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$home/articles/jargon_file/jargon-2.2.1
========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.2.1 15 DEC 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 file contains essentially the entire text of a late version of that file intermingled with the newer entries. A version of the original jargon-file (expanded with commentary for the mass market) was edited by by Guy L. Steele into a book published in 1983 as _The_Hacker's_Dictionary_ (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). It is now out of print, but this version contains about 80% of its text (omitting the introductions, the author bios, and a very few obsolescent entries). 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 maintainer of the jargon file is Eric S. Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com) with assistance from Guy L. Steele (gls@think.com). Send all additions, corrections and correspondence relating to the jargon file to jargon@snark.thyrsus.com (UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can use ...!uunet!snark!jargon). (Warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not guaranteed to be correct* later than the revision date on the first line. *Don't* email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces --- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people) It is intended that some `snapshot' of this on-line version will become the main text of a second paper edition, possibly as early as Fall 1991. The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the jargon file through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker community. Revision History ================ 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 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: 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 The Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey). Some obsolescent usages (mostly PDP-10 derived) were moved to appendix B. Version 2.1.5, Nov 28 1990: Changes and additions by ESR in response to numerous USENET submissions and comment from the First Edition coauthors. The bibliography (Appendix C) was also appended. Version 2.2.1: most of the contents of the 1983 paper edition edited by Guy Steele was merged in. Many more USENET submissions added, including the `INTERNATIONAL STYLE' and `COMMONWEALTH HACKISH' material. Version numbering: Read versions as <major>.<minor>.<revision>. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR with assistance from GLS. Someday, the next maintainer will take over and spawn `version 3'. In general, later versions will either completely obsolesce or incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions around. 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 formerly maintained. Format For New Entries ====================== Try to conform to the format already being used -- pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in brackets, single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set (no high-half characters or {nt}roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a character tty. We are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many other related fields. Send us your 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. A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These are coinages generated by editors or USENET correspondents in the process of responding to previous definitions of those entries. These are *not* represented as established jargon. The jargon file will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute -- this is *your* monument! 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!" Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon. Soundalike slang: Phonetic distortions of a phrase intended to produce the effect of a pun or wordplay. Not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas hacker rhyming slang is intentionally transparent. Often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples: Boston Globe => Boston Glob Herald American => Horrid (or Harried) American New York Times => New York Slime Prime Time => Slime Time Data General => Dirty Genitals Government Property - Do Not Duplicate (seen on keys) => Government Duplicity - Do Not Propagate for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins 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 The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the syllable "P"; from the LISP convention of appending the letter "P" to denote a predicate (a Boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: Q: "Foodp?" A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!" Q: "State-of-the-world-P?" A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home." A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state." On the phone to Florida: Q: "State-p Florida?" A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?" [One of the best of these is a Gosperism (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 grammar: Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases. For example, because porous => porosity generous => generosity hackers happily generalize: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferrocity Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. e.g.: "All nouns can be verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve. Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. Thus: win -> winnitude, winnage disgust -> disgustitude hack -> hackification Finally, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms. Anything ending in x may form plurals in -xen (see VAXEN and BOXEN in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; ex. `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of FROBBOTZ (see main text) and `Unices' and `Tenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Tenexes'; see UNIX, TENEX in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Tenexen' are *never* used; there seems to be a rule that operating system names take the default English or Latin plural rather than the Anglo-Saxon or Hebrew. The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of an inflectional rule which (in English) is either an import or a fossil (such as Hebrew plural in `-im', or the Anglo-Saxen plural in `en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply. This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. Spoken inarticulations: Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan" are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link. Another expression sometimes heard is "complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!" 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. Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum: MONSTROSITY BRAIN-DAMAGE SCREW BUG LOSE MISFEATURE CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE ELEGANCE PERFECTION The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, never actually attained. 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 of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude are considered tacky and the mark of a loser. This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. Unlike the jargon construction methods it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom. It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions -- or, at least, the people they're talking to are confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they've done so much coding that distinguishes between if (going) { and if (!going) { that when they parse the question "Are you not going?" it seems to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits the opposite answer. This confuses non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like french "si" with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question. For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use a double negative even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows it. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be mis-parsed as a negative tends to disturb them. Hacker Writing Style ==================== Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parens, much to the dismay of editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase, and so is "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and"Spock groks". This is incorrect according to prevalent usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes) but it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong there. The Jargon File follows hackish usage fairly consistently throughout. Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of font changes, underlining and the like are available. One of these is that, TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS "LOUD", and this becomes such a synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to caps-lock while in TALK MODE (see main text) may be asked to "stop shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!". Also, it is common to use bracketing with asterisks to signify emphasis, as in "What the *hell*?". Underlining is often suggested by substituting underscores for spaces and prepending and appending one underscore to the underlined phrase. Example: "It is often alleged that Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ in response to Robert Heinlein's earlier _Starship_Troopers_". Another habit is that of using enclosure to "genericize" a term; this derives from conventions used in BNF (q.v.). Uses like the following are common: So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day, and... Another special form of enclosure uses the square brackets [, ]. This is often interpreted as "comment by an editor" in contexts where that's reasonable, and there's a semi-standard way to identify the editor where there might be more than one. For example: [This is an editorial comment -- ESR] is a comment by an editor with initials ESR. You'll see examples of this in the lexicon at places where present or past editors have added their own glosses on various entries. It is also common in moderated groups on USENET (q.v.). One quirk that shows up frequently in the email style of UNIX hackers in particular is a tendency for some things which are normally all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. It is clear that for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an appopriate reflex because UNIX and C both distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to lossage). The *rest* of us simply avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences. Finally, it should be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English (this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses in its syntax)). International Style =================== Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of English slang (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!) the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to traveling hackers. There are some references to `Commonwealth English'. These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India etc.) There is also an entry on COMMONWEALTH HACKISH, which see. Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage which are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here. A note or two on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are parallel with and comprehensible to English-speakers. 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 and n=6 is games. Sections 4, 5, 7 and 8 have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to from any of the entries. 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. Slashes bracket a phonetic pronunciation to be interpreted using the following conventions: 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'. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of `loch' or `l'chaim'. 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/, not /kit'@n/ and /kul'@r/. The Jargon (Low Moby, Current Terminology) ****************************************** {= =} @-SIGN PARTY n. Semi-closed parties thrown at SF conventions (esp. the annual Worldcon) for hackers; one must have a NETWORK ADDRESS to get in, or at least be in company with someone who is. One of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare BOINK. @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; note, if you are viewing an ASCII-only version of this file, that the actual case is all-lower: "/dev/null"] 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, NULL DEVICE. 2 INFIX n. In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents the syllable "to" with the comnnotation "translate to"; as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string) and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). {= A =} ACK /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 00110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream "Yo!"). An appropriate response to PING or ENQ (q.v.). 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 (010101), 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." Compare DUMBASS ATTACK. AD-HOCKERY /ad-hok'@r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior, but are in fact entirely arbitrary. 2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input which would otherwise cause a program to CHOKE, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way. 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. AI KOANS pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the Lab's culture. A selection are included in Appendix A. See also HA HA ONLY SERIOUS and HUMOR, HACKER. 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. AMP OFF [Purdue] v. To run in BACKGROUND. From the UNIX shell '&' operator. ANGLE BRACKETS [primarily MIT] n. Either of the characters "<" and ">" (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). The `real world' angle bracket used by typographers is actually taller than these. See BROKET, ASCII. 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, UNDERPANTS, 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 YU-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, pling, 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, octothorpe (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 ; semicolon, semi <> 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, query, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh, hook @ 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), slosh. ^ circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to the power of"), fang _ underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow ` 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, or-bar, v-bar, pipe, gozinta, thru, pipesinta (last four from UNIX) ~ tilde, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, swung dash, enyay ASYMPTOTIC adj. Infinitely close to. This is used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to allege that something is WITHIN EPSILON OF some standard, reference or goal (see EPSILON). AUTOBOGOTIPHOBIA /aw'to-boh-got'@-foh`bee-uh/ n. See BOGOTIFY. AUTOMAGICALLY /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k@l-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. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable." AWK n. 1. [UNIX] An interpreted language developed by Aho, Weinberg and Kernighan, characterized by: C-like syntax, a BASIC-like approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also PERL. 2. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal regular expression facilities. {= 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. Syn. TRAP DOOR. See also IRON BOX, CRACKER, WORM, LOGIC BOMB. BACKGROUND vt.,adj. A task running in background is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose FOREGROUND. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with UNIX, but it 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 AMP OFF, 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 vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting the bag." The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, 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. BANDWIDTH n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its techniucal meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics but I missed some of the detail --- not enough bandwidth, I guess." 2. Attention span. 3. Very loosely, total data volume. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon full of magtapes." 4. On USENET, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how network news items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth. 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 (esp. via the term BANG PATH) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang.", 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, NETWORK, and SITENAME. 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. BARE METAL n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an OPERATING SYSTEM, HLL or even assembler. Commonly in the phrase "programming on the bare metal" which refers to the arduous work of BIT-BASHING needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment. 2. The same phrase is also used to describe a style of HAND-HACKING that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on crocks like overlapping opcodes (or, in one famous case, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs of programming time and machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments like industrial embedded systems. See REAL PROGRAMMER. 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. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable input. May mean to give an error message. Examples: "The division operation barfs if you try to divide by 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. Note that in Commonwealth English, "barf" is generally replaced by "puke" or "vom". BARF is sometimes also used as a metasyntactic variable like FOO or BAR. BAUD BARF /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the connection. Baud barf is not completely RANDOM, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones can identify particular speeds. BAZ /baz/ 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!"] vt. To transfer SOFTCOPY of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as "beam me a copy" or "beam that over to his site". Compare BLAST, SNARF, BLT. BELLS AND WHISTLES [by analogy with steam calliopies] n. Features added to a program or system to make it more FLAVORFUL from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from CHROME which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." However, no one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. 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. May be more common among SUITS attempting to sound like cognoscenti than hackers, who usually just say `BSD'. 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. BIBLE n. As used by hackers, usually refers to one of a small number of fundamental source books including Donald Knuth's "The Art Of Computer Programming" or the WHITE BOOK. BIFF /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous PSEUDO, and the prototypical NEWBIE. Articles from BIFF are characterized by all upper case letters sprinkled liberally with BANGS, typos, "cute" misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), a long SIG (sometimes even a DOUBLED SIG), and unbounded naivete. BIFF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. BIFF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However, BITNET seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: BIFF@BIT.NET. See also DOUBLED SIG. 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; compare HEAVY METAL, oppose DINOSAUR. 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". BIGNUM /big'num/ [orig. from MIT MACLISP; the name is said to derive from a pun on the FORTRAN REAL type] n. 1. 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!" 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 ^ 15 (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 8477284218896796462449451607653534081989013854424879849599533191 0172335555660213945039973628075013783761530712776192684903435262 5200015888535147331611702103968175921510907788019393178114194545 2572238655414610628921879602238389714760885062768629671466746975 6291123408243920816015378088989396451826324367161676217916890977 9911903754031274622289988005195444414282012187361745992642956581 7466283029555702990243241531816172104658320367869061172601587835 2075151628422554026517048330422614397428693306169089796848259012 5458327168226458066526769958652682272807075781391858178889652208 1643483448259932660433676601769996128318607883861502794659551311 5655203609398818061213855860030143569452722420634463179746059468 2573103790084024432438465657245014402821885252470935190620929023 1364932734975655139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623 7738753823048386568897646192738381490014076731044664025989949022 2221765904339901886018566526485061799702356193897017860040811889 7299183110211712298459016419210688843871218556461249607987229085 1929681937238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013742853 1926649875337218940694281434118520158014123344828015051399694290 1534830776445690990731524332782882698646027898643211390835062170 9500259738986355427719674282224875758676575234422020757363056949 8825087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994871701244516 4612603790293091208890869420285106401821543994571568059418727489 9809425474217358240106367740459574178516082923013535808184009699 6372524230560855903700624271243416909004153690105933983835777939 4109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000. 2. BIGNUMS [from Macsyma] n. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice, especially a roll of double fives or double sixes. See also EL CAMINO BIGNUM. BIT [from the unit of information] n. 1. The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question (this is straight technicalese). 2. A computational quantity that can take on one of two values, such as true and false, or zero and one. 3. 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.) A bit is said to be "set" if its value is true or one, and "reset" or "clear" if its value is false or zero. One speaks of setting and clearing bits. To "toggle" or "invert" a bit is to change it, either from zero to one or from one to zero. 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. instructions 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 BASHING n. (also, "bit diddling") Term used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming characterized by manipulation of BIT, FLAG, NYBBLE and other smaller-than-character sized pieces of data: these include low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics programming (see BITBLT), and assembler/compiler code generation. May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more usually the former)."The command decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." See also BIT BANG, BIT MASK. BIT BUCKET n. The great data sink in the sky (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). Data that is discarded, lost, or destroyed 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". This term is used purely in jest. It's based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed, but only misplaced. See also NULL DEVICE. 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/ or /bit'belt/ n. [from BLT, q.v.] 1. Any 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. Synonym for BLIT or BLT (q.v.) BITS n. 1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare CORE DUMP, sense #4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrasted with paper. "I only have a photocopy of the Jargon File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See SOFTCOPY. 3. Also in THE SOURCE OF ALL GOOD BITS n. A person from whom (or a place from which) information may be obtained. If you need to know about a program, a WIZARD might be the source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a particularly competent secretary. 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 800, 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 (q.v.) used on BIX (the Byte Information Exchange); BIXers believe (probably incorrectly) the emoticon was invented there. BLACK ART n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area. VLSI design and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they became DEEP MAGIC, and once standard textbooks had been written became merely HEAVY WIZARDRY. The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term "black art" and what it describes less common than formerly. BLACK HOLE n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites it is commonly said to have "fallen into a black hole". Similarly, one might say "I think there's a black hole at foovax!" to convey suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately. The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. BLAST vt.,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. BLETCHEROUS /blech'@-rus/ adj. Disgusting in design or function; aesthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced). See LOSING, CRETINOUS, BAGBITING, BOGUS, and RANDOM. BLETCHEROUS applies to the aesthetics of the thing so described; similarly for CRETINOUS. By contrast, something that is LOSING or BAGBITING may be failing to meet objective criteria. See BOGUS and RANDOM, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above. 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 sign in its entiretu ran: ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS 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 1959 at Stanford University and had already gone international by the early '60s, when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several variants of it in circulation. BLIT /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high memory, and at the end BLITs it all back down again." See BITBLT, BLT, DD, CAT, BLAST, SNARF, Appendix B. More generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2. An early experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T 5620. 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 vt. To remove files and directories from permanant storage with extreme prejudice, generally by accident. Oppose NUKE. BLOW OUT vi. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as CRASH AND BURN. See BLOW PAST. BLOW PAST vi. To BLOW OUT despite a safeguard. "The server blew past the 5K reserve buffer." BLT /bee ell tee/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,v. 1. Synonym for BLIT. This is the original form of BLIT and the ancestor of BITBLT (q.v.). In these versions the usage has outlasted the PDP-10 BLock Transfer instruction for which BLT derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic BLT almost always means `Branch if Less Than Zero'. BLUE BOOK n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on the page-layout and graphics-control language PostScript; the others are known as the GREEN BOOK and RED BOOK. 2. Any of the 1988 standards issues by the CCIT 9th plenary assembly. They change color each review cycle (1984 was RED BOOK, 1992 will be GREEN BOOK). These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also RED BOOK, GREEN BOOK, SILVER BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON 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. It may not be irrelevant that BLUE GLUE is the trade name of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors so common in computer installations. A correspondent at U.Minn. reports "The CS dept here has about 80 bottles of BLUE GLUE hanging about, so we're occasionally calling [sic] any messy work to be done `using the BLUE GLUE"'. 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. See also PARSE. It is worth noting that the term BNF is also used loosely for extensions of this notation containing some or all of the GLOB wildcards. 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 n. See BOGOSITY. BOGON /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to the "Vogons", see Appendix C] 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." 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivatives in 1-4. BOGON FILTER /boh'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-go's@-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. BOGOTIFY /boh-go't@-fie/ vt. To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you'd better not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional AUTOBOGOTIPHOBIA (aw'to-boh-got'@-foh`bee-uh) n., defined as the fear of becoming bogotified; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' slang rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. BOGUE OUT /bohg owt/ vi. to becomes bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question, then he bogued out and did nothing but FLAME afterwards". 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. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of RANDOM.) [Etymological note: "Bogus" was originally used in the hackish 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 (see AUTOBOGOTIPHOBIA under BOGOTIFY). By the mid-1980s it was also current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen slang] Further note: A correspondent at Cambridge claims these uses of bogus grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means rather specifically `counterfeit' as in "a bogus pound note". BOHR BUG /bohr 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. In Commonwealth English this the variant "bonk" is more common. 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. Compare @-SIGN PARTY. BOMB vi. 1. General synonym for CRASH, esp. used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb out" 2. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of PANIC or GURU (sense 2), where icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed indicating the system has died. On the Mac this may be accomanied by a hexadecimal number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga GURU MEDITION number. MESS-DOS machines tend to get LOCKED UP in this situation. 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"] vi.,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); the opposite condition is called `balanced', which is more jargon in the strict sense and may be found in technical dictionaries. 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, perhaps from "to bounce a check"] 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. At one time there was a volleyball court next to the computer laboratory. From 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5:00 the computer would become unavailable, and over the intercom a voice would cry , "Bounce, bounce!" 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. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among VMS users. 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 Honeywell MULTICS] adj. Obviously wrong; CRETINOUS; DEMENTED. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. BRAIN-DEAD adj. Brain-damaged in the extreme. Not quite like mainstream use, as it tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. BRAINO /bray'no/ n. Syn. for THINKO (q.v.). 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 editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may be examined for debugging purposes. The place where it stops is a "breakpoint". 3. To send an RS-232 "break" (125 msec. of line high) over a serial comm line. 4. [UNIX] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally "break" (sense 3) or delete does this. 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. Oppose ROBUST. BROADCAST STORM n. An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that start the process over again. 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/ or /broh'ket/ [by analogy with "bracket": a "broken bracket"] (primarily Stanford) n. Either of the characters "<" and ">". This word originated as a contraction of the phrase "broken bracket", that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and apparently in THE REAL WORLD (q.v.) as well, these are usually called ANGLE BRACKETS.) BRUTE FORCE adj. Describes a certain kind of primitive programming style. Brute-force programs typically work by enumerating all possible combinations of things in an effort to find the one combination that solves the problem. An example of a brute-force program is one that sorts a thousand numbers by examining them all, picking the smallest one, and saving it in another table; then examining all the numbers again, and picking the smallest one except for the one it already picked; and in general choosing the next number by examining all one thousand numbers and choosing the smallest one that hasn't yet been picked (as determined by examining all the ones already picked). Yes, the program will produce the right answer, but it will be much slower than a program that uses even a modicum of cleverness to avoid most of the work. (A little bit of computer science---specifically, the theory of algorithms---will show that if a typical large computer can sort a thousand numbers in a tenth of a second using a clever sorting method, the brute-force method outlined above would take about 14 hours.) BRUTE FORCE AND IGNORANCE n. A popular design technique at many software houses --- BRUTE FORCE coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to encourage it. Characteristic of early LARVAL STAGE programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI, as in: "Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's strictly from BFI." (this comment might be used by a hacker to describe the example given under BRUTE FORCE above). 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 University of California at 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, esp. on a Stanford (or Knight) keyboard (see SPACE-CADET 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. See DOUBLE BUCKY, QUADRUPLE BUCKY. BUFFER OVERFLOW n. What typically happens when an OS or application is fed data faster than it can handle. 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 n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or hardware, esp. one which causes it to malfunction. Antonym of FEATURE. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards." "The system CRASHED because of a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs." (e.g. Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems.) Some have said this term came from telephone company usage: "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines, but this appears to be a `folk etymology'. Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a persistent glitch in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual physical bug out between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated BUG in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, and now resides in the Smithsonian. Interestingly, the text of the log entry, which is said to read "First example of a real computer `bug"' establishes that the term was already in use at the time; and a similar incident is alleged to have occurred on the original ENIAC machine. Indeed, the use of "bug" to mean an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and "bug" in the sense of an annoyance goes back to Shakespeare! In any case, in hacker's slang the word almost never refers to insects. Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened: "This ant-farm has a bug." "What do you mean? There aren't even any ants in it." "That's the bug." BUG COMPATIBLE n. Said of a design or revision the design of which has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with FOSSILS or MISFEATURES in other programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. 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. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." 2. n. A small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by TUNE (q.v.). Note that both these uses are rare in Commonwealth English, where "bum" is interpreted as a rude synonym for "buttocks". BUMP vt. 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 vi. Like FLAME, but connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep contempt. BUSY-WAIT vi. 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. Syn. SPIN-LOCK BUZZ vi. 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. The state of a buzzing program resembles CATATONIA, but you never get out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. Example: "The program buzzes for about ten seconds trying to sort all the names into order." 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 vt. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the person doing the deed is an operator, as in CANNED FROM THE CONSOLE. Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can that print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!". Synonymous with GUN. It is said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN (0011000) was used as a kill-job character on some early OSs. CALCULATOR [Cambridge] n. Syn. for BITTY BOX. CANONICAL adj. The usual or standard state or manner of something. This word has a somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. For example, one sometimes speaks of a formula as being in canonical form. Two formulas such as "9 + x" and "x + 9" are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in canonical form because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. The slang meaning is a relaxation of the technical meaning (this generalization 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: "Bob just used `canonical' in the canonical way." CARD WALLOPER n. An EDP programmer who works on batch programs that do stupid things like print people's paychecks. Compare CODE GRINDER. CASTERS-UP MODE /cas'trz uhp mohd/ [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for `broken' or `down'. CASTING THE RUNES n. The act of getting a GURU to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from J. RANDOM LOSER does. Compare INCANTATION, RUNES, EXAMINING THE ENTRAILS. CAT [from "concatenate" via UNIX cat(1)] vt. 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 something is so WEDGED that it makes no response. For example, if you are typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia (possibly because it has CRASHED). CDR /ku'dr/ [from LISP] v. To remove the first item from a list of things. In the form CDR DOWN, to trace down a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. 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] vi. 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/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n. Shorthand for `character'. Esp. used by C programmers, as `char' is C's typename for character data. CHASE POINTERS 1. vi. To go through multiple levels of indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure. Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common data type. This is almost jargon 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..." 2. [Cambridge] POINTER CHASE or POINTER HUNT: the process of going through a dump (intractively or on a large piece of paper printed with hex RUNES) following dynamic data-structures. Only used in a debugging context. 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. CHOKE vt. To reject input, often ungracefully. "I tried building X, but cpp choked on all those #define's." See BARF, GAG, VI. CHOMP vt. 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 (much like what the PacMan does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb Doubling). The hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. For example, to do this to a person is equivalent to saying "You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. You might do this if someone told you that a program you had written had failed in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated it. CHOMPER n. Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See LOSER, BAGBITER, CHOMP. CHRISTMAS TREE n. A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring rows of blinking red and green LEDs like Christmas lights. 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 n. 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". See also HA HA ONLY SERIOUS. CLASSIC C /klas'ik see/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] 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. CLEAN adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies "elegance in the small", that is a design or implementation which may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intutive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is GRUNGY or CRUFTY. 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. Compare CYCLES. 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 blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or trade secret protections, as in "your product is a clone of my product." This usage implies legal action is pending. 4. A PC-BUS/ISA or EISA-compatible 80x86 based microcomputer (in-context shorthand for "PC clone"). 5. 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 /klohz/ [from the verb "to close", thus the `z' sound] 1. n. Abbreviation for "close (or right) parenthesis", used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. See OPEN. 2. adj. Of a delimiting character, used at the right-hand end of a grouping. Used in such terms as "close parenthesis", "close bracket", etc. 3. vt. To release a file or communication channel after access. 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. Compare CARD WALLOPER. 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 ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive weenies. The ironic usage is perhaps more common. CODEWALKER n. A program component that traverses other programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front-ends. Other utility programs which try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in "This new vgrind feature would require a codewalker to implement." COKEBOTTLE /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character, particularly one that isn't on your keyboard so you can't type it. 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). Mythically, some variants are the "assigned come from", and the "computed come from" (parodyong some nasty control constructs in BASIC and FORTRAN). Notionally, multi-tasking can be implemented by having more than one COME FROM statement coming from the same label. COME FROM was actually implemented under a different name in Univac's Fortran, c.1975. The statement "AT 100" would perform a "COME FROM 100". It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. It was supported under its own name for the first time fifteen years later, in C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL, RETROCOMPUTING); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from shock. COMMONWEALTH HACKISH n. Hacker slang as spoken outside the U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce "char", "soc" etc. as spelled (/char/, /sok/) as opposed to American /keir/ or /sohsh/. Dots in names tend to be pronounced more often (/sok dot wi'bble/ rather than /sohsh wib'ble/). Preferred metasyntactic variables include FRODO and BILBO; WIBBLE, WOBBLE and in emergencies WUBBLE; BANANA, WOMBAT and FROG and so on and on. Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes "-o-rama", "frenzy" (as in feeding frenzy) and "city" (as in "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American usages `parens' `brackets' and `braces' for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers "bracket", "square bracket" and "curly bracket". Also, the use of "pling" for BANG is common outside the U.S.. See also CALCULATOR, CHEMIST, GRUNGE, HEAVY METAL, LEAKY HEAP, LORD HIGH FIXER, PSYCHEDELICWARE, PLINGNET, RASTER BLASTER, SEGGIE, SPIN-LOCK, TICK-LIST FEATURES, WEEBLE, WEASEL, YABA and notes or definitions under BARF, BOGUS, CHASE POINTERS, COSMIC RAYS, CRIPPLEWARE, CRUNCH, DODGY, GONK, ROOT, TWEAK, and BUM. COMPRESS [UNIX] vt. 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. 1. 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. 2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see BOGON). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been worked out based on the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object move more rapidly as it is heated. It is argued that an object melts because the molecules have lost their information about where they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). This explains why computers get so hot and require air conditioning; they use up computrons. Conversely, you should be able to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed that this may also explain why machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room --- because the computrons there have been all used up by your other hardware. 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, esp. at the top. 2. CONS UP: vt. 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 (the "considered silly" found at various places in this jargon file is related). CONTENT-FREE adj. Ironic analogy with "context-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. Perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and like animals. "Content-free? Uh...that's anything printed on glossy paper". CONWAY'S LAW n. The rule that the organization of the software and the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a four-pass compiler." This was originally promulgated by Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. "SAVE" didn't stand for anything, it was just that you lost fewer decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on top of them. COOKIE MONSTER [from "Sesame Street"] 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 ("General Public License") carried by GNU EMACS and other Free Software Foundation software, granting re-use and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also GENERAL PUBLIC VIRUS). 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. See CORE DUMP. CORE DUMP n. [UNIX] 1. A symptom of 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." 3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp. in apology: "Sorry I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare BITS, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows about a topic, esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" [From the instructions to a qual exam at Columbia]. See CORE. CORE LEAK n. Syn. with MEMORY LEAK (q.v.). 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. See CORE. CORGE /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the Gosmacs documentation. See GRAULT. COSMIC RAYS n. Notionally, the cause of BIT ROT (q.v.). However, this is a semi-independent usage which may be invoked as a humorous way of HANDWAVING away any minor RANDOMNESS that doesn't seem worth the bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric --- I just got a burst of garbage on my TUBE, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess". Compare SUNSPOTS, PHASE OF THE MOON. The British seem to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'. 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 OS-8, RSTS and RSX-11. See MS-DOS, OPERATING SYSTEM. CPU WARS n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of "IPM" (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This rather transparent allegory featured many references to ADVENT (q.v.) and the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper). It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM company stationery from the then-head of IBM's Thomas J. Watson research laboratories (then as now one of the few islands of true hackerdom in the IBM archipelago). The lower loop of the `B' in the IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out. See EAT FLAMING DEATH, X!. CRACKER n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined c.1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of HACKER, (q.v., sense #7). CRANK [from automotive slang] vt. 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", whereas the term "system crash" usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or other software was at fault. 2. vi. 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 vi.,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. CRAYOLA n. A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer perfermance for an unreasonably low price. Now known also as KILLER MICROS. 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. 1. 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"...) 2. More generally, The tendency for anything complicated to become even more complicated because people keep saying, "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too." (See FEATURE.) The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone... and then another... and another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. CRETIN /kre'tn/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital LOSER (q.v.); an obnoxious person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed that American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation /kret'n/ over standard American /kreet'n/; it is thought this may be due to the phonetic influence Monty Python's Flying Circus. CRETINOUS /kre't@n-us/ or /kree't@n-us/ adj. Wrong; non-functional; very poorly designed (Also used pejoratively of people). Synonyms: BLETCHEROUS, BAGBITING, LOSING, BRAIN-DAMAGED. CRIPPLEWARE n. 1. SHAREWARE which has some important functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working version. See also GUILTWARE. 2. [Cambridge] GUILTWARE (q.v.) which exhorts you to donate to some charity. CRLF /ker'l@f/, sometimes /kru'l@f/ n. A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). More loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. See NEWLINE, TERPRI. Under UNIX influence this usage has become less common (UNIX uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF'). CROCK [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. 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. See KLUGE. Also in the adjectives CROCKISH, CROCKY and the noun CROCKITUDE. CROSS-POST [USENET] v. To post a single article directed to several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it multiple times. 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!" The related usage "fuckware" is reported for software so bad it mutilates your disk, broadcasts to the Internet, or some similar fiasco. CRUFT /kruhft/ 1. [back-formation from CRUFTY] n. 1. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft. 2. n. The results of shoddy construction. 3. v. [from hand cruft, pun on hand craft] to write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see HAND HACKING). CRUFT TOGETHER, CRUFT UP /kruhft too-ge'thr/, /kruhft uhp/ vt. To throw together something ugly but temporarily workable. Like v. KLUGE, but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in about ten minutes." See CRUFTY. CRUFTSMANSHIP n. [from CRUFT] The antithesis of craftsmanship. CRUFTY /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from "crusty" or "cruddy"] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly overly complex. The CANONICAL example is "This is standard old crufty DEC software". In fact, one theory of the origin of "crufty" holds that was originally a mutation of "crusty" applied to DEC software so old that the Ss were tall and skinny, looking more like Fs. Hence CRUFT, n. shoddy construction. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. 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)." CRUMB n. Two binary digits; a quad. Larger that a BIT, smaller than a NYBBLE (q.v.). CRUNCH 1. vi. 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. vt. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as 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. 4. [Cambridge] To squeeze program source into a minimum-size representation that will still compile. The term came into being specifically for a famous program on the BBC micro which crunched Basic source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a wholly-interpretive basic). 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, GRIND GRIND. 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. CRYPPIE /krip'ee/ n. A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic software or hardware. 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.). CTY /sit'ee/ or /see tee wie/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically associated with a computer's operating console. The term is a contraction of "Console TTY", that is, "Console TeleTYpe". This ITS and TOPS-10-associated term has become less common than formerly, as most UNIX hackers simply refer to the CTY as `the console'. CUBING [parallel with "tubing"] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing AGAIN!!" 2. An indescribable form of self-torture (see sense #1). CUSPY /kuhs'pee/ [coined at WPI from the DEC acronym CUSP, for Commonly Used System Program, i.e., a utility program used by many people] adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. See RUDE. 2. [NYU] An attractive woman, especially one regarded as available. 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. CYCLE n. The "basic unit of computation". What every hacker wants more of. One might think that single machine instructions would be the measure of computation, and indeed computers are often compared by how many instructions they can process per second, but some instructions take longer than others. Nearly all computers have an internal clock, though, and you can describe an instruction as taking so many "clock cycles". Frequently the computer can access its memory once on every clock cycle, and so one speaks also of "memory cycles". These are technical meanings of "cycle". The slang meaning comes from the observation that there are only so many cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer, the cycles get divided up among the users. The more cycles the computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to respond. CYCLE CRUNCH n. The situation where the number of people trying to use the computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one can get enough cycles because they are spread too thin. Usually the only solution is to buy more computer. Happily, this has rapidly become easier in recent years, so much so that the very term CYCLE CRUNCH now has a faintly archaic flavor (most hackers now use workstations or personal computers as opposed to traditional timesharing systems). CYCLE DROUGHT n. A scarcity of cycles. It may be due to a CYCLE CRUNCH, but could also occur because part of the computer is temporarily not working, leaving fewer cycles to go around. Example: "The HIGH MOBY is DOWN, so we're running with only half the usual amount of memory. There will be a CYCLE DROUGHT until it's fixed." {= D =} DAEMON /day'mun/ or /dee'mun/ [Disk And Execution MONitor] n. A program which is not invoked explicitly, but which lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, under ITS writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory would invoke the spooling daemon, which 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 IBM JCL via archaic UNIX dd(1)] vt. Equivalent to CAT or BLT. A specialized UNIX copy command for block-oriented devices. Often used in heavy-handed system abuse, as in "Let's dd the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot prom to load it back on to a new disk". The UNIX dd(1) was originally written with a weird, distinctly non-UNIXy keyword option syntax reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had a similar DD command); though the command filled a need the design choice looks to have been somebody's joke. The slang usage is now very rare outside UNIX sites and now nearly obsolescent even there, as dd(1) has been DEPRECATED for a long time (though it has no replacement). Replaced by BLT or simple English `copy'. DDT /dee'dee'tee'/ n. 1. Generic term for a program that helps you to debug other programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the term DDT is now slightly archaic, having been widely displaced by `debugger' 2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled ITS operating system (q.v.), its DDT was also used as the SHELL or top level command language used to execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early DEC hardware. The DEC PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT which illuminates the origin of the term: Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT acronym. Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs. Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the handbook as DEC became much more "businesslike". DEADLOCK n. 1. 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 server, which may find itself waiting for output from the server before sending anything more to it, while the server is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling program before outputting anything. (It is reported that this particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a "starvation" deadlock, though that term is more properly used for situations where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough priority. Another common flavor is "constipation", where each process is trying to send stuff to the other, but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything.) See DEADLY EMBRACE. 2. Also used of deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when two people meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side without making any progress because they always both move the same way at the same time. DEADLY EMBRACE n. Same as DEADLOCK (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. Also DEADLY EMBRACE is often restricted to the case where exactly two processes are involved, while DEADLOCK can involve any number. 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. DEC WARS n. A 1983 USENET posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr, spoofing the _Star_Wars_ movies in hackish terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings/Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a three-times-longer complete rewrite called `UNIX WARS'; the two are often confused. DECKLE /dek'l/ n. Two NICKLES; 10 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. DEFENESTRATION [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of assassinating prime ministers, via ESR and SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was *awful*!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" See also H INFIX. 2. [proposed] The requirement to support a command-line interface. As: "It has to run on a VT100." "Curses! I've been defenestrated". 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. DEHOSE vt. To clear a HOSED condition. DELINT vt. To modify code to remove problems detected when linting. See LINT. DEEP MAGIC n. An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare BLACK ART). one which could only have been uttered by a true WIZARD. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of OS design used to be DEEP MAGIC; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics and AI still are. Compare HEAVY WIZARDRY. Esp. found in comments of the form "Deep magic begins here...". DEEP SPACE adj. 1. Describes the "location" of any program which has gone OFF THE TROLLEY (q.v.). Esp. used of programs which just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some output is expected. Compare BUZZ, CATATONIA. 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. DELTA n. 1. A change, especially a small or incremental change. Example: "I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program size?" "About thirty percent." (He doubled the speed of his program, but increased its size by only thirty percent.) 2. [UNIX] A DIFF (q.v.), especially a DIFF stored under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System). 3. n. A small quantity, but not as small as EPSILON. The slang usage of DELTA and EPSILON stems from the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in so-called "epsilon-delta" proofs in the differential calculus. DELTA is often used once EPSILON has been mentioned to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than EPSILON but still very small. For example, "The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Compare WITHIN DELTA OF, WITHIN EPSILON OF: that is, close to and even closer to. DEMENTED adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. 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 lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See DAEMON. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. Demons are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to DAEMON, especially in the UNIX world where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic. 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, DEREZ /dee rez/ [from the movie TRON] 1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; the image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster lines and static and then dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to have suddenly "fuzzed out" mentally rather than physically. Usage: extremely silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented as *fictional* hacker slang, and adopted in a spirit of irony by real hackers years after the fact. 2. vt. On a Macintosh, the data is compiled separately from the program, in small segments of the program file known as "resources". The standard resource compiler is Rez. The standard resource decompiler is DeRez. Usage: very common. 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 1. vt. 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. 2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also TWEAK, TWIDDLE, FROB. 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 vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan runs: "When in doubt, dike it out." (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity rather than increasing it). The word "dikes" is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean "diagonal cutters", a heavy-duty metal-cutting device; to "dike something out" means to use such cutters to remove something. Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to non-physical objects such as sections of code. DING /ding/ n.,v. 1. Synonym for FEEP (q.v.). Usage: rare among hackers, but commoner in THE REAL WORLD. 2. DINGED: What happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something you consider trivial. "I was dinged for having a messy desk". 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, CHURCH OF THE SUB-GENIUS, 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. Display hacks can also be implemented without programming by creating text files containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a christmas tree with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. DOCO /do'ko/ [orig. in-house slang at Symbolics] n. A documentation writer. See also DEVO and MANGO. DO PROTOCOL [from network protocol programming] vt. 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. DODGY adj. Syn. with FLAKEY (q.v.). Preferred outside the U.S. 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."] 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 [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial complaint] 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 transferrable 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". DONUTS n. Collective noun for any set of memory bits. This is really archaic and may no longer be live slang; it dates from the days of ferrite-core memories in which each bit was represented by a donut-shaped magnetic flip-flop. Compare CORE. 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 normally invisible). 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, QUADRUPLE BUCKY, SPACE-CADET KEYBOARD. The following lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford BUCKY BITS (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could only type 512 different characters on a Stanford keyword. An obvious thing was simply to add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; one problem, is that a keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned below, in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber Duckie", which was published in "The Sesame Street Songbook". Double Bucky Double bucky, you're the one! You make my keyboard lots of fun. Double bucky, an additional bit or two: (Vo-vo-de-o!) Control and meta, side by side, Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide! Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few! Oh, I sure wish that I Had a couple of Bits more! Perhaps a Set of pedals to Make the number of Bits four: Double double bucky! Double bucky, left and right OR'd together, outta sight! Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you! --- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss) [This is, by the way, an excellent example of computer FILK --- ESR] DOUBLED SIG /duh'b@ld sig/ [USENET] n. A SIG BLOCK (q.v.) that has been included twice in a USENET article or, less frequently, in an electronic mail message. An article or message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured software. More often, however, it reveals the author's lack of experience in electronic communication. See BIFF, PSEUDO. DOWN 1. adj. Not working. "The up escalator is down." That is considered a humorous thing to say, but "The elevator is down" always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on. 2. GO DOWN vi. To stop functioning; usually said of the SYSTEM. The message every hacker hates to hear from the operator is, "The system will go down in five minutes." 3. TAKE DOWN, BRING DOWN vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work. "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the tape drive." DOWNLOAD vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a mainframe) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral 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". See also BLUE BOOK, RED BOOK, GREEN BOOK, SILVER BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK. DRAIN [IBM] v. Syn. for FLUSH (sense 4). DREAD HIGH BIT DISEASE n. A condition endemic to PRIME (formerly PR1ME) minicomputers which results in all the characters having their high (\200) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to mention talking to true eightbit devices. It is reported that PRIME adopted the reversed eight bit convention in order to save 25 cents/serial line/machine. This probably qualifies as one of the most CRETINOUS design tradeoffs ever made. See META BIT. 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). See also CONNECTOR CONSPIRACY. 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". For example, this is an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame." DROP ON THE FLOOR vt. To react to an error condition by silent discarding messages or other valuable data. 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. See also BLACK HOLE. DRUGGED adj., also ON DRUGS. 1. Conspicuously stupid, heading towards BRAIN DAMAGE. Often accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint. 2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal preformance. 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. Another recommended fix is to the rotate optical mouse pad 90 degrees. DUMBASS ATTACK /duhm'ass @-tak'/ [Purdue] n. A novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made by running as root under UNIX, eg. typing "rm *" or mkfs on a mounted file system. Compare ADGER. DUSTY DECK n. Old software (especially applications) with which one is obliged to remain compatible. The term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and number-crunching software, much of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but 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; also occasionally described as the single instruction the ideal computer would have (back when proof of program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about DWIMC: Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing), see RIGHT THING, THE. 2. n. The INTERLISP function that attempts to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. See HAIRY. DYNNER /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with NYBBLE and BYTE. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also PLAYTE. {= E =} 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. 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 SOS (q.v.) 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. EAT FLAMING DEATH, X! expl. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous DEC WARS comic (q.v.); supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic in which X was "non-Aryan mongrels" or something of the sort. Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, EBCDIC users!" 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, like (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried `9-EDGE-FORWARD-FACE-DOWN'. These people are thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base, and its thinking. EL CAMINO BIGNUM /el' k@-mee'noh big'num/ n. El Camino Real. El Camino Real is the name of a street through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended (and still appears in places) all the way down to Mexico City. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which is assumed to run north and south even though it doesn't really in many places (see LOGICAL). El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University, and so is familiar to hackers. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables (ree-ahl')) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". Now the English word "real" is used in mathematics to describe numbers (and by analogy is misused in computer jargon to mean floating-point numbers). In the FORTRAN language, for example, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven decimal places, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen decimal places. When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976 or so, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" --- but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See BIGNUM.) 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. Some versions running under window managers iconify as a kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor doesn't include. See also VI. EMAIL /ee-mayl/ vt.,n. Electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems common-carrier lines. Contrast SNAIL-MAIL. See NETWORK ADDRESS. 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. Note for the NEWBIE: overuse of the smiley is a mark of loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a sure sign that you've gone over the line. EMPIRE n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are 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. ENQ /enkw/ [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000101] 1. An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a TALK MODE connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type "SYN SYN ENQ?" (the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes) expecting a return of ACK or NAK depending on whether or not the person felt interruptible. See ACK; compare PING, FINGER, and the usage of `FOO?' listed under TALK MODE. 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. The time and date corresponding to zero in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. Under most UNIX versions, 00:00 of January 1st 1970 GMT. System time is measured in seconds or TICKS past the era. Syn. with EPOCH. See TICKS, WALL TIME. Note that weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around, and that this is actually not a rare event; on systems counting 10 TICKS per second, a 32 bit count of ticks is only good for 6.8 years. 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. This is even closer than being WITHIN DELTA OF. Example: "That's not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of working." See ASYMPTOTIC. EPSILON SQUARED n. A quantity even smaller than EPSILON, as small in comparison to it as it is to something normal. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is EPSILON, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect the two is EPSILON SQUARED. ERA, THE n. Syn. for EPOCH. 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 Eric Allman of BSD fame, Erik Fair (coauthor of NNTP) and your editor [ESR]; 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. EROTICS /ee-ro'tiks/ n. Reported from Scandinavia as English-language university slang for electronics. Often used by hackers, maybe because of its exciting aspects. 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 a BLUE GLUE interface but decided it was too evil to deal with." "TECO is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." Often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeeevil/. EXAMINING THE ENTRAILS n. The process of rooting through a core dump or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that brought your program or system down. Compare RUNES, INCANTATION, BLACK ART. EXCH /eks'ch@, ekstch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location. EXCL /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for "exclamation point". See BANG, SHRIEK, WOW. EXE /ex'ee/ An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX executables don't have any required extension. EXEC /eg'zek/ [shortened from "executive" or "execute"] vt.,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] vi. Yet another synonym for CRASH or LOSE. `Fall over hard' equates to CRASH AND BURN. FALL THROUGH vu. 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e. by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old, as in dating from the '40s and '50s. It may no longer be live slang. 2. In C, `fall-through' is said to occur when the flow of execution in a switch statement reaches a `case' label for the second or subsequent time, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial example: switch (color) { case GREEN: do_green(); break; case PINK: do_pink(); case RED: do_red(); break; default: do_blue(); break; } The effect of this code is to do_green() when color is GREEN, do_red() when color is RED, do_blue() on any other color than PINK, and (this is the important part) do_pink() and *then* do_red() when color is PINK. It is considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the fall through, at ytje point one would normally expect a break. FANDANGO ON CORE [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n. In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds causing a CORE DUMP, or corrupts the malloc(3) ARENA in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have `done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal machines without an MMU this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage. Other 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, CORE. FAQ LIST /ef-ay-kyoo list/ [Usenix] n. Compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall Frequently Asked Questions. The jargon file itself serves as a good example of a collection of one kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular posting. Several extant FAQ lists do (or should) make reference to the jargon file. "How do you pronounce `char'?" and "What's that funny name for the `#' character?" are, for example, both Frequently Asked Questions. FASCIST 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. The variant "fascistic" seens to have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with TOURISTIC. FAULTY adj. Non-functional; buggy. 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. An intended property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial. 2. A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works better that way. For example, in some versions of the EMACS text editor, the "transpose characters" command exchanges the two characters on either side of the cursor on the screen, *except* when the cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters before the curspor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been found through extensive experimentation to be what most users want; the inconsistency is therefore a FEATURE and not a BUG. 4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of the MACLISP language is the ability to print numbers as Roman numerals. See BELLS AND WHISTLES. 5. A property or behavior that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. A BUG that has been documented. To call something a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and the program responded in a way that was unexpected, but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a BUG can be turned into a FEATURE simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" See also FEETCH FEETCH. 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. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. TTY's do not have feeps; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: BEEP, BLEEP, or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff Macnelly, in his comic strip `Shoe', uses the word `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term BREEDLE was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly "soft" (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five seconds.). The "feeper" on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also DING. FEEPER /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the FEEP sound. FEEPING 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.This term isn't really well-defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It probably derives from an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises. FEETCH FEETCH interj. If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you might respond, "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like, "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated thing." With a tone of resignation, it means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done." 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.) For example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m + 1. A program that used the "obvious" formula would have a fencepost error in it. See also OFF-BY-ONE ERROR, and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves an off-by-one problem where N people try to sit in N-1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. Occasionally, an error induced by unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for instance) screw up your hash table. FIELD CIRCUS [a derogatory pun on "field service"] n. The field service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus engineers: Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer with a flat tire? A: He's 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. See DOUBLE BUCKY for an example. 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. "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 [SAIL's ITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote system. Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line and terminal location. May also display a "plan file" left by the user. 2. vt. 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. FIREFIGHTING n. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project to get it out before deadline. 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 n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done. Examples: "This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing the message." "The program status word contains several flag bits." See also BIT. FLAG DAY 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?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word FLAG to mean a variable that has two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the MULTICS timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day, June 14, 1966. FLAKEY, FLAKY adj. Subject to frequent lossages. See LOSSAGE. This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word, to describe a person as eccentric or crazy. A system that is flakey is working, sort of, enough that you are tempted to try to use it, but it fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers DODGY (q.v.). 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. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the participants, "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak). 2. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. FLAME ON: vi. To continue to flame. See RAVE, BURBLE. The punning reference to Marvel comics's Human Torch has been lost as recent usage completes the circle: "Flame on" now usually means "beginning of flame". A USENETter who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976 adds: I am 99% certain that the use of "FLAME" originated at WPI. Those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use a TTY for "real work" came to be known as "flaming asshole lusers". Other, particularly annoying people became "flaming asshole ravers", which shortened to "flaming ravers", and ultimately "flamers". I remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't think "FLAME ON/OFF" was ever much used at WPI. FLAME WAR n. Acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as USENET. FLAMER v. One who habitually flames others. Said esp. of obnoxious USENET personalities. FLAP vt. 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." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." See VANILLA. 2. The attribute that causes something to be FLAVORFUL. Usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavor." "This convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down." See VANILLA. 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 (but note sense 4 below!); one speaks of the text that would have been printed, but was not, as having been flushed. Under ITS, if you asked to have a file printed on your terminal, it was printed a page at a time; at the end of each page, it asked whether you want to see more, and if you said no, it replied "FLUSHED". (It is speculated that this term arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they can be printed.) 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. This is *not* an abort as in sense 1 but a demand for early completion! UNIX hackers find the ITS usage confusing and vice versa. FLYTRAP n. See FIREWALL. FOAF [USENET] n. Written-only acronym for Friend Of A Friend. The source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. 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 this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for noted weird-comix artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. 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 able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose BACKGROUND. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to LOSE. 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. FORKED [UNIX] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when the system slowed to incredibly bad speeds due to a process recursively spawning copies of itself (using the Unix system command fork(2)) and taking up all the process table entries. FORTUNE COOKIE [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this 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 (LCASE) bits in the V7 and BSD UNIX tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. In a perversion of the usual backwards compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later USG UNIX releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 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. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits! In particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt down, emitting terribly-smelling smoke. However, this term is also used metaphorically.) 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; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob. See FROBNITZ. 2. v. Abbreviated form of FROBNICATE. FROBNICATE /frob'ni-kayt/ v. To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Thus: "Please frob the light switch." (That is, flip the light switch.), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it." Poss. derived from FROBNITZ (q.v.). Usually abbreviated to FROB, but FROBNICATE is recognized as the official full form. 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'), plural FROBBOTZIM (fruh-bot'z@m) has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure as a name via ZORK. 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/ adj. DOWN due to hardware problems. FRY 1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never said of software, only of hardware and humans. See FRIED, MAGIC SMOKE. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to ROACH, TOAST or HOSE a piece of hardware (never used of software or humans). FTP /ef-tee-pee/, *not* /fit'ip/ 1. n. The File Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the Internet. 2. vt. 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!*" The phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated FMH in polite company. 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. A good example is the FUZZ typically needed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. FUEL UP vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a GREAT-WALL!". See also ORIENTAL FOOD. FUGGLY /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of FUNKY; funky + ugly (or possibly a contraction of "fuckin' 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. FUNNY MONEY n. 1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course by professors; also called "purple money" (in implicit opposition to real or "green" money). When your funny money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more. Formerly a common practice, this has now been made sufficiently rare by the plunging cost of timesharing CYCLES that it has become folklore. The amounts allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with minimum work. In extreme cases the practice led to small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation hack within a system. 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. See FUDGE FACTOR. 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 vi., 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. vt. 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; "Garbage Collect"] 1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is equivalent to GFR (q.v.). 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process. `Garbage collection' is computer science jargon for a particular class of strategies for dynamically reallocating computer memory. One such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is no longer useful; useless data items are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage collection. In slang, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the acronym is more frequently used because it's shorter. Note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself. GCOS n. A quick and dirty clone of System/360 DOS that emerged from GE about 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System) and later kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing. After the buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell the name was changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as `God's Chosen Operating System', allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. All this might be of zero interest, except for two facts: 1) the GCOS people won the political war, resulting in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell MULTICS (q.v.), and 2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on UNIX. Some early UNIX systems at Bell Labs were used as front ends to GCOS machines; the field added to /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information was called `the GECOS field' and survives today as the pw_gecos member used for the user's full name and other human-id information. GCOS itself played a major rule in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was itself ditched for UNIX in the late 1980s when Honeywell retired its aging BIG IRON designs. GECOS n. See GCOS GEDANKEN /g@-dahn'kn/ adj. Wild-eyed; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested. "Gedanken" is a German word for "thought". A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term "gedanken experiment" is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because you can reason about it theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man flying through space in an elevator.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but you have to be careful. It was a gedanken experiment that led Aristotle to conclude that heavy things always fall faster than light things (he thought about a rock and a feather); this was accepted until Galileo proved otherwise. Among hackers, however, the word has a pejorative connotation. It is said of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research, which is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what does and does not constitute a clear specification an algorithm. GEEK OUT vi. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek out for a moment." GENDER MENDER n. (also "gender bender" and "sex changer") A cable connector shell with either two male or two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result when some LOSER didn't understand the RS232C specification and the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format. GENERAL PUBLIC VIRUS n. Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project COPYLEFT (q.v.) or General Public License, which requires that any tools or apps incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same anti-commercial terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools. FSF's official position is that only code incorporating either the Bison parser skeleton or GNU CC libraries is so infected. Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the COPYLEFT language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL license. GENERATE vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of PARSE. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (though often humorously) when used of human behavior. GET A LIFE! imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see COMPUTER GEEK). Often heard on USENET. It is alleged that this exhortation was originally uttered by William Shatner to a crowd of eager trekkies in a speach which ended "Get a job! Get a *life*!". 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 an address space smaller than 4 megabytes. 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/ vt. [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, REAPER. GIG (gig) n. Short for "gigabyte" (1000 megabytes); esp. used in describing amounts of CORE or mass storage. "My machine just got upgraded to a quarter-gig". GIGO /gie'goh/ [acronym] 1. 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. 2. Garbage In, Gospel Out -- this more recent expansion is a comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in "computerized" data. GILLION /jill'yun/ n. 10^9. [From giga, following construction of mega/million and tera/trillion] Same as an American billion or a British `myriad'. GLARK /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context, taken from an old Scientific American "Mathematical Games" column. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context". Interestingly, the original sentence was "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context." by David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January 1981 Scientific American. It is conjectured that hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because GLORK (q.v.) was already an established jargon term. GLASS [IBM] n. Synonym for SILICON. GLASS TTY /glas tee-tee-wie/ or /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 , thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy An example is Lear-Siegler the ADM-3 (without cursor control). See TUBE, TTY. See Appendix A for an interesting true story about glass TTYs. GLITCH /glich/ [from German "glitchen" to slip, via Yiddish "glitshen", to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity,, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specfically called a POWER GLITCH. This is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. More common in slang, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgotten how he or she intended to complete it might say, "Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See GRITCH. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen several lines at a time. This derives from some oddities in the terminal behavior on the ITS machines formerly used at SAIL. 4. (obs.) Same as MAGIC COOKIE, sense #2. GLOB /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX, from "glob", the name of a subprogram that translated wildcards in archaic Bourne Shell versions] v. To expand special characters in a wildcarded name (the action is "globbing"). The UNIX conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include: * wildcard for any string (see UN*X, U*IX). ? wildcard for any character (generally only read this way at the beginning or in the middle of a word). [] wildcard matching one character from a specified set. 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. vt. 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 (rms@prep.ai.mit.edu). 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 (sense #1). GNUMACS /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of "Gnu Emacs"] Often-heard abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with GOSMACS. GO FLATLINE [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival FLATLINED. 1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. 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 vt. 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/ vt.,n. 1. 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. 2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time. 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; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of MOBY and HAIRY, 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. 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?" 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". GOSPERISM /goss'p@r'iz'm/ A hack, invention, or saying by arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in HAKMEM are Gosperisms; see also LIFE. 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 simplest of the NANOTECHNOLOGY (q.v.) disaster scenarios and is easuky refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental abundances. 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 multiple-hierarchies scheme. GREAT-WALL [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is seved family-style and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food to order expressed as "For N people, get N - 1 entrees.". See ORIENTAL FOOD, 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. 4. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCIT 10th plenary assembly. They change color each review cycle (1984 was RED BOOK, 1988 BLUE BOOK). These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also BLUE BOOK, RED BOOK, GREEN BOOK, SILVER BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, DRAGON BOOK, PINK-SHIRT 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. [proposed] 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". GREP /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p (Global search for Regular Expression and Print) via UNIX grep(1)] vt. 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 vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was associated with the MACLISP community and is now rare; PRETTY PRINT was and is the generic term for such operations. 2. [UNIX] To generate the formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, TeX or Scribe source. 3. To run seemingly interminably, performing some tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to CRUNCH, GROVEL. 3. GRIND GRIND excl. "Isn't the machine slow today!" GRIND CRANK n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and noise. See GRIND, and WUGGA WUGGA. Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind crank --- the R1, a research machine built towards the the end of the great days of vacuum tube computers in 1959. R1 (also known as "The Rice Institute Computer" - TRIC, and later as "The Rice University Computer" - TRUC) had a single step/free run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single step button. This allowed one to "crank" through a lot of code, then slow down to single step a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the "console typewriter", and then keep on cranking. GRITCH /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a GLITCH (q.v.)). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for GLITCH (as verb or noun). 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"] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast ZEN, similar supernal understanding as a single brief flash. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding, e.g., "Almost all C compilers grok void these days." GRONK /gronk/ [popularized by the cartoon strip "B.C." by Johnny Hart, but the word apparently predates that] vt. 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. Oppose BROKEN, which means about the same as GRONK used of hardware but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in people. 4. GRONK OUT: vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow." GROVEL vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with "over" or "through". "The file scavenger has been grovelling through the file directories for ten minutes now." Compare GRIND and CRUNCH. Emphatic form: GROVEL OBSCENELY. 2. To examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find the command I wanted." GRUNGE [Cambridge] n. Code which is `dead' (can never be accessed) due to changes in other parts of the program. GRUNGY /gruhn'jee/ adj. Incredibly dirty, greasy, 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] vt. To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." Compare CAN. GURFLE /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week. Gurfle!" Compare WEEBLE. GURU n. 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, orig. as mutation of HHOK, "Ha Ha Only Kidding"] A phrase that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse (often 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 and AI KOANS. HACK 1. n. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed. 3. The result of a hack (sense 1 or 2); 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). vt. 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 major interest (or project)". "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. [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. For more on the meaning of HACK, see Appendix A. HACK ATTACK n. Nearly synonymous with HACKING RUN (q.v.) though the latter implies an all-nighter more strongly. HACK VALUE n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP has features for reading and printing roman numerals, which was installed purely for hack value. As a musician once said of jazz, if you don't understand hack value there is no way it can be explained. 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. An expert of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. (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. It is better to be described as hackish by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves somewhat of an elite, though one to which new members are gladly welcome. It is a meritocracy based on ability. There is a certain self-satisfaction in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labelled BOGUS). HACKISHNESS, HACKITUDE n. The quality of being or involving a hack. (The word HACKITUDE is considered silly; the standard term is HACKISHNESS.) 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." (or just: "Hair squared!") 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. (The title of the memo really is "HAKMEM", which is an acronym of sorts for "hacks memo".) Some of them are very useful techniques or powerful theorems, but most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. A sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased: Item 41 (Gene Salamin) There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less than 2 to the 18th power. Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel) The most *probable* suit distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered energy. Problem 81 (Rich Schroeppel) Count the magic squares of order 5 (that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and reflection. Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson) 21963283741 is the only number such that if you represent it on the PDP-10 as both an integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two representations are identical. HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor. HAND-HACKING n. 1. 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; syn. with v. CRUFT. 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. If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", you can be sure he is about to handwave. The theory behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you have said is BOGUS. Alternatively, if a listener does object, you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand. 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; if a speaker makes an outrageous unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an accusation more eloquent than words could express that his logic is faulty HANG v. 1. To wait for some event to occur; to hang around until something happens. "The program displays a menu and then hangs until you type a character." 2. More commonly, to wait for an event that will never occur. "The system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive". See WEDGED. 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". The derivation of the common title Hanlon's Razor is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to William James. 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. "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." The variant "hash clash" is also reported. 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 MC6800 microprocessor was the first for which the HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused 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. HEAVY METAL [Cambridge] n. Syn. with BIG IRON (q.v). HEAVY WIZARDRY n. Code or designs which trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or language or complex application interface. Distinguished from DEEP MAGIC, which trades more on arcane *theoretical* knowledge. Writing device drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X (sense #2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in comments of the form "Heavy wizardry begins here...". HEISENBUG /hie'sen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle 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. HELEN KELLER MODE n. State of a hardware or software system which is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into DEEP SPACE. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also GO FLATLINE. HELLO SAILOR! interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of `Hello, world!'; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with the game ZORK. See HELLO WORLD. HELLO WALL! excl. 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 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." HIGH MOBY /hie mohb'ee/ n. The high half of a stock PDP-10's address space; the other half was of course the LOW MOBY. This usage has been generalized in a way that has outlasted the PDP-10; for example, at the 1990 Washington D.C Area Science Fiction Conclave (DISCLAVE) when a miscommunication resulted in two separate @-SIGN PARTIES being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last ITS machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the HIGH MOBY and the other the LOW MOBY. All parties involved grokked this instantly. See MOBY in main text and Appendix B. 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 or hardware 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". Example: "A controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the bus hog timer expires." HOLY WARS [from USENET, but may predate it] n. FLAME WARS over RELIGIOUS ISSUES. The 1980 paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms BIG-ENDIAN and LITTLE-ENDIAN in connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included: EMACS vs. VI, <my personal computer> vs. <everyone else's personal computer>, UNIX vs. VMS, BSD UNIX vs. AT&T UNIX, C vs. Pascal, etc. etc. etc. The characteristic that distinguishes HOLY WARS from normal technical disputes is that (regardless of the technical merits of the case on either side) most participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. HOOK n. An extraneous piece of software or hardware included in order to simplify later additions or changes by a user. 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. As another example, a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in base ten, but a more flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use; setting the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in base five. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible program might examine the variable, and treat a value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a very powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the program through the hook. Often the difference between a good program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities. 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. This is sometimes called "bit hose" or "hosery" (play on "hosiery"). See also WASHING MACHINES. 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. There is a story that a Cray which had been experiencing periodic difficulties once CRASHED, and it was announced to have been HOSED. It was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some coolant hoses. The problem was connected, and users were then assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. [This is an excellent example of hackish wordplay --- ESR]. HOT SPOT n. 1. [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 micro-optimization or HAND-HACKING. The term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See TUNE, BUM, HAND-HACKING. 2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button." 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. HP-UX is often referred to as "hockey-pux" inside HP, and one outside correspondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /aych-pee ukkkhhhh/ as though one were spitting. See also TELERAT, SUN-STOOLS, TERMINAK. HUMMA excl. A filler word used on various "chat" and "talk" programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say something. The word apparently originated (at least with this definition) on the MECC Timeshare System (MTS) a now-defunct educational time-sharing system running in Michigan during the 1970s and early '80s, but was later sighted on early UNIX systems. 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, AI KOANS. 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 generally used of people. Syn. with LOCKED UP, WEDGED; compare HOSED. 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, usually inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "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; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-INFINITE number of 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 code is locked up tight and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous 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, this lexicon 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 (in Gibson's original, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to literally kill the intruder). 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. 1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method that tends to blow up due to accumulated roundoff error or poor convergence properties. 2. 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, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to the effect that (due to gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved. Oppose WELL-BEHAVED, compare PC-ISM. 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." "He is an infinite loser." This is an abuse of the word's mathematical meaning. INFINITY n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever). 2. MINUS INFINITY The smallest such value. Note that this is different from TIME T EQUALS MINUS INFINITY, which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity. 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 (or, occasionally, as "sudden infant death syndrome"). INTERCAL /in'tr-kal/ [said by the authors to stand for "Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym"] n. A computer language designed by Don Woods and James Lyon in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear. In most languages, if you wanted the variable A to have the value 65536, you would write something like LET A = 65536; The INTERCAL Reference Manual, however, explains that "It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is: DO :1 <- #0$#256 any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct." INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even more unspeakable. The Woods/Lyons implementation was actually used by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language has been recently re-implemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ... appreciation of the language on USENET. INTERESTING adj. In hacker parlance, this word is not simply synonymous with "intriguing", but has strong connotations of "annoying", or "difficult", or both. Hackers relish a challenge. Oppose UNININTERESTING. INTERNET ADDRESS n. An `absolute' network address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a SITENAME (q.v.), and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. Contrasts with BANG PATH, q.v.; see also NETWORK, THE and NETWORK ADDRESS. 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. INTERRUPT interj. 1. On a computer, an event which interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also TRAP. 2. A request for attention from a hacker. Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt --- have you seen Joe recently?". See PRIORITY INTERRUPT. INTERRUPTS LOCKED OUT adj. When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might well observe 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 housing 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, FIREWALL, VENUS FLYTRAP. 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. The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is maintaing one `live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use. 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 =} J. RANDOM /jay rand'm/ n. [generalized from J. RANDOM HACKER, q.v.] Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; "any old". "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?". See RANDOM. J. RANDOM HACKER /jay rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See RANDOM, LITTLE SUZIE COBOL. JAGGIES /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of slope far from a multiple of 45 degrees) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display). JIFFY n. 1. The width of one tick of the system clock on the computer (see TICK). Often 1 AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and 1/50 elsewhere) but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. 2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond WALL TIME interval. "The swapper runs every six jiffies" means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every six ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. 3. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. JOCK n. 1. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute force programs. See BRUTE FORCE. 2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some particular computing area. The compounds `compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be the best established examples 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". {= 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. KGBVAX /kay-jee-bee-vaks/ n. See KREMVAX KILL FILE [USENET] n. Per-user file used by some USENET reading programs to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles which match some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Thus to "add a person (or subject) to one's kill file" is to arrange for that person to be ignored by 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 /klooj/ alt. KLUDGE /kluhj/ [from the German "klug", clever] (`klooj' is the original pronunciation, more common in the US; `kluhj' is reported more common in England). n. 1. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device in hardware or software. (A long-ago Datamation article said: "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.") 2. n. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often involves AD-HOCKERY and verges on being a CROCK. 3. 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 (the name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church with which LISP is intimately connected). There is no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known to give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who they are... KREMVAX /krem-vaks/ [From the then large number of USENET VAXEN with names of the form "foovax"] n. A fictitious USENET site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984, in a posting ostensibly from Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and KGBVAX, which now seems to be the one by which it is remembered. This was probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on USENET (which has negligible security against them), because the notion that USENET might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time. But in fact, the first genuine site in Moscow (demos.su) joined USENET only 6 years later --- and some readers needed convincing that it wasn't a hoax. [Ed. note: Vadim Antonov (avg), the major poster from demos.su up to at least the end of 1990, was well acquainted with the kremvax hoax and referred to it in his own postings --- even to the extent of twitting a number of credulous netters on alt.folklore.computers by blandly "admitting" that *he* was a hoax! Mr. Antonov, BTW, also contributed the Russian-language material for this File --- ESR] {= L =} LACE CARD n. obs. A Hollerith card with all holes punched (also called a WHOOPEE CARD). Card readers jammed when they got to one of these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. When some practical joker fed a LACE CARD through the reader you needed to clear the jam with a card knife --- which you use on the joker first. 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. Compare WIZARD. 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. LASER CHICKEN n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and bell peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. A few hackers call it "laser chiicken" for two reasons; it can ZAP you just like a laser, and the pepper-oil sauce has a red color reminiscent of a laser beam. 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. LEAKY HEAP [Cambridge] n. Syn. MEMORY LEAK (q.v.). 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, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT; see GOSPERISM). When a hacker mentions "life", he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. 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. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews software used to cause the first parts 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. 2. The mythical NSA trawling program sometimes assumed to be reading USENET for the U.S. Government's spooks. Some netters put loaded phrases like `Uzi' `nuclear materials' `Palestine' `cocaine' and `assassination' in their SIG BLOCKs in an attempt to confuse and overload the creature. LINE STARVE [MIT] 1. v. To feed the paper through the terminal the wrong way by one line (most terminals can't do this!). On a display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen. Example: "To print X squared, you just output X, line starve, 2, line feed." (The line starve causes the 2 to appear on the line above the X, and the line feed gets back to the original line.) 2. n. A "character" (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to perform this action. Unlike "line feed", "line starve" is *not* standard ASCII terminology. Even among hackers it is considered a bit silly. 3. [proposed] A sequence like \c (used in System V echo, as well as nroff/troff) which suppresses a line feed that would normally implicitly be emitted. 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), named perhaps for the bits of fluff it picks from programs] 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 USENET) has become a shorthand for `desk-check' at some non-UNIX shops, even in some languages other than C. See also DELINT. 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. LIVE FREE OR DIE! imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire. 2. A slogan associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the windmills of industry. Armando Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to give out fake license plates bearing this motto under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items. 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. LOCKED UP adj. Syn. for HUNG, WEDGED. 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". Compare VIRTUAL, oppose PHYSICAL. This use of LOGICAL is an extension from its technical use in computer science. A program can be written to do input or output using a "logical device"; when the program is run, the user can specify which "physical" (actual) device to use for that logical device. For example, a program might write all its error messages to a logical device called ERROR; the user can then specify whether logical device ERROR should be associated to the terminal, a disk file, or the BIT BUCKET (to throw the error messages away). Perhaps the word "logical" is used because even though a thing isn't the actual object in question, you can reason logically about the thing as if it were the actual object. At Stanford, "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.) In giving directions, one might say, "To get to Rincon Tarasco restaurant, get onto El Camino Bignum going logical north." Using the word "logical" helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The concept is perpetuated by North American highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labelled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT. Route 128 (famous for the electronics industries that have grown up along it) is a three-quarters circle surrounding Boston at a radius of ten miles, terminating at the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway as being "clockwise" and "counterclockwise", but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. A hacker would describe these directions as "logical north" and "logical south", to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual convention for those words. (If you went logical south along the entire length of route 128, you would start out going northwest, curve around to the south, and finish headed due east!) 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 or fails to work in the expected manner. 2. To be exceptionally unaesthetic. 3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). 4. DESERVES 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 MESS-DOS deserves to lose!" (ITS fans used to say this of UNIX; many still do) 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!". LOSE LOSE interj. A reply or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose lose." LOSER n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. Someone who habitually loses (even winners can lose occasionally). Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. emphatic forms are "real loser", "total loser", and "complete loser" (but not "moby loser", which would be a contradiction in terms). See LUSER. LOSS n. Something (not a person) which loses; a situation in which something is losing. Emphatic forms include "moby loss" "total loss", "complete loss". WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection. Compare LOSSAGE. LOSSAGE /los'@j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly synonymous remarks. The former is slightly more particular to the speaker's present circumstances while the latter implies a continuing lose of which the speaker is presently victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious lossage. 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 FLAMAGE-emitting regulars. LUNATIC FRINGE [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions of software. LUSER /loo'zr/ n. A USER who is probably also a LOSER. (LUSER and LOSER are pronounced identically.) This word was coined about 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it prints out some status information, including how many people are already using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck until ITS died in early 1990. The usage lives on, however, and the term `luser' is often seen in program comments. {= 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, as described by a hacker 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) as well as other "expansions" such as the "keyboard macros" supported in some text editors (and PC TSR keyboard enhancers). 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 AUTOMAGICALLY and Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an eight-bit byte in three instructions." 2. Characteristic of something that works but no one really understands why. 3. [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 operation; 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. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (i.e. inverse video or underlining) or performing other control functions. Some older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change cookies; 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 (also called "blue smoke"). 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." In everyday terms, this means that it's a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it. 2. Of 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 fried." 4. MARGINALLY: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small Eating Place." See EPSILON. 4. MARGINAL HACKS: n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the '80s. MARKETROID /mar'k@-troyd/ alt. MARKETING SLIME, MARKETING DROID, MARKETEER 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; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. 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/ or /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, NETWORK n. A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of THRASHing. See also 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. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons. MEMETICS /me-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, LEAKY HEAP. 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" "mess-loss" "mess-dross" and various combinations thereof. META /meta@/ or /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. See HUMOR, HACKER. META BIT /meta@ bit/ or /mayt'@ bit/ 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. A DECtape is a small reel of magnetic tape about four inches in diameter and an inch wide. Unlike standard magnetic tapes, microtapes allow "random access" to the data. In their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways one would now use a floppy disk: as a small, portable way to save and transport files and programs. Apparently the term "microtape" was actually the official term used within DEC for these tapes until someone consed up [invented] the word "DECtape", which of course had more commercial appeal. 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] 1. A measure of computing speed; 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. 2. The corporate name of a RISC-chip maker; among other things, they supplied silicon for the DEC 3100 workstation series. MISBUG [MIT] n. An unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a BUG but turns out to be a FEATURE. 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. A misfeature is different from a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the misfeature was actually carefully planned to be that way, but future consequences or circumstances just weren't predicted accurately. This is different from just not having thought ahead about it at all. 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 the original implementors wanted to save directory space and 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, complex, impressive. "A Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob." "Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the Harvard-Yale game." (see Appendix A). 2. n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see Appendix B). Examples: for a PDP-10, a moby is 256K 36-bit words; for a PDP-8, it is 4096 12-bit words; for a 68000 or VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is 4294967296 8-bit bytes. 3. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker. "Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for the Mac going?" 4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in "moby sixes", "moby ones", etc. Compare this with BIGNUMS: double sixes are both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of term "moby" to describe double ones is sarcastic). MOBY FOO, MOBY WIN, MOBY LOSS: standard emphatic forms. FOBY MOO: a spoonerism due to Greenblatt. MODE n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. Use of the word "mode" rather than "state" implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is being carried out. "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode." Usage: in its jargon sense, MODE is most often said of people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. "The E editor normally uses a display terminal, but if you're on a TTY it will switch to non-display mode." This term is normally used in a technical sense to describe the state of a program. Extended usage --- for example, to describe people --- is definitely slang. 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) (the precise meaning is a bit more complicated, but that's the idea). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug." "I feel fine today modulo a slight headache." 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/ n. 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/ [from the 1970 census forms via USENET, Member Of The Opposite 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 /motss/ [from the 1970 census forms via 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 newsgroup 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 AHEAD v. To manipulate a computer's pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation of the program accepting the input. Handling this properly is rare, but it can help make a USER FRIENDLY program usable by real users, assuming they are familiar with the behavior of the user interface. Point-and-click analog of "type ahead". 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. Compare THINKO. MS-DOS /em-es-das/ [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] n. A clone of CP/M (q.v.) for the 8088 crufted together in six weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since. Now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly-abbreviated operating systems. See MESS-DOS. MULTICIAN /muhl-ti'sh@n/ [coined at Honeywell, c.1970] n. Competent user of MULTICS (q.v.). MULTICS /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An early (late 1960s) timesharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT, GE and Bell Laboratories, very innovative for its time (among other things, it introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special files). All the members but GE eventually pulled out after determining that SECOND-SYSTEM EFFECT had bloated MULTICS to the point of practical unusability (the `lean' predecessor in question is said to have been CTSS, (q.v.)). Honeywell comercialized MULTICS after buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful (amomg other things, one was required to enter a password to log out). 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. "Don't you think that we could improve LISP performance by using a hybrid reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?" "Well, mumble... I'll have to think about it." 2. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement. "I think we should buy a VAX." "Mumble!" Common variant: MUMBLE FROTZ. 3. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like FOO. 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 and nearly synonymous with GROVEL, 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. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form FOO on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as "munching FOOs" (this is a good example of the use of the word FOO as a metasyntactic variable). MUNCHKIN /muhnch'kin/ n. 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 /muhng/ alt. MUNGE /muhnj/ [in 1960 at MIT, "Mash Until No Good"; sometime after that the derivation from the recursive acronym "Mung Until No Good" became standard] 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; this ia a consequence of Murphy's Law. See SCRIBBLE, MANGLE, TRASH. Reports from USENET suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program comments. 3. The kind of beans of which the sprouts are used in Chinese food. (That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!) 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; "This crock has N bugs, as N goes to infinity". 3. A variable whose value is specified by the current context. For example, when ordering a meal at a restaurant N may be understood to mean however many people there are at the table. From the remark "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for N-1." you can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat only soup, even though you don't know how many people there are. A silly riddle: "How many computers does it take to shift the bits in a register? N+1: N to hold all the bits still, and one to shove the register over." 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 areal init (about 2mm.sq.) of "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/ n. 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. Compare SHITOGRAM. 3. (deprecated) An error reply by mail from a DAEMON; in particular, a BOUNCE MESSAGE. 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. 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/ [onomatopoeic, 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!" NET. (net dot) [USENET] Prefix used to describe people and events related to USENET. From the time before the GREAT RENAMING, when when all non-local newsgroups had names beginning "net.". 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. See also NET.POLICE. 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. 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 NET., CODE POLICE. 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. See also SITENAME. 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). NEW TESTAMENT n. [C programmers] The second edition of K&R's "The C Programming Language", defining ANSI Standard C. See WHITE BOOK. NEWBIE /n./ [orig. fr. British military & public-school slang] A USENET neophyte. This term originated in the NEWSGROUP "talk.bizarre" but is now in wide use. Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one newsgroup while remaining a respected participant in another. The label "newbie" is sometimes applied as a serious insult, to a person who has been around USENET for a long time, but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. See BIFF. 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. NEWLINE /n[y]oo'lien/ n. 1. [UNIX] The ASCII LF character (decimal 10), used under UNIX as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX slang) it is said originally to have been an IBM usage. 2. More generally, any magic character sequence or operation (like Pascal's writeln() function) required to terminate a text record. See CRLF, TERPRI. 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.1.wizards (for UNIX wizards), rec.arts.sf-lovers (for science-fiction fans) and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and FLAMAGE). NICKLE n. A NYBBLE + 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See also DECLE. 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. NMI n. Non-Maskable Interrupt. See PRIORITY INTERRUPT. NON-OPTIMAL (or SUB-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, INTERESTING. 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 DIKE, applied to smaller things such as files, features or code sections. 3. Used of processes as well as files; frequently an alias for "kill -9" on UNIX. NULL DEVICE n. A LOGICAL input/output device connected to the BIT BUCKET; when you write to it nothing happens, when you reaad from it you get a zero-length record full of nothing. Useful for discarding unwanted output or using interactive programs in a non-interactive way. See /DEV/NULL. 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. NYBBLE /nib'l/ [from v. `nibble' by analogy with `bite' -> `byte'] n. Four bits; one hexadecimal digit; a half-byte. Though `byte' is now accepted technical jargon found in dictionaries, this useful relative is still slang. Compare CRUMB, see also BIT. {= O =} OB /ob/ pref. Obligatory. A piece of NETIQUETTE that acknowledges the author has been straying from the newsgroup'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 toss off a question or vignette about some unusual erotic act. 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." "The find(1) command's 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. This relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the flavor of obfuscated C: main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";(!!c)[*c]&& (v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c, !!**c);} OCTAL FORTY /ok'tl for'tee/ n. Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a blank" (octal 40 is the ASCII space character). See WALL. OFF-BY-ONE ERROR n. Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice versa, or by writing < N instead of <= N or vice-versa. Also applied to giving 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." Specifically used on USENET to suggest that a discussion be taken off a public newsgroup to email. OLD FART n. Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by (esp.) USENETters who have been programming for more than about twenty five years; frequently appears in SIGs attached to jargon file contributions of great archeological significance. This is a term of insult in second or third person but pride in first person. OLD TESTAMENT n. [C programmers] The first edition of the book describing CLASSIC C; see WHITE BOOK. 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 (see WRITE-ONLY LANGUAGE). 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 (q.v.) 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/ [from Dr. Seuss' "Bartholomew and the Ooblick"] 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 also RED BOOK, BLUE BOOK, GREEN BOOK, SILVER BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON 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 RAVS, GREAT-WALL, STIR-FRIED RANDOM. Thai, Indian, Korean and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular. ORPHAN [UNIX] n. A process whose parent has died; one inherited by init(1). Compare ZOMBIE. ORTHOGONAL [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independent; well-separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning 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 `nand', `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. See Appendix B. 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. Often called "Half-an-OS". See VAPORWARE, MONSTROSITY, CRETINOUS, SECOND-SYSTEM EFFECT. 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. Compare GLITCH, THINKO. 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." Derives from a relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error in RAM hardware. PARSE [from linguistic terminology via AI research] 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 source code upgrades and fixes over USENET. PBD [abbrev of `Programmer Brain Damage'] n. Applied to bug reports revealing places where the program was obviously broken due to an incompetent or short-cited programmer. Compare UBD; see also BRAIN-DAMAGED. PC-ISM n. A piece of code or coding technique that takes advantage of the unprotected single-tasking environment in IBM PCs and the like. e.g. by busy-waiting on a hardware register, direct diddling of screen memory, or using hard timing loops. Compare ILL-BEHAVED, VAXISM, UNIXISM. Also, PC-WARE n., a program full of PC-ISMs on a machine with a more capable operating system. Pejorative. 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 or 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." "I haven't done it yet because every time I pop my pdl something new gets pushed." If you are interrupted several times in the middle of a conversation, "my pdl overflowed" means "I forget what we were talking about" (the implication is that too many items were pushed onto the pdl than could be remembered, and so the least recent items were lost). All these usages are also frequently found with STACK (q.v) itself as the subject noun. See PUSH and POP. 2. Dave Lebling, one of the coauthors of ZORK (q.v.); (his NETWORK ADDRESS on the ITS machines was at one time pdl@dms). PDP-10 [Programmable Data 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. Later editions were labelled `DECsystem-10' as a way of differentiating them from the PDP-11. 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' ess/ [From "%s", the formatting sequence in C's printf(3) 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). PERL [Practical Extraction and Report Language, aka Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] n. An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall (lwall@jpl.nasa.gov, author of patch(1)) and distributed over USENET. Superficially resembles awk(1), but is much more arcane (see AWK). Increasingly considered a LANGUAGE OF CHOICE by UNIX sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers. Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the "Swiss-army chainsaw" of UNIX programming. PESSIMAL /pes'i-ml/ [Latin-based antonym for "optimal"] adj. Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal situation." Also PESSIMIZE v. to make as bad as possible. These words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for "optimal" and "optimize", but for some reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries, although "pessimize" is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. 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. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but through stupidity is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks. PHANTOM n. At Stanford, the term PHANTOM was formerly used to mean a DRAGON (q.v.). 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 , but less frequently, used, meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or more likely 10 to 6)) 2. CHANGE PHASE THE HARD WAY: To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a different phase. 3. CHANGE PHASE THE EASY WAY: To stay asleep etc. However, some claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, an that it's *shortening* your day or night that's hard. The phenomenon of "jet lag" that afflicts travelers who cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very like jet lag without travelling. 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." True story: Once upon a time, a program written by Gerry Sussman (professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT) and Guy Steele had a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon! There is a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase; the phase is then printed out at the top of program listings, for example, along with the date and time, purely for fun. (Actually, since hackers spend a lot of time indoors, this might be the only way they would ever know what the moon's phase was!) Steele incorporated this routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a `timestamp" line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would BARF. The length of the first line depended on the precise time when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended 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, also ENQ. 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 submariners' "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. PIP /pip/ v. obs. To copy, from the program PIP on CP/M and RSX-11 that was used for file copying (and in RSX for just about every other file operation you might want to do). Obsolete, but still occasionally heard. 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. See also ROTARY DEBUGGER. PLAYPEN [IBM] n. A room where programmers work. Compare SALT MINES. PLAYTE /din'r/ 16 bits, by analogy with NYBBLE and BYTE. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also DYNNER. PLINGNET /pling'net/ n. See UUCPNET. (Usage: British) PLONK [USENET] The sound a NEWBIE makes as he falls to the bottom of a KILL FILE. Almost exclusively used in the NEWSGROUP "talk.bizarre", this term (usually written "*plonk*") is a form of public ridicule. 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; see SCRATCH MONKEY. 2. n. Abbrev. for "Presentation Manager", an ELEPHANTINE OS/2 graphical user interface. P.O.D. /pee-oh-dee/ Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code section). Usage: pedantic and rare. POD n. A diablo 630 (or, latterly, any impact letter quality printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to same. 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). Also "rectangle slinger". 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] 1. v. To remove something from a stack or PDL. If a person says he has popped something from his pdl, he means he has finally finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging over his head. 2. To return from a digression (the J-form derives specifically 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. See GRIND. 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. Also called an NMI (non maskable interrupt) especially in PC-land. PROGRAMMER'S CHEER "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Push down, pop up! Byte! Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on it... PROPELLER HEAD n. Used by hackers, this is syn. with COMPUTER GEEK. Non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from SF fandom's tradition of propeller beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody actually wears them except as a joke). 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, REAPER. PSEUDO /soo'do/ [USENET] n. 1. An electronic-mail or USENET persona adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of his/her net.behavior; a `nom de USENET', often associated with forged postings designed to conceal message origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is BIFF (q.v.). 2. Notionally, a FLAMAGE-generating AI program simulating a USENET user. Many FLAMERS have been accused of actually being such entities, despite the fact that no AI program of the required sophistication exists. However, in 1989 there was a famous series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers based on large samples of their back postings. A significant number of people were fooled by these, and the debate over their authenticity was only settled when the perpetrator of the hoax came publicly forward to admit the deed. PSEUDOPRIME n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method which, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors), uses a statistical technique to decide whether the number is "probably" prime. A number that passes this test is called a pseudoprime. The hacker backgammon usage stems from the idea that pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it does the job of a prime until proven otherwise, and that probably won't happen. PSEUDOSUIT n. A SUIT wannabee; a hacker who's decided that he wants to be in management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. Chacun a son gout... PUNT [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt"] v. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this feature in, but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature. PURPLE BOOK, THE n. The System V Interface Definition. The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender. See also RED BOOK, BLUE BOOK, GREEN BOOK, SILVER BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON 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] Also PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure call instruction. 1. To put something onto a stack or PDL. If a person says something has been pushed onto his pdl, he means yet another thing has been added to the list of things hanging over his head for him to do. 2. v. To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for later. Antonym of POP, POPJ; see also PDL. PSYCHEDELICWARE [Great Britain] n. Syn. DISPLAY HACK. {= Q =} QUADRUPLE BUCKY n., obs. On a SPACE-CADET KEYBOARD (q.v.), use of all four of the shifting keys control, meta, hyper, and super while typing a character key. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. Thus, this combination was very seldom used in practice, because when you invent a new command you usually assign it to some character that is easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like "Oh, the command that makes it spin all the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle". See DOUBLE BUCKY, BUCKY BITS. 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 /kwuhks/ The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variables, after BAZ and before the QUU*X series. See FOO, BAR, BAZ, QUUX. Note that this appears to a be recent mutation from QUUX, and that many versions of the standard series just run FOO, BAR, BAZ, QUUX, QUUUX... QUUX /kwuhks/ [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. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a nickname, as punishment for inventing this bletcherous word in the first place. 2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. 3. Guy L. Steele in his persona as "The Great Quux", which is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the "Crunchly" cartoons. 4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a QUUX. QWERTY /kwer'tee/ adj. Pertaining to a standard English typewriter keyboard, as opposed to Dvorak or foreign-language layouts or a SPACE-CADET or APL keyboard. {= 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 registers, but randomly uses seven for assorted non-overlapping purposes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. 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"). It means roughly "some particular" or "any specific one". 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 for its accidental failure to malfunction). "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; in particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably 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 (though it is alleged that some versions of the V7 manuals used the term `half-cooked'). Usage: rare. RASTER BLASTER n. [Cambridge] Specialized hardware for BITBLT (q.v.) operations. Allegedly inspired by analogy with `Rasta Blasta', British slang for the sort of portable stereo/radio/tapedeck Americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto blaster'. RASTER BURN n. Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly tuned or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See TERMINAL ILLNESS. 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 differs slightly from FLAME in that RAVE implies that it is the manner or persistence of speaking that is annoying, while FLAME implies somewhat more strongly that the subject matter is annoying as well. RAVE ON! imp. Sarcastic invitation to continue a RAVE, often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely. RAVS /ravz/, also CHINESE RAVS n. Kuo-teh. A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as dumplings, potstickers and (around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term "rav" is short for "ravioli", which among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell, but the Chinese kind uses a thinner pasta and is cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or dumpling can be steamed or fried, but a potsticker is always the fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." See also ORIENTAL FOOD. READ.ME FILE n. By convention, the top-level directory of a UNIX source distribution always contains a file named `READ.ME' (or README, or (rarely) ReadMe) which is a hacker's-eye introduction containing a pointer to more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history notes, etc. 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 PROGRAMMER [indirectly, from the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] n. A particular sub-variety of hacker, one possessed of a flippant attitude towards complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The archetypal `real programmer' likes to program on the BARE METAL, and is very good at same; he remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he's every programmed and thinks that HLLs are for wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been BUMmed into a state of TENSEness just short of rupture. Real Programmers never use comments or write documentation; "If it was hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they're seldom really happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe you with its fiendish brilliance even as it appalls by its level of CROCKISHNESS. Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers --- because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their successors generally consider it a GOOD THING that there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. 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. Hackers who are also students may also be REAL USERS. "I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user." See also LUSER. REAL WORLD, THE n. 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as compute payroll checks and invoices. 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, MUNDANE, and UNINTERESTING. REAPER n. A PROWLER which GFRs files (see GFR). A file removed in this way is said to have been "reaped". RECTANGLE SLINGER n. See POLYGON PUSHER. RECURSION n. See RECURSION, TAIL RECURSION. RECURSIVE ACRONYMS pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms which refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, GNU (q.v., sense #1) is said to stand for "GNU's Not UNIX!" RED BOOK n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on PostScript; the others are known as the GREEN BOOK and BLUE BOOK. 2. Any of the 1984 standards issued by the CCIT 8th plenary assembly. They change color each review cycle (1988 was BLUE BOOK, 1992 will be GREEN BOOK). These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also GREEN BOOK, BLUE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, SILVER BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON BOOK. REGEXP /reg'exp/ [UNIX] n. 1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by UNIX utilities such as grep(1), sed(1) and awk(1). These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under GLOB. 2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C, written by revered USENETter Henry Spencer (henry@utzoo.uucp). 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 theological idea. RELIGIOUS ISSUES n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off a HOLY WAR, such as "What is the best editor/language/operating system/architecture/shell/mail reader/news reader". See also THEOLOGY. 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), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see LIFE, sense #1), or (speculatively) a robot. RETCON /ret'-con/ ["retroactive continuity", from USENET's rec.arts.comics] 1. n. the common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics, soaps) where a new story "reveals" new things about events previous stories, usually leaving the "facts" the same (thus preserving "continuity") while completely changing their interpretation. E.g., revealing that a whole season's episodes of Dallas was a dream was a retcon. 2. v.t. To write such a story about (a character or fictitious object). Thus, "Byrne has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer unbreakable". 3. v.i. Used of something "transformed" in this way - "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic dreams", "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed person into a sentient vegetable." [Ed.note: This is included because it's a good example of hackish innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers. The word "retcon" will probably spread through comics fandom and lose its association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the record, it started here.] 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 programming language INTERCAL (q.v.), a jcl-emulating shell for UNIX, the card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various elaborate PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to keep an old, sourceless ZORK binary running. 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. For this reason they remain known as RFCs even once adopted. 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 a mod 0? Should it return a, or give a divide-by-zero error?" Antonym: WRONG THING, THE (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. ROOT n. [UNIX] 1. The top node of the system directory structure (home directory of the root user). 2. The "superuser" account that ignores permission bits, user number zero on a UNIX system. This account has the user name `root'. 3. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any OS. 4. Thus, ROOT MODE: Syn. with WIZARD MODE or WHEEL MODE. Like these, it is often generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than OSs. 5. GO ROOT: to temporarily enter ROOT MODE in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. "root" is slang for "to have sex with". 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. 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. ROT13 /rot-ther'teen/ [USENET, from "rotate alphabet 13 places"] n.,v. The simple encryption of replacing each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting programs include a rot13 feature. It is used as if to enclose the text in a sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open, for posting things that might offend some readers, answers to puzzles, or discussion of movie plot surprises. RTFM /ahr-tee-ef-em/ [UNIX] Abbrev. for "Read The Fucking Manual". 1. Used by GURUs to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. Compare DON'T DO THAT, THEN. 2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of RANDOMNESS. "No, I can't figure out how to interface UNIX to my toaster and yes I have RTFM." Unlike sense #1 this use is considered polite. 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. RUNES pl.n. 1. Anything that requires HEAVY WIZARDRY or BLACK ART to PARSE; core dumps, JCL commands, or even code in a language you don't have the faintest idea how to read. Compare CASTING THE RUNES. 2. Special display characters (for example, the high-half graphics on an IBM PC). 3. RUNIC adj. Syn. OBSCURE. VMS fans sometimes refer to UNIX as `Runix'; UNIX fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Vachement Mauvais Systeme'. {= 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. Example: The comment "Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler" appearing in a program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean that one part of the program, the "interrupt handler", uses register 7, and if any other part of the program changes the contents of register 7 dire consequences are likely to ensue. 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. SALESCRITTER /sayls'kri-tr/ n. Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the following joke: Q. What's the difference between a used car dealer and a computer saleman? A. The used car dealer knows he's lying. This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the inclination to use them they'd be making more money programming). Compare MARKETROID, SUIT. 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, DE-REZZ, GO FLATLINE, ICE, VIRUS, WIREHEAD and WORM originated in SF itself. SCRATCH [from "scratchpad"] 1. adj. A device or recording medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use 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 EFFECT 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 was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic book "The Mythical Man-Month". It described the jump from a set of nice, simple, operating monitors on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360 series. 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. SEGMENT v. To CORE DUMP with a segment violation error (see SEGGIE). Used of programs. SELF-REFERENCE n. See SELF-REFERENCE. SELVAGE /selv'@j/ [from sewing] 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." (That is, maybe not for an hour). "We did consider that possibility semi-seriously." 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. The Intel 8048 even had logical-or and logical-and instructions ORL and ANL. 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 [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. This sort of program is also called a "wrapper". 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! You can move to that empty one to the left (right)." 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. SHITOGRAM /shit'oh-gram/ n. A *really* nasty piece of email. Compare NASTYGRAM, FLAME. SHRIEK See EXCL. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use among mathematicians, especially category theorists. SIG /sig/ or SIG BLOCK /sig blok/ [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 (see SIG QUOTE); 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. SIG QUOTE /sig kwoht/ [USENET] n. A maxim, quote, proverb, joke or slogan embedded in one's SIG (q.v.) and intended to convey something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or sense of humor. "He *must* be a Democrat --- he posted a sig quote from Dan Quayle." 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 RED BOOK, GREEN BOOK, BLUE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON BOOK. SITENAME [UNIX/Internet] n. The unique electronic name of a computer system, used to identify it in UUCP mail, USENET or other forms of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon characters, animal names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature are probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly that order). See also NETWORK ADDRESS. SLEEP v. 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.), that is, an allowance for error but only in one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of wire ten feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large amount if necessary, rather than too short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the SLOP but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete quantities are involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of a FENCEPOST ERROR (q.v.). 2. n. The ratio of the size code generated by a compiler to the size of equivalent HAND-HACKED assembler code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself. This number is often used as a measure of the goodness of a compiler; slop below 5% is very good, and 10% is usually acceptable for most purposes. With modern compiler technology, esp. on RISC machines, the compiler's slop may actually be *negative*; that is, humans may be unable to generate code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler programming is no longer common. SLOPSUCKER 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 may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece). "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT." 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). SMART TERMINAL n. A terminal that has enough computing capability to perform useful work independently of the main computer. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behavior of workstations/PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote SERVER's storage, using said devices as displays. There's a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the BLIT (q.v.) terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate." This illustrates a common design problem; the attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. 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 [ITS] 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. 1. 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. It is also used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily solved because a program can be written to do it; the irony is that it is very clear that writing such a program will be a great deal of work. Example: "It's easy to change a FORTRAN compiler to compile COBOL as well; it's just a Small Matter of Programming." 2. Often used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion for a program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously a lot of work to the programmer. SNAIL-MAIL n. Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes written as the single word `SnailMail'. Derives from earlier coinage `USnail' for which there have been parody posters and stamps made. Oppose 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. to snarf, sometimes with the connotation of absorbing, processing, or understanding. "I think I'll snarf down the list of DDT commands so I'll know what's changed recently." 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 and then stuffing the contents of that region into another region or into the same region, to avoid re-typing a command line. SNARK [Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System] n. 1. A system failure. When a user's process bombed, the operator would get a message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!". 2. More generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a computer. Often used to refer to events or log file entries which might indicate an attempted security violation. 3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the Jargon File 2.x.x versions. 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. (Also known as BIT DECAY, BIT ROT) Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if "nothing has changed". The theory explains that bits decay as if they were radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled. There actually are physical processes that produce such effects (the alpha particles such as are found in cosmic rays can change the contents of a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt files in mass storage) but they are quite rare. Nevertheless, when you can't figure out why something stopped working, it is often humorously convenient to blame SOFTWARE ROT. Historical note: software rot in an even funnier sense than the mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e. g. the R1, see GRIND CRANK). If a program that depended on a peculiar instuction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover that the opcodes no longer did the things as they used to. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. We can snarf this one, right? No one uses it.") 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." SORCERER'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. SPACE-CADET KEYBOARD n. The Knight keyboard, a now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines which inspired several still-current slang terms and influenced the design of EMACS (q.v.). It was inspired by the Stanford keyboard and equipped with no less than *seven* shift keys: four BUCKY BIT (q.v.) keys (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and three like the regular shift key, called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many keys have three symbols on them: a letter and a symbol on the top, and a Greek letter on the front. For example, the "L" key has an "L" and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front. If you press this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate "chord" with the left hand on the shift keys, you can get the following results: L lower-case "l" shift-L upper-case "L" front-L Greek lower-case lambda front-shift-L Greek upper-case lambda top-L two-way arrow (front and shift are ignored) And of course each of these may also be typed with any combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyboard you can type over 8000 different characters! This allows the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands of single-character commands at his disposal. Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings of that many characters if it will reduce typing time (this view rather obviously shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits is overkill, and object that such a keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. See BUCKY BITS, COKEBOTTLE, META BIT. 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 build, in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became 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. The synonym "kangaroo code" has been reported. 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. SPIN-LOCK [Cambridge] n. A BUSY-WAIT. Preferred in Britain. SPLAT n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the ASCII asterisk ("*") character. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the ASCII number-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 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 [fr. early IBM "Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line", but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for effect] 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. The usual physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates sitting on a spring in a well in a cart, so that when you put a plate on the top they all sink down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring up a bit. 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. among microcomputer hackers. STATE n. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest hack?" "It's winning away." "The system tried to read and write the disk simultaneously and got into a totally wedged state." A standard question is "What's your state?" which means "What are you doing?" or "What are you about to do?" Typical answers might be "I'm about to GRONK OUT", or "I'm hungry". Another standard question is "What's the state of the world?" meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse and humorous way of asking these conventions would be "State-p?". STIR-FRIED RANDOM alt. STIR-FRIED MUMBLE 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; see also MUMBLE. 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. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a FRIED transformer." STUBROUTINE /stuhb'roo-teen/ [contr. of "stub routine"] n. Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine to be written or fleshed out later. 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. English, BTW, is relatively kind; our Soviet correspondent informs us that the corresponding idiom in Russian hacker jargon is `sovok', lit. a tool for grabbing garbage. 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 (X, however, is larger and slower; see SECOND SYSTEM EFFECT). 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. SUPERPROGRAMMER n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by factors of as much as 1000. For example, programmer A might be able to write an average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools and skill, might be able to write 3,000 lines of working code in one day. This variance is astonishing, appearing in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term SUPERPROGRAMMER is more commonly used within such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress productivity rather than creativity or ingenuity. Hackers tend to prefer the terms HACKER and WIZARD. 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' or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any CODE GRINDER, analogous to J. RANDOM HACKER. SWAB [From the PDP-11 "byte swap" instruction, and immortallized in the option "conv=swab" to DD (q.v.)] 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, or anything functionally equivalent to it. See also BIG-ENDIAN, LITTLE-ENDIAN, BYTESEXUAL. SWAP SPACE n. Storage space. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space". SWAPPED adj. From the older (per-task) method of using secondary storage devices to implement support for multitasking. 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 the Scheme Report 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/ [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: C's "a[i]" notation in syntactic sugar for "*(a + i)". 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 or OS on a computer. 2. n. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any large-scale program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5. 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. In LISP, the name T means "true", among other things. Some hackers use "T" and "NIL" instead of "yes" and "no" almost reflexively. This sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may well respond "T", meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will be brought a cup of tea instead. As it happens, most hackers like tea at least as well as coffee, particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants, so it's not that big a problem. 2. See TIME T. 3. In transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation for the noun "transaction". 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of TEE (q.v.) TAIL RECURSION n. See TAIL RECURSION. 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 talk mode conversation; the other person types BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation.) CUL See you later. ENQ? Are you busy? Expects ACK or NAK in return. FOO? 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.) JAM Just a minute... Equivalent to SEC... NIL No (see the main entry for NIL). O Over to you (lower-case works too). OO Over and out (lower-case works too). / Another form of "Over to you" 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. /\/\/\ A giggle or chuckle (rare). 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 abbreviations 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 loud 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 or in the UNIX world; 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" comics. TAR AND FEATHER [from UNIX tar(1)] v. To create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with the tape archiver tar(1) and then compressing the result (see COMPRESS). The latter is dubbed `feathering' by analogy to what you do with an airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily. 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. TASTE refers to sound judgement on the part of the creator; a program or feature can *exhibit* taste but cannot "have" taste. On the other hand, a feature can have FLAVOR. Also, FLAVOR has the additional meaning of "kind" or "variety" not shared by TASTE. FLAVOR is a more popular word among hackers than TASTE, though both are used. TCB /tee see bee/ [IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. Intermittent or difficult-to reproduce problem which has failed to respond to neglect. Compare HEISENBUG. Not to be confused with: 2. Trusted Computing Base, an "official" jargon term from the ORANGE BOOK (q.v.). TECO /tee'koh/ v. obs. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see Appendix B); sometimes still used to mean "to edit" even when not using TECO! Usage: rare and now primarily historical. TEE n.,v. [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmisson, "Oh, you're sending him the BITS to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the UNIX command tee(1). Can also mean `save one for me' as in "Tee a slice for me!". Also spelled `T'. 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." TEN FINGER INTERFACE n. The interface between two networks which cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the other. TENSE adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly BUMMED, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever display routine by Mike Kazar, a student hacker at CMU: "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. TENURED GRADUATE STUDENT n. One who has been in graduate school for ten years (the usual maximum is five or six): a "ten-yeared" student (get it?). Students don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer than any non-tenured professor. TERAFLOP CLUB /ter'a-flop kluhb/ [FLOP = Floating Point Operation] 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 have been 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 BRAIN DEATH n. Extreme form of TERMINAL ILLNESS (sense #1). 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.). Now rare. It is a contraction of "TERminate PRInt line". TEX /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful MACRO-based text-formatter written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced UNIX troff(1), the other favored formatter, even at many UNIX installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural) pronunciation and mixed-case spelling (TeX) of the name. They like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' --- such as TeXnichian (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, TeXnique. 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. This is a generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner tonight?" ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory on letting lusers on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw..." THINKO /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. Syn. BRAINO. Compare MOUSO. THIS TIME, FOR SURE! Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (as, in for example, attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle the Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!". The canonical response is, of course, "Oh, Bullwinkle...that trick *never* works!". See HUMOR, HACKER. 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. Someone who keeps changing his mind is said to be thrashing. THREAD /thred/ n. [USENET, GEnie] Common abbreviation of `topic thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic. Also in 2. UPTHREAD: earlier in the discussion. "As Joe pointed out upthread..." THREE-FINGER SALUTE n. Syn. for VULCAN NERVE PINCH. THUNK n. [from the implementation model for ALGOL-60's "call by name", a design accident that resulted from a THINKO when attempting to describe "call by reference"] 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. Stub routine, in an overlay programming environment, which loads and jumps to the correct overlay. 3. 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. The width of one tick of the system clock on the computer. Often 1 AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and 1/50 elsewhere) but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. Syn 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. TICK-LIST FEATURES [Acorn Computers] n. Features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). 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." means, in the context of going out for dinner, "If we meet at Louie's directly, we can meet there a little later than if we meet on campus and then have to travel to Louie's." (Louie's is a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto that is a favorite with hackers. Had the number 30 been used instead of "one", it would have implied that the travel time from campus to Louie's is thirty minutes; whatever time T is (and that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time. 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. Sometimes the word "time" is omitted if there is no danger of confusing "T" as a time with "T" meaning "yes". 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. TITS ON A KEYBOARD n. Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered. (Usually on the 5 of a numeric keypad, and on F and J of a QWERTY keyboard.) TLA /tee el ay/ [Three-Letter-Acronym] 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. One also hears of "ETLA" (Extended Three Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/ ) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. 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. TOGGLE v. To change a BIT from whatever state it is in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This probably comes from "toggle switches", such as standard light switches, though the word "toggle" apparently originally referred to the mechanism that keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped, rather than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about toggling bits.) TOOL 1. n. A program 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 adj. Having the quality of a TOURIST (q.v.). Often used as a pejorative, as in "losing touristic scum". 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 in Appendix B. 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." This term is associated with assembler programming (INTERRUPT is more common among HLL programmers) and appears to be fading into history as the role of assembler continues to shrink. TRAP DOOR alt. TRAPDOOR n. Syn. with BACK DOOR (q.v.). 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], /ti'tee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it this way as well] 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 given 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 Rocky & Bullwinkle 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. 1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used synonymously with TWIDDLE. If a program is almost correct, rather than figuring out the precise problem, you might just keep tweaking it until it works. See FROBNICATE and FUDGE FACTOR. 2. To TUNE or BUM a program. This is preferred usage in England. TWENEX /twe-neks/ n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC. TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the PDP-10, so TOPS-20 was the obvious name choice for the DEC-20 OS. Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) had developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN EXecutive), and in creating TOPS-20 DEC copied TENEX and adapted it for the 20. The term TWENEX was therefore a contraction of "twenty TENEX". DEC people cringed when they heard TOPS-20 referred to as "Twenex", but the term caught on nevertheless. The written abbreviation "20x" was also used. TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a period in the 1980s when it commanded almost as fervent a culture of partisans as UNIX or ITS --- but DEC's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX architecture and the relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in the sun. 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. To speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessnes, and at best doesn't specify what you're doing to the bit; by contrast, TOGGLING a bit has a more specific meaning. TWINK /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to READ-ONLY USER. TWO-TO-THE-N q. 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 =} UBD [abbreviation for "User Brain Damage"] An abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare PBD; see also BRAIN-DAMAGED. 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; oppose INTERESTING. 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, lawyers now say (1990) that the requirement for superscript-tm has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in certain religions where the name of the deity is never written out in full, e.g. JHWH or G-d is used. 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. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C 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. UNIXISM n. A piece of code or coding technique that depends on of the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on UNIX systems. Common UNIXISMs include: gratuitous use of fork(2); the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of UNIX libraries like stdio(3) are supported elsewhere; reliance on OBSCURE side-effects of sytem calls (use of sleep(2) with a zero argument to clue the scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for example); the assumption that freshly-allocated memory is empty, the assumption that it's safe to never free() memory, etc. 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 /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `User's Network'] 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 700 topic groups and distributes up to 15 megabytes of new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and FLAMAGE every day. See NEWSGROUP. USER n. 1. Someone doing "real work" with the computer, who uses a computer as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See REAL USER. 2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions. (This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep. Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the documentation before bothering the maintainer.) See LUSER. 3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully, without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them. 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. (The few users who do are known as REAL WINNERS.) The term is a relative one: a consummate hacker may be a user with respect to some program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context. USER FRIENDLY adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a critical tone, to describe systems 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. 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. UUCPNET n. The store-and-forward network consisting of all the world's UNIX machines (and others running some clone of the UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Program) software). Any machine reachable via a BANG PATH is on UUCPNET. See NETWORK ADDRESS. {= 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". Also used to orthogonalize TTL nomenclature; for instance a 74V00 is what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from [CANONICAL in that the latter means "the thing you always use (or the way you always do it) unless you have some strong reason to do otherwise", whereas VANILLA simply means "ordinary". For example, when hackers go on a GREAT WALL (q.v.), hot-and-sour wonton soup is the CANONICAL wonton soup to get (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the VANILLA wonton soup. 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 magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines and a paper from the late 1970s that purported to prove limits on maximum 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/ or /vahr/ n. Short for "variable". Compare ARG, PARAM. VAX /vaks/ n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and 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 standardly used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10's and twenty VAXEN." See BOXEN. VAXISM n. A piece of code that excebits VAXOCENTRISM (q.v.) in critical areas. Compare PC-ISM, UNIXISM, PC-WARE. VAXOCENTRISM /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ [analogy with "ethnocentrism"] n. A notional disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions valid (esp. under UNIX) on VAXEN, but false elsewhere (this can create substantial portability problems). Among these are: 1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because location 0 is readable and zero (it may instead cause an illegal-address trap on non-VAXEN, and even on VAXEN under OSs other than BSD UNIX). 2. The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size, and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables and drawn back out without being truncated or mangled. 3. The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any byte address in memory (for example, that you can freely construct and dereference a pointer to a word-sized object at an odd address). On many (esp. RISC) architectures better optimized for HLL execution speed this is invalid and can cause an illegal address fault or bus error. 4. The (related) assumption that there is no `padding' at the end of types and that in an array you can thus step right from the last byte of a previous component to the first byte of the next one. 5. The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and that the array reference foo[-1] is necessarily valid This is not true on segment-addressed machines like Intel chips (yes, segmentatation is universally considered a BRAIN-DAMAGED way to design but that is a separate issue). 6. The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no special considerations (again, not true on segmented architectures); 7. The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in memory, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or descending order (fails on many RISC architectures). 8. The assumption that bits and addressable units within an object are ordered in the same way and that this order is a constant of nature (fails on BIG-ENDIAN machines). 9. The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to different objects not located within the same array, or to objects of different types (the former fails on segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines with multiple pointer formats). 10. The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast into a pointer to any other type (fails on word- oriented machines with multiple pointer formats). 11. The assumption that "int" is 32 bits (fails on 286-based systems under some compilers), or (nearly equivelantly) the assumption that sizeof(int) == sizeof(long). 12. The assumption that argv[] is writeable (fails in some embedded-systems C environments). 13. The assumption that characters are signed (fails on the 68000 series and elsewhere). 14. The assumption that all pointers are the same size and format, which means you don't have to worry about getting the types correct in calls (fails on word-oriented machines with multiple pointer formats). Note that a programmer can be validly be accused of VAXOCENTRISM even if he/she has never seen a VAX. The terms "vaxocentricity" and "all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome" have been used synonymously. 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 [after the plant] n. See FIREWALL. VERBIAGE /ver'bee-@j/ [IBM] n. Documentation. VERSION 7 alt. V7 /vee-se'vn/ 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. Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain V7 was the Last True UNIX. VI /vee ie/, *not* /vie/ and NEVER /siks/ [from `Visual Editor'] n. A screen editor CRUFTED TOGETHER by Bill Joy for an early BSD version. Became the de-facto standard UNIX editor until displaced by EMACS after about 1984. Tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while accepting input text nor vice versa, and it is easy to forget which mode one is in (see CHOKE, GAG, BARF). Nevertheless it is still widely used for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than bulky EMACS) and many hackers take some trouble to maintain their vi reflexes. 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. 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. This word is nearly synonymous with LOGICAL, but is never used of directions. Note that for any thing X, a logical X is either a real X or a virtual X, but not both. VIRTUAL REALITY n. 1. Computer simulations that involve 3D graphics and use devices such as the Dataglove to allow the user interact with the simulation. See CYBERSPACE. 2. A form of network interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing games, interactive theater, improvisational comedy and "true confessions" magazines. In a "virtual reality" forum (such as USENET's alt.callahans newsgroup or the MUD experiments on Internet) interaction between the participants is written like a shared novel complete with scenery, "foreground characters" 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, CYBERSPACE. VISIONARY n. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to "see" things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a computer. The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See SMOP.) VMS /vee em ess/ n. DEC's proprietary operating system for their VAX minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker folklore. Many UNIX fans generously concede that VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite commercial OS if UNIX didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious. One major hacker gripe with it is its slowness, thus the following limerick: There once was a system called VMS Of cycles by no means abstemious. It's chock-full of hacks And runs on a VAX And makes my poor stomach all squeamious. ---The Great Quux See also VAX, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, UNIX. 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; on Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called THREE-FINGER SALUTE. VULTURE CAPITALIST n. Pejorative hackerism for "venture capitalist", deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of both control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them. {= W =} WABBIT /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "you wascal wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 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 /wol'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] At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students) this is used instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic variable and general nonsense word. See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX. WALKING DRIVES n. 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. There is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). 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 [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone. "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication. Compare OCTAL FORTY. It is said that "WALL?" really came from "talking to a blank wall". It was initially used in situations where, after one carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly, having understood nothing that was explained. One would then throw out a "HELLO, WALL?" to elicit some sort of response from the questioner. Later, confused questioners began voicing "WALL?" themselves. There is an anecdote about a child in a hospital who is addressed by a nurse over an intercom and replies "What do you want, Wall?" 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. 1. 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 Stanford 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). However, the UNIX world doesn't have an equivalent term, so perhaps WALLPAPER will take hold there. The term probably originated on ITS, where the commands to begin and end transcript files were :WALBEG and :WALEND, with default file DSK:WALL PAPER. 2. The background pattern used on graphical workstations (this is jargon under the "Windows" graphical user interface to MS-DOS). 3. WALLPAPER FILE n. The file that contains the wallpaper information before it is actually printed on paper. (Sometimes you don't intend ever to produce a real paper copy of the file, because you can look at the file directly on your terminal, but it is still called a "wallpaper file".) 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 -- and, of coaurse, they were always set on "spin cycle". The washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it's even used in Russian hacker jargon. See WALKING DRIVES. The thick channel cables connecting these were called BIT HOSE (see HOSE). WEASEL [Cambridge University] A "naive user", one who deliberately or accidentally does things which are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with LUSER. WEDGED adj. 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having CRASHED. If the system has crashed, then it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, the system may become wedged if the disk controller fries; there are some things you can do without using the disks, but not many. Being wedged is slightly milder than being HUNG. Also see GRONK, LOCKED UP, HOSED. 2. This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED (q.v). 3. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. 4. [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. 5. WEDGITUDE (wedj'i-tood) n. The quality or state of being wedged. 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. 1. [primarily MS-DOS] Said of software conforming to system interface 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. 2. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a tool by other software. WELL-CONNECTED adj. Said of a computer installation, this means it has reliable email links with THE NETWORK and/or relays a large fraction of available USENET newsgroups. 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). The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TWENEX, Xerox-IFS, and others. It entered the UNIX culture from TWENEX and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). Privilege bits are sometimes called WHEEL BITS. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called WHEEL MODE. See also ROOT. 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, and 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 RED BOOK, GREEN BOOK, BLUE BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, SILVER BOOK, ORANGE BOOK, PINK-SHIRT BOOK, DRAGON 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 graphical user interfaces. WIMP ENVIRONMENT n. [acronymic from Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer] A graphical-user-interface based environment, 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. Success, or a specific instance thereof. A pleasing outcome. A FEATURE. 3. 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. 4. WIN BIG v. To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a two-for-one sale." 5. WIN WIN interj. Expresses pleasure at a WIN. Oppose 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. [prob. from notional SF slang for an electrical brain stimulation junkie] 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. WISH LIST n. A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. WIZARD n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works (that is, who GROKS it); esp. someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. This term differs somewhat from HACKER. Someone is a hacker if he has general hacking ability, but is only a wizard with respect to something if he has specific detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for something given the time to study it. 2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary people. For example, an Adventure wizard at Stanford may play the Adventure game during the day, which is forbidden (the program simply refuses to play) to most people because it uselessly consumes too many CYCLES. 3. A UNIX expert, esp. a UNIX systems programmer. This usage is well enough established that UNIX WIZARD is a recognized job title at some corporations and to most headhunters. See GURU. 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). WIZARDLY adj. Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly FEATURE is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly. 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, SMOP. 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 '88, 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. WRAP AROUND v., WRAPAROUND n. 1. This is "jargon" in its normal computer usage, i.e., describing the action of a counter that starts over at 0 or at MINUS INFINITY after its maximum value has been reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed to do so, or because of an overflow like a car's odometer starting over at 0. 2. To CHANGE PHASE gradually and continuously by maintaining a steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than 24 hours, e.g. living 6 long days in a week. WRITE-ONLY CODE [a play on "read-only memory"] n. Code sufficiently arcane, complex, or ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by anyone but the original author. A BAD THING. WRITE-ONLY LANGUAGE n. A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size is WRITE-ONLY CODE. A sobriquet often applied to APL (q.v.), though INTERCAL certainly deserves it more. WRONG THING, THE n. A design, action or decision which is clearly incorrect or inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if capitalized. The opposite of the RIGHT THING; more generally, anything that is not the RIGHT THING. In cases were "the good is the enemy of the best", the merely good, while good, is nevertheless the WRONG THING. 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, GRIND GRIND. WYSIWYG /wiz'ee-wig/ adj. User interface (usu. text or graphics editor) characterized as being "what you see is what you get;" as opposed to one which uses more-or-less obscure commands which do not result in immediate visual feedback. The term can be mildly derogatory, as it is often used to refer to dumbed-down interfaces targeted at non-programmers, while a hacker has no fear of obscure commands. On the other hand, EMACS was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, command-based TECO. {= X =} X /eks/ n. 1. 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). 2. An over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered window system developed at MIT and widely used on UNIX systems. XOR /eks'ohr/ conj. Exclusive or. "A xor B" means "A or B, but not both". Example: "I want to get cherry pie XOR a banana split." This derives from the technical use of the term as a function on truth-values that is true if either of two arguments is true but not both. XREF v.,n. Hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'. XYZZY /exs-wie-zee-zee-wie/ or /ik-zi'zee/ [from the ADVENT game] adj. The CANONICAL "magic word". This comes from ADVENT (q.v.), in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms to collect treasure. If you type XYZZY at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of MAGIC, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply "XYZZY"! Example: "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-CLEAR the system will let you do it anyway." "XYZZY!" XYZZY has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several OSs; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would typically respond "Nothing happens." just as ADVENT did before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. See PLUGH. {= Y =} YA* ["Yet Another"] abbrev. In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to `Yet Another' following the precedent set by UNIX yacc(1). See YABA. 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. YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO UNDERSTAND THIS cav. [UNIX] Canonical comment describing something MAGIC or too complicated to bother explaining properly. From a comment in the context-switching code of the V6 UNIX kernel. YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN HACKING TOO LONG WHEN... The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about themselves. These include the following: * not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you remember your NETWORK ADDRESS faster than your postal one. * your SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing you think is "Uh, oh, PRIORITY INTERRUPT" (q.v.). * you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing it in octal. * your computers have a higher street value than your car. * `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10. * you've woken up more than once to recall of a dream in C or LISP. * you realize you've never met half of your best friends. All but one of these have been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY cav. [from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by American car manufacturers] A ritual warning often found in UNIX freeware distributions. Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried to write this portably but who *knows* what'll happen on your system?" 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. obs. The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 11), which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not PARSED) and covered with Yu Shiang sauce. Usage: was used primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand. {= Z =} ZAP 1. n. Spiciness. 2. v. To make food spicy. 3. v. To make someone "suffer" by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes you blow your nose for the rest of the meal.) 4. ZAPPED adj. Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in temperature) and food that is "hot", that is, spicy. For example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold but zapped. See also ORIENTAL FOOD, LASER CHICKEN. 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. Compare HACK MODE. 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. One may speak of something being "logically zeroed" rather than being "physically 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 (because the parent process hasn't executed a wait(2) for it yet). These show up in ps(1) listings occasionally. Compare ORPHAN. 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. Appendix A: Hacker Folklore *************************** This appendix contains several fables and legends which illuminate the meaning of various entries in the main text. All of this material except THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF MABEL THE MONKEY appeared in the 1983 paper edition of the Jargon File (but not in the previous on-line versions). The Meaning of "Hack" ********************* "The word HACK doesn't really have 69 different meanings," according to Phil Agre, an MIT hacker. "In fact, HACK has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably RANDOM." Hacking might be characterized as "an appropriate application of ingenuity". Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it. An important secondary meaning of `hack' is `a creative practical joke'. This kind of hack is often easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. Accordingly, here are three examples of practical joke hacks: In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed as a reporter and "interviewed" the director of the University of Washington card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up colored cards to make pictures). The reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and also that the director would be out to dinner later. While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the "Fiendish Fourteen") picked a lock and stole one of the direction sheets for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the sheet. The next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts, large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using these as a guide, they carefully made "corrections" for three of the stunts on the duplicate instruction sheets. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting the stack of altered instruction sheets for the original set. The result was that three of the pictures were totally different. Instead of spelling "WASHINGTON", the word "CALTECH" was flashed. Another stunt showed the word "HUSKIES", the Washington nickname, but spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have been a picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the beaver as a mascot. Beavers are nature's engineers.) After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative said, "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The Washington student body president remarked, "No hard feelings, but at the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed." This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the direction sheets constituted a form of programming not unlike computer programming. Another classic hack: One winter, late at night, an MIT fraternity hosed down an underpass that is part of a commuter expressway near MIT. This produced an ice slick that "trapped" a couple of small cars: they didn't have the momentum or traction to climb out of the underpass. While it was clever to apply some simple science to trap a car, it was also very dangerous as it could have caused a collision. Therefore this was a very poor hack overall. (There is another story about an even less appealing hack in which some MIT students used thermite to weld a trolley car to its tracks. The story may be apocryphal, however.) And yet another: On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale football game. Just after Harvard's second touchdown against Yale in the second quarter, a small black ball popped up out of the ground at the 40-yard line, and grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The letters "MIT" appeared all over the ball. As the players and officials stood around gawking, the ball grew to six feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of white smoke. As the Boston Globe later reported, "If you want to know the truth, M.I.T. won The Game." The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made eight separate expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 AM, in which they located an unused 110-volt circuit in the stadium, and ran buried wiring from the stadium circuit to the 40-yard line, where they buried the balloon device. When the time came to activate the device, two fraternity members had merely to flip a circuit breaker and push a plug into an outlet. This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise, publicity, the ingenious use of technology, safety, and harmlessness. The use of manual control allowed the prank to be timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was set off between plays, so the outcome of the game would not be unduly affected). The perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the balloon explaining that the device was not dangerous and contained no explosives. Harvard president Derek Bok commented: "They have an awful lot of clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again." President Paul E. Gray of MIT said, "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I had anything to do with it, but I wish there were." Such is the way of all good hacks. 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 TV Typewriters: A Tale Of Hackish Ingenuity ******************************************* Here is a true story about a glass tty. One day an MIT hacker was in a motorcycle accident and broke his leg. He had to stay in the hospital quite a while, and got restless because he couldn't HACK (use the computer). Two of his friends therefore took a display terminal and a telephone connection for it to the hospital, so that he could use the computer by telephone from his hospital bed. Now this happened some years before the spread of home computers, and computer terminals were not a familiar sight to the average person. When the two friends got to the hospital, a guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. They explained that they wanted to take a computer terminal to their friend who was a patient. The guard got out his list of things that patients were permitted to have in their rooms: TV, radio, electric razor, typewriter, tape player... no computer terminals. Computer terminals weren't on the list, so they couldn't take it in. Rules are rules. Fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. They were frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal was as harmless as a TV or anything else on the list... which gave them an idea. The next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a guard stopped them and asked what they were carrying. They said, "This is a TV typewriter!" The guard was skeptical, so they plugged it in and demonstrated it. "See? You just type on the keyboard and what you type shows up on the TV screen." Now the guard didn't stop to think about how utterly useless a typewriter would be that didn't produce any paper copies of what you typed; but this was clearly a TV typewriter, no doubt about it. So he checked his list: "A TV is all right, a typewriter is all right... okay, take it on in!" Two Stories About "Magic" (As Told By Guy Steele) ************************************************* When Barbara Steele was in her fifth month of pregnancy, her doctor sent her to a specialist to have a sonogram made to determine whether there were twins. She dragged her husband Guy along to the appointment. It was quite fascinating; as the doctor moved an instrument along the skin, a small TV screen showed cross-sectional pictures of the abdomen. Now Barbara and I had both studied computer science at MIT, and we both saw that some complex computerized image-processing was involved. Out of curiosity, we asked the doctor how it was done, hoping to learn some details about the mathematics involved. The doctor, not knowing our educational background, simply said, "The probe sends out sound waves, which bounce off the internal organs. A microphone picks up the echoes, like radar, and send the signals to a computer---and the computer makes a picture." Thanks a lot! Now a hacker would have said, "... and the computer *magically* makes a picture," implicitly acknowledging that he has glossed over an extremely complicated process. Some years ago I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one know who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch only had one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it ran fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was MAGIC. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic." A Selection of AI Koans *********************** These are perhaps the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the MIT AI lab about various noted computer scientists and hackers. * * * A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly: "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. [Ed note: This is much funnier if you know that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine's principal designers] * * * One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following story: "One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector... [Ed. note: The point here is technical. Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with `pathological' structures that point to themselves.] * * * In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe", Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. * * * A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too." Appendix B: The High Moby -- Obsolescent Terms From Jargon-1 ************************************************************ 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. 1. To increase the amount of something. "Aos the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now obsolescent. See SOS. Now largely supplanted by BUMP. 2. A crufty MULTICS-derived OS supported at one time by Data General. Sense #1 was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that takes any memory location in the computer and adds one to it; AOS means "Add One and do not Skip". Why, you may ask, does the "S" stand for "do not Skip" rather than for "Skip"? Ah, here is a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There are eight such instructions: AOSE adds one and then skips the next instruction if the result is Equal to zero; AOSG adds one and then skips if the result is Greater than zero; AOSN adds one and then skips if the result is Not zero; AOSA adds one and then skips Always; and so on. Just plain AOS doesn't say when to skip, so it never skips. For similar reasons, AOJ means "Add One and do not Jump". Even more bizarre, SKIP means "do not SKIP"! If you want to skip the next instruction, you must say "SKIPA". Likewise, JUMP means "do not JUMP" (see JRST below). 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. CHINE NUAL n.,obs. The Lisp Machine Manual, so called because the title was wrapped around the cover so only those letters show. 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, POD 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. Usage: silly. Example: "Dpb yourself into that couch, there." The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to sit in. DPB means "DePosit Byte", and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. DRAGON [ITS; UNIX calls this a DAEMON or DEMON] n. A program similar to a DAEMON, except that it doesn't sit around waiting for something to happen, but is instead used by the system to perform various useful tasks that just have to be done periodically. A typical example would be an accounting program that accumulates statistics, keeps track of who is logged in, and so on. Another example: most timesharing systems have several terminals, and at any given time some are in use and some are sitting idle; the idle ones usually sit there with some idiotic message on their screens, such as "Logged off.", from the last time someone used it. The ITS timesharing system at MIT puts these idle terminals to good use by displaying useful information on them, such as who is using the computer, where they are, what they're doing, what their telephone numbers are, and so on, along with other information such as pretty pictures (the picture collection included a unicorn, Snoopy, and the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek). All this information was displayed on idle terminals by the `name dragon', so called because it originally printed just the names of the users. (That it now shows all kinds of things, including useless though pretty pictures, is an example of CREEPING FEATURISM.) The name dragon is a program started up by the system, and it runs about every five minutes and updates the information on all idle terminals. ENGLISH /ing'lish/ n. The source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to BINARY. The idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is as readable as English. 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 was [CSP,SYS]. EOU /ee oh yoo/ The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User) that could make a Model 33 Teletype explode on receipt. This parodied the numerous obscure record-delimiter control characters left in ASCII from the days when it was more associated with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g. FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX and esp. EOT). It is worth remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front of a TUBE or flatscreen today. EXCH /ex'chuh/ or /ekstch/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v., obs. To exchange two things, each for the other. IMPCOM /imp'kom/ 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 /jif'kl/ or /jaf'kl/ v., obs. To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag set and then CLear the flag"; this does something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one of the jargon-1 compilers, once had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW. JRN, JRL /jay ahr en/, /jay ahr el/ n. The names JRN and JRL were sometimes used as example names when discussing PPNs (q.v.); they were understood to be programmer names for (fictitious) programmers named "J. Random Nerd" and "J. Random Loser" (see [J. RANDOM). For example, one might say "To log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "[log1,JRN]"), and the listener will understand that he should use his own computer id in place of "[JRN]". JRST /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v., obs. To suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic.. Usage: rather rare, and considered silly. "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick." This is even sillier. Why JRST and not JUMP? The PDP-10 JUMP instruction means "do not jump", as explained in the definition of AOS. The JUMPA instruction ("JUMP Always") does jump, but it isn't quite as fast as the JRST instruction (Jump and ReSTore flags). The instruction was used so frequently that the speed matters, so all PDP-10 hackers automatically used the faster though more obscure JRST instruction. 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., sense 2. 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. Back when address registers were narrow, the term was more generally useful; because when a computer had "virtual memory mapping" it might actually have more physical memory attached to it than any one program could access directly. One could then say "This computer has six mobies" to mean that the ratio of physical memory to address space is six, without having to say specifically how much memory there actually is. That in turn implies that the computer can timeshare six "full-sized" programs without having to swap programs between memory and disk. Thus the MIT PDP-10s each had 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.) Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means registers are typically wider than the most memory you can cram onto a machine, so most systems have much *less* than 1 theoretical `native' moby of core. However, the size of the PDP-10 "moby" was 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). OUTPUT SPY n. On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what is being printed on someone else's terminal. It works by "spying" on the other guy's output, by examining the insides of the monitor system. It could do this because the MIT system purposely had very little in the way of "protection" that prevents one user from interfering with another. Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would automatically notify you if anyone starts to spy on your output. It worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the operating system to see if anyone else was looking at the insides that have to do with your output. This "counterspy" program was called JEDGAR (pronounced as two syllables: /jed'gr/), in honor of the former head of the FBI. By the way, the output spy program is called OS. Throughout the rest of computer science, and also at IBM, OS means "operating system", but among old-time ITS hackers it almost always meant "output spy". PHANTOM /fan'tm/ [Stanford] n. The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON (q.v.). Typical phantoms included 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'@n/ 1. A combination of a "project identifier" and "programmer name", used to identify a specific file directory belonging to that programmer. This was used in the TOPS-10 operating system that DEC provided for the PDP-10. The implicit assumption is that there will be many projects, each with several programmers working on it, and that a programmer may work on several projects. This is not a bad organization; what was totally BOGUS is that projects and programmers were identified by octal (base eight) numbers! Hence the term Project-Programmer Number, or PPN. If you were programmer 72534 and wanted to work on project 306, you would have had to tell the computer "login 306,72534". This was absurd. At CMU the TOPS-10 system was modified to be somewhat less ridiculous: projects were identified by a letter and three decimal (not octal) digits, and programmers were identified by his two initials, a digit indicating the first year he came to CMU, and a fourth character that is used to distinguish between, say, Fred Loser and Farley Luser who both happened to arrive the same year. So to use the PDP-10 at CMU one might have said "login A780GS70". The programmer name "GS70" was also called a "man number" at CMU, even though it isn't really a number. At Stanford, projects and programmers were identified by three letters or digits each: if Guy Steele werre to work on a LISP project at Stanford, he might log in as "login lsp,gls". This was much more mnemonic. Programmer identifiers at Stanford were usually the programmer's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or other three-letter sequence. Even though the CMU and Stanford forms were not really (pairs of) numbers, the term PPN was used to refer to the combination. 2. At Stanford, the term PPN was often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone. "I want to send you some mail; what's your ppn?". This term is still used by old-timers on the commercial time-sharing service CompuServe (which uses PDP-10s) but has long since vanished from hackerdom. ITS and UNIX, of course, never used PPNs; ITS had six-character UNAMEs, and UNIX has 15-character `usernames' and hierararchical file system rather than project areas. 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 n. 1. /sahss/ Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set. 2. /ess-oh-ess/ An infamously LOSING text editor. Once, back in the 1960's, when a text editor was needed for the PDP-6, a hacker CRUFTED TOGETHER a quick-and-dirty "stopgap editor" to be used until a better one was written. Unfortunately, the old one was never really discarded when new ones (in particular, TECO) came along. SOS is a descendant of that editor; SOS means "Son of Stopgap", and many PDP-10 users gained the dubious pleasure of its axquaintance. [Since then other programs similar in style to SOS have been written, notably BILOS (bye'lohss) the Brother-In-Law Of Stopgap.] See also TECO. STY /stie/, *not* /ess tee wie/ [ITS] 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). TECO /tee'koh/ [acronym for Tape (later, Text) Editor and COrrector] n. 1. A text editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody. If all the dialects are included, TECO might have been the single most prolific editor in use before EMACS (q.v.) to which it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful programming-language-like features and its incredibly hairy syntax. It is literally the case that every possible sequence of ASCII characters is a valid, though probably uninteresting, TECO program; one common hacker game used to be mentally working out what the teco commands corresponding to human names did. As an example, here is a TECO program that takes a list of names like this: Loser, J. Random Quux, The Great Dick, Moby sorts them alphabetically according to last name, and then puts the last name last, removing the comma, to produce this: Moby Dick J. Random Loser The Great Quux The program is: [1 J ^P $ L $ $ J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$ In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted list from the first list! The first time I tried the program it had a BUG: I had accidentally omitted the "@" in front of "F^B", which as anyone can see is clearly the wrong thing. It worked fine the second time. There is no space to describe all the features of TECO, but I will note that "^P" means "sort" and "J <.-Z; ... L>" is an idiomatic series of commands for "do once for every line". Historical data from MRC: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT TECO many years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor (that is, didn't make use of display screens). By then, TECO at MIT had become a highly display-oriented and is actually a language for writing editors, rather than an editor. Meanwhile, the outside world's various versions of TECO remained 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. DEC later 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. 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 salescritters 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: Bibliography ************************ 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 (thankfully) 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 Markus 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. The Devil's DP Dictionary by Stan Kelly-Bootle McGraw-Hill Inc, 1981 ISBN 0-07-034022-6 This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in format to the Jargon File (and quotes several entries from jargon-1) but somewhat different in tone and intent. It is more satirical and less anthropological, and largely a product of the author's literate and quirky imagination. For example, it defines "computer science" as "A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter"; also as "The boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities." The Devouring Fungus: Tales from the Computer Age by Karla Jennings W. W. Norton 1990, New York ISBN 0-393-30732-8 The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a great deal of computer and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a few well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for the human aspects of the lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of hackerdom. Unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses suggest that she didn't have the final manuscript vetted by a hackish insider; the glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing, and at least one classic tale (the Magic Switch story in this file's Appendix A) is given in incomplete and badly mangled form. Nevertheless, this book is a win overall and can be enjoyed by hacker and non-hacker alike. True Names...and Other Dangers by Vernor Vinge Baen Books 1987, New York ISBN 0-671-65363 RMS believes the title story this book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". This may well be true; it's certainly difficult to recall anyone doing a better job. Certainly it holds a special place in the hearts of hackers everywhere. The other stories in this collection are also fine work by an author who is perhaps one of today's very best practitioners of the hard-SF genre.