term% cat index.txt ============ THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.7.1, 1 MAR 1991 ============
Introduction
************
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is
included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;
what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for
fun, social communication, and technical debate within their communities.
The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths,
heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because
hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define
themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits,
it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional
culture less than thirty-five years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
their culture together --- it helps hackers recognize each other's
places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences.
Also as usual, *not* knowing the slang (or using it
inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of
all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a *suit*. All human
cultures use slang in this threefold way --- as a tool of
communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect paralleled perhaps
in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard
to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are
code for shared states of *consciousness*. There is a whole range
of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to
high-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic
reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's
trick-the-eye paintings (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker
slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. Take the
distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and the
differing connotations attached to each, as a simple example. The
distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right
back into the nature of the generative processes in program design and
asserts something important about two different kinds of relationship
between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in
implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate
the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love word-play and are very
conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits are
common in children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are
pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us
before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of
ours is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by
contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for
conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique
combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the
discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the
electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot'
connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and
the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results
of this process give us perhaps a uniquely intense ans accelerated
view of linguistic evolution in action.
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention makes a
compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the
surrounding culture --- and, in fact, this one is the latest version
of an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File' maintained by
hackers themselves for over fifteen years. This one (like its
ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes `topic entries'
which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture
that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries.
Though the format is that of a reference, it is also intended that the
material be enjoyable to browse or read straight through. Even a
complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every page,
and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true
that hackers use humorous word-play to make strong, sometime combative
statements about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the
views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely
passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or
pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that
*everyone's* sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is
not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of
divergent viewpoints is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt
it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences
(fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture) will benefit
from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor are included
in Appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly
directed to Appendix B, the Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Appendix C
is a bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced
or described the hacker culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred. Earlier Jargon File versions have played a central role in
spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to
successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one
will do likewise.
Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
===============================
Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve
the term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various
occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the
`Jargon File' and hackish slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When
talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way to
distinguish what a *linguist* would call hackers' jargon --- the
formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and
manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hackish slang and
technical programming and computer science vocabulary is fuzzy, and
shifts over time. Further, this technical vocabulary is shared with a
wider technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers
and do not speak or recognize hackish slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of
usage permit about the distinctions between three categories:
* `slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-techical
subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc.).
* `jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language
peculiar to hackers --- the subject of this lexicon.
* `techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming,
computer science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of
this lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of
techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing
uptake of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon
arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about
this in the `Jargon Construction' section below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term which communicates
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages
or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that
isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical
historical background necessary to understand other entries to which
they are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon
words have been listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; where
the text does not specify that a straight technical sense is under
discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Many
entries have a sense #1 marked this way, with subsequent jargon
meanings explained in terms of it.
Revision History
================
The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from
technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab
(SAIL), the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, Bolt Beranek and
Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester
Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File')
was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975, though some terms in
it date back considerably earlier ({frob} and some senses of
{moby}, for instance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad Club and
MIT and are believed to date at least back to the early 1960s). The
revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively
considered `Version 1'.
In 1976, Mark Crispin brought the File to MIT; he and Guy Steele then
added a first wave of new entries. Raphael Finkel dropped out of
active participation shortly thereafter, and Don Woods became the SAIL
contact for the File (which was subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL
and MIT, with periodic re-synchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard
Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and
ITS-related coinages.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass
market, was edited by Guy L. Steele into a book published in 1983 as
`The Hacker's Dictionary' (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN
0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don
Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to the revision, as did Richard
M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book is hereafter referred to
as `Steele-1983'. It is now out of print.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively
stopped growing and changing. The PDP-10-centered cultures that had
originally nourished it were dealt a serious blow by the cancellation
of the Jupiter project at DEC; at the same time, the commercialization
of AI technology lured some of their best and brightest away to
startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and in Silicon
Valley. The AI-Lab culture died and its members dispersed; the File's
compilers moved on to other things.
By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had
grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies
obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from
MIT's and Stanford's; the content exerted a strong and continuing
influence on hackish language and humor. Even as the advent of the
microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of
hackerdom, the File (and related materials like the AI Koans in
Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture
Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of
the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated
tremendously, but the Jargon File passed from living document to icon
and remained essentially untouched for seven years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of
jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries have been dropped
following careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It
merges in about about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some
framing material and a very few entries introduced in Steele-1983
which are now also obsolete.
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 represent jargon now current in the
C and UNIX communities, but special efforts have been made to collect
jargon from other cultures including IBM-PC programmers, Mac
enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known
to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a
list of abbreviations used in etymologies:
Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Cambridge
The university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
Fidonet
See the {Fidonet} entry.
IBM
International Business Machines
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab
culture of roughly 1971 to 1983. Some MITisms go back as far as the
Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT c.1960.
NYU
New York University
Purdue
Purdue University
SAIL
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stanford
Stanford University
Sun
Sun Microsystems
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
USENET
See the {USENET} entry.
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of
PDP-10 hackers during the Seventies.
Xerox PARC
Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research in
user interface design and networking.
Yale
Yale University
Some other etymology abbreviations such as {UNIX}, {PDP-10}, etc.
refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems,
processors, or other environments. Note: the fact that a term is
labelled with any of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its
use is confined to that culture. In particular, many terms labelled
`MIT' and `Stanford' are in quite general use. We have tried to give
some indication of speaker distribution in the usage notes.
Eric S. Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com) maintains the new File with
assistance from Guy L. Steele (gls@think.com); these are the persons
primarily reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take
pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other
coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections and
correspondence relating to the jargon file to jargon@thyrsus.com
(UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can
use ...!uunet!snark!jargon).
(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not
guaranteed to be correct* later than the revision date on the first
line. *Don't* email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces
--- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people)
Some snapshot of this on-line version will become the main text of a
`New Hacker's Dictionary', to be published by MIT Press possibly as
early as Summer 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.
Here is a chronology of the recent on-line revisions:
Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the jargon file comes alive again after a
seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric
S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and
microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time (as well as The
Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey). Some obsolete 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 co-authors.
The bibliography (Appendix C) was also appended.
Version 2.2.1, Dec 15 1990: most of the contents of the 1983 paper
edition edited by Guy Steele was merged in. Many more USENET
submissions added, including the International Style and the material
on Commonwealth Hackish. This version had 9394 lines, 75954 words,
490501 characters, and 1046 entries.
Version 2.3.1, Jan 03 1991: the great format change --- case is no
longer smashed in lexicon keys and cross-references. A very few
entries from jargon-1 which were basically straight tech-speak were
deleted; this enabled the rest of Appendix B to be merged back into
main text and the appendix replaced with the Portrait of J. Random
Hacker. More USENET submissions were added. This version had 10728
lines, 85070 words, 558261 characters, and 1138 entries.
Version 2.4.1, Jan 14 1991: the Story of Mel and many more USENET
submissions merged in. More material on hackish writing habits added.
Numerous typo fixes. This version had 12362 lines, 97819 words,
642899 characters, and 1239 entries.
Version 2.5.1, Jan 29 1991: many new entries merged in. Discussion of
inclusion styles added. This version had 14145 lines, 111904 words,
734285 characters, and 1425 entries.
Version 2.6.1, Feb 13 1991: second great format change; no more <>
around headwords or references. Merged in results of serious
copy-editing passes by Guy Steele, Mark Brader. Still more entries
added. This version had 15011 lines, 118277 words, 774942 characters,
and 1485 entries.
Version 2.7.1, Mar 1 1991: new section on slang/jargon/techspeak
added. Results of Guy's 2nd edit pass merged in. This version had
16087 lines, 126885 words, 831872 characters, and 1533 entries.
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 (Eric S. Raymond) with
assistance from GLS (Guy Steele). Someday, the next maintainer will
take over and spawn `version 3'. Usually later versions will either
completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is
generally no point in keeping old versions around.
Our thanks to the other co-authors of Steele-1983 for oversight and
assistance; also to all the USENETters who contributed entries and
encouragement. Special thanks go to our Scandinavian correspondent
Per Lindberg (per@front.se), author of the remarkable Swedish
language 'zine `Hackerbladet', for bringing FOO! comics to our
attention and smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby
jargon files out to us. Also, much gratitude to ace hacker/linguist
Joe Keane (jkg@osc.osc.com) for helping us improve the pronunciation
guides; and to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion
of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. Finally,
Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) submitted many thoughtful comments and did
yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles, and Eric
Tiedemann (est@thyrsus.com) contributed sage advice on rhetoric,
amphigory, and philosophunculism.
Format For New Entries
======================
Try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words
separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries),
cross-references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries),
pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets,
single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to
the standard ASCII character set (no high-half characters or
[nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from
the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a
character tty.
We are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered.
There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific
computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical
analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many
other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are *not* interested in straight technical terms explained by
textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates
`underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories.
We are also not interested in `joke' entries --- there is a lot of
humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations
of what hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have spread
to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with
you. We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two
different sites.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed].
These are usually generalizations suggested by editors or USENET
respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of
those entries. These are *not* represented as established
jargon.
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 in English is to double a verb
and use it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack,
quack!". Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double
verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied
subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a
conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs
or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involve
{win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {chomp}:
"The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose."
"Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame."
"Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!"
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately
obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.
Soundalike slang: Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to
convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting.
It is considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so
as to include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist
magazine `Dr. Dobb's Journal' is almost always referred to among
hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of
this kind that have been in fairly wide use include names for
newspapers:
Boston Herald American => Horrid (or Harried) American
Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle => the Crocknicle
New York Times => New York Slime
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment.
Standard examples include:
Prime Time => Slime Time
Data General => Dirty Genitals
IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
Government Property -- Do Not Duplicate (seen on keys)
=> Government Duplicity -- Do Not Propagate
for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall
This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque
whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.
The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the
syllable `P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter `P'
to denote a predicate (a Boolean-valued function). The question
should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.)
At dinnertime:
Q: "Foodp?"
A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!"
Q: "State-of-the-world-P?"
A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home."
A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state."
On the phone to Florida:
Q: "State-p Florida?"
A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?"
[One of the best of these is a {Gosperism} Once, when we were at a
Chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would
like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry
was: "Split-p soup?" ---GLS]
Overgeneralization: A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the
frequency with which techspeak items like names of program tools,
command language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to
contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies
to them. Thus, (to cite one of the best-known examples) UNIX hackers
often {grep} for things rather than searching for them. Many of the
lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well.
Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to
them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to
nonuniform cases (or vice versa). For example, because
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
hackers happily generalize:
mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrosity
obvious => obviosity
dubious => dubiosity
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be
verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over",
"I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in
this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese);
hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.
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. Almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in -xen (see
{VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text). Even words ending in
phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g. `soxen' for a
bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural
of {frobboz} (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; it has been
suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular
endings that attract a Latinate plural.
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-Saxon 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 or in
email. 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 punning jargon is still largely confined to MIT and other
large universities, and the -P convention is found only where LISPers
flourish.
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be
understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially
true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and
functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct
spectrum:
MONSTROSITY BRAIN-DAMAGE SCREW BUG LOSE MISFEATURE
CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE ELEGANCE PERFECTION
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
actually attained. Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call
forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been
truly said that "{Computer geeks} have more words for equipment
failures than Inuit have for snow", or than Yiddish has for obnoxious
people.
Hacker Speech Style
===================
This 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 often
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 "Aren't you going?" it seems to be
asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits an
answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking
non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative
part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian,
Chinese and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the
problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a
word like French `si' or German `doch' with which one could
unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use 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 parentheses,
much to the dismay of American 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 standard American
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 in them.
Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussing
programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading.
When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra
characters can be a real pain in the neck. For example:
First do "foo -acrZ tempo | bar -," then ...
is different from
First do "foo -acrZ tempo | bar -", then ...
from a computer's point of view. While the first is correct according
to the stylebooks and would probably be parsed correctly by the a
human recipient, the second is unambiguous. The Jargon File follows
hackish usage consistently throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great
Britain, though the older style (which became established for
typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and
quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. Hart's Rules and the
Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the hacker-like style
`new' or `logical' style quoting.
Another hacker quirk about quoting style is a tendency to distinguish
between `scare' quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use
British-style single quotes for marking and reserve American-style
double quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from
elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct
general usage, but mainstream American English has gone to using
double-quotes thoroughly enough that hacker usage appears marked [and,
in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked
with USENET --- ESR]. One further permutation that is definitely
*not* standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by
using apostrophes in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on
string and character literal syntax in some programming languages
(reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals display a
vertical single quote).
There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to
the effect that precision of expression is more important than
conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or
lose information they can be discarded without a second thought. It
is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example,
in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even
when constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker,
the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a
substantial part of its humor!
There is another respect in which hackish usage often parallels
British usage; it tends to choose British spellings whenever these
seem more phonetically consistent than the American ones.
Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis
conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and
these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when
normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.
One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and
this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who
goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop
shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!".
Also, it is common to use bracketing with asterisks to signify
emphasis, as in "What the *hell*?" (note that this interferes with
the common use of asterisk suffix as a footnote mark). An alternative
form uses paired slash and backslash: "What the \hell/?". The
latter is never used in text documents, as many formatters treat
backslash as an escape and may do inappropriate things with the
following text. Also note that there is a semantic difference between
*emphasis like this*, (which emphasizes the phrase as a whole) and
*emphasis* *like* *this* (which suggests the writer speaking very
slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young child or mentally
impaired person).
In a formula, `*' signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a
row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN).
Thus, one might write `2 ** 8 = 256'.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2 ^ 8 = 256'.
This goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII
`up-arrow' that later became caret; this was picked up by Kemeny &
Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the
bc(1) and dc(1) UNIX tools that have probably done most to reinforce
the convention on USENET. The notation is mildly confusing to C
programmers, because `^' means logical {XOR} in C. Despite
this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of USENET.
It is used consistently in this text.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small
numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a
form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example,
one year is about 3e7 seconds long .
The tilde (`~') is commonly used in a quantifying sense of
`approximately'; that is, `~50' means `about fifty'.
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_."
Occasionally this underline indication is used for emphasis, like the
paired asterisks.
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's in from corporate HQ.
would be read as "Be nice to this fool, I mean this gentleman...".
This comes from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print
representation for a backspace. It parallels (and may have been
influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in SF fanzines.
On USENET and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
relational operators such as (`|', `&', `!', `==', `!=', `>', and `<')
are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, `<>', is also
recognized. The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or
`no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or
`clueless'.
Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a
term; this derives from conventions used in {BNF}. Uses like the
following are common:
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day, and...
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
(the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an
appropriate reflex because UNIX and C both distinguish cases and
confusing them can lead to lossage). A way of escaping this dilemma
is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of
sentences.
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit
sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string
that names that number in English. So, hackers write "1970s" rather
than "nineteen-seventies" or "1970's" (the later looks like a
possessive).
Finally, it should be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance
to use multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English. Partly
this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP ((which uses
deeply nested parentheses (like this) in its syntax) (a lot (see?))),
but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of
enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits
is in operation.
One area where hackish conventions for on-line writing are still in
some flux is the marking of included material from earlier messages
--- what would be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From
the usual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at
an extra indent), there derived the notation of included text being
indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under UNIX and
many other environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD `Mail(1)'
was the first message agent to support inclusion, and early USENETters
emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push included
text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions),
leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion
(during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces
became established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading ">"
or "> " became standard, perhaps because the character suggests
movement to the right (alternatively, it may derive from the ">" that
some V7 UNIX mailers use to quote leading instances of "From" in
text). Inclusions within inclusions keep their ">" leaders, so the
`nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent.
A few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they're
automatically generated. One particularly ugly one looks like this:
/* Written hh:mm pm Mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in local:group */
/* ---------- "Subject of article chopped to 35 ch" ---------- */
<<quoted text>>
/* End of text from local:group */
It's generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called
`notesfiles'. The overall trend, however, is definitely away from
such verbosity.
The practice of including text helped solve what had been a major
nuisance on USENET: the fact that articles do not arrive at different
sites in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that
would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong",
or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to
what. Consequently, in about 1984, new news-posting software was
created with a facility to automatically include the text of a
previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster chose. The
poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The result
has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the
*entire* text of a preceding article, *followed* only by
"No, that's wrong" or "I agree".
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease,
and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader
skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software
rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning
with ">", but this too has led to undesirable workarounds such as the
deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted
and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold.
Because the default mailers supplied with UNIX and other operating
systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older
conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still
alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both
netnews and mail.
Practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion
style occasionally leads to {holy wars}. One variant style reported
uses the citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended
quotations where original variations in indentation are being
retained. One also sees different styles of quoting a number of
authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses
information) uses a leader of "> " for everyone, another (the most
common) is "> > > > ", "> > > ", etc. (or ">>>> ", ">>> ", etc.,
depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original
order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation
leader for each author, say "> ", ": ", "| ", "} " (preserving
nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or
tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet *another* style
is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader
for that poster. Occasionally one sees a "# " leader used for
quotations from *authoritative* sources such as standards
documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special
UNIX command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged
super-user).
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting
effect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which
emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about
other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has
both good and bad effects. The good one is that it encourages
honesty and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships;
the bad is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous
rudeness.
Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often display a sort
of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed out of
fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase
"Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would
face to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network definitely places a premium on
literacy and clarity of expression. It may well be that future
historians of literature will see in it a revival of the great
tradition of personal letters as art.
International Style
===================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage
in American English, we have made some effort to get input from
abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses
translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by
earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting,
and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth English'. These are
intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in
the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada,
Australia, India, etc., though Canada is heavily influenced by
American usage). There is also an entry on {{Commonwealth Hackish}}
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S.
hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported
to often use a mixture of English and their native languages for
technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their
English usage 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 English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
Pronunciation Guide
===================
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listing for all
entries that 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 `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' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
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 /kuhl'r/,
not /kit'@n/ and /kuhl'@r/.
Other Lexicon Conventions
=========================
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than
the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in
mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with
nonalphabetic characters are sorted to the beginning. The
case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.
The `OED' referred to in several entries is, of course, the Oxford
English Dictionary.
In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used
to bracket words which themselves have entries in the File. This
isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere
that a reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one
might wish to refer to its entry.
In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are
distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by
"::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by
"{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}".
References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX
facilities (some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware
distributed over USENET). The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer
to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2
is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8
(where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5,
and 7 have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred
to from any of the entries.
The Jargon Lexicon
******************
= [^A-Za-z] (see {regexp}) =
============================
'Snooze: /snooz/ [FidoNet] n. Fidonews, the weekly official on-line
newsletter of FidoNet. As the editorial policy of Fidonews is
"anything that arrives, we print", there are often large articles
completely unrelated to FidoNet, which in turn tend to elicit
{flamage} in subsequent issues.
(tm): [USENET] ASCII rendition of the trademark symbol, appended to
phrases that the author feels should be recorded for posterity,
perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used
ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of
software and algorithm patents and `look and feel' lawsuits.
-ware: [from `software'] suff. Commonly used to form jargon terms
for classes of software. For examples, see {crippleware},
{crudware}, {firmware}, {freeware}, {fritterware},
{guiltware}, {liveware}, {meatware}, {payware},
{psychedelicware}, {shareware}, {shelfware}, {vaporware},
{wetware}.
/dev/null: /dev-nuhl/ [from the UNIX null device, used as a data
sink] n. A notional `black hole' in any information space being
discussed, used or referred to. A controversial posting, for
example, might end "Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to
/dev/null". See {bit bucket}, {null device}.
120 reset: [from 120 volts, U.S. wall current] n. To cycle power on
a machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare {Big Red
Switch}, {power cycle}.
2: infix. In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often
represents the syllable *to* with the connotation
`translate to'; as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string
(integer to string) and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff).
@-party: /at'par`tee/ [from the @-sign in an Internet address] n.
(also `@-sign party' /at'sien par`tee/) Semi-closed parties thrown
at science-fiction 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 does. One of the most reliable
opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who
might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their
screens. Compare {boink}.
@Begin: [written only; primarily CMU] n. Equivalent of {\begin}
in the Scribe text formatting language; used as an idiom by Scribe
users.
\begin: [written only, from the LaTeX command] With \end, used
humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the
surrounded text. 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}
The Scribe users at CMU and elsewhere used to use @Begin/@End in
an identical way. On USENET, this construct would more frequently
be rendered as "<FLAME ON>" and "<FLAME OFF>".
= A =
=====
abbrev: /@'breev/, /@'brev/ n. Common abbreviation for
`abbreviation'.
abend: [ABnormal End] /ab'end/ n. Abnormal termination (of
software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives from an error message
on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by
{code grinder}s.
accumulator: n. Archaic term for a register. Cited here because
on-line use of it is a fairly reliable indication that the user has
been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under
discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of
microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for
arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use of
`accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic'!).
Confusingly, though, an `a' register name prefix may also stand for
`address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family.
ACK: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for #b0000110]
Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream
*Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}. 2.
[prob. from the Bloom County comic strip] An exclamation of
surprised disgust, esp. in "Oop ack!". Semi-humorous.
Generally this sense is distinguished by a following exclamation
point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you
understand their point. See {NAK}. Thus, for example, you might
cut off an overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get
it now". See also {NAK}.
There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense #1) meaning "Are you
there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has
gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}
(sense #2), i.e., "I'm not here").
ad-hockery: /ad-hok'@r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions
made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to
the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior, but are in fact
entirely arbitrary. 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.
Also called `ad-hackery'.
Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that,
technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind
of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult
to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle;
one common description is "The PL/1 of the 1980s". Hackers find
Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features
particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron
who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with
Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the
mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use her name has
been latterly put to; the kindest thing that has been said about it
it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get
out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk.
adger: /adj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences
that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental
effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
whole project." Compare {dumbass attack}.
admin: /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly used
in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a
computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and
`site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site
contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing on the
latter). Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system mangler}.
ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure,
but the {TOPS-10} operating system only permitted 6-letter
filenames. See also {vadding}.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak. "A huge green fierce snake bars
the way!" "I see no X here." (for some noun X). "You are in a
maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little
maze of twisty passages, all different." The "magic words"
{xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth/Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `Colossal
Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns
up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.
AI koans: pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles
created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major
figures of the Lab's culture. A selection are included in Appendix
A. See also {ha ha only serious} and {{Humor, Hacker}}.
AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome ("A*" matches,
but not limited to, Apple), this condition is the quite often the
result of practicing unsafe {SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan
horse}, {virgin}.
airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of
failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems
as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and
electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (see
also {KISS Principle}). It is correspondingly argued that the
right way to build reliable systems is to design to put all your
eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a
*really good* basket.
aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors which can
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
`malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses
(`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
storage is freed 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 avoidable by use of higher-level
languages such as {LISP} which employ a garbage collector (see
{GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also
{precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core},
{memory leak}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.
Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with C
programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC
program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities
that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a
program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without
considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly
common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over
the keyboard interrupt. See also {mess-dos}.
ALT: /awlt/ 1. n. The ALT shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}.
2. [possibly lowercased] n. The `Apple' or `Command' key on a
Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked
PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {command key}). 3.
n.obs. [PDP-10] Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character, after
the keycap labeling on some older terminals. Also `ALTMODE'.
This character was almost never pronounced "escape" on an ITS
system, in TECO, or under TOPS-10 --- always ALT, as in "Type ALT
ALT to end a TECO command" or "ALT U onto the system" (for "log
onto the [ITS] system"). This was probably because ALT is more
convenient to say than "escape", especially when followed by
another ALT or a character (or another ALT *and* a character,
for that matter!).
alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.
Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common Lisp: The Language', by Guy L.
Steele Jr., Digital Press, first edition, 1984, second edition
1990. Strictly speaking, only the first edition is the aluminum
book, since the second edition has a yucky pale green cover. See
also {{book titles}}.
amoeba: /@-mee'b@/ n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga
personal computer.
amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&'
operator.
angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' and `>'
(ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle
brackets used by typographers are actually taller than a less-than
or greater-than sign.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.
AOS: 1. /aws/ (East coast), /ay-os/ (West coast) [based on a PDP-10
increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
something. "Aos the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now
obsolete. See {SOS}. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. 2. A
crufty {Multics}-derived OS supported at one time by Data
General. This was pronounced /ay-oh-ess/ or /ay-os/, the latter
being prevalent internally at DG. A spoof of the standard AOS
system administrator's manual (`How to load and generate your
AOS system') was created, issued a part number, and allegedly
released. It was called `How to goad and levitate your chaos
system'.
Historical note: AOS in sense #1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
one to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may
ask, does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for
`Skip'? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There
were eight such instructions: AOSE added one and then skipped the
next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added one
and then skipped if the result was Greater than zero; AOSN added
one and then skipped if the result was Not zero; AOSA added one and
then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to
skip, so it never skipped. For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add
One and do not Jump'. Even more bizarre, SKIP meant `Do not
SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say
`SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP means `Do not JUMP'. Such were the
perverse mysteries of assembler programming.
app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to 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}.
arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a
group of files using the SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or compatible
program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method
is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression
techniques. See {tar and feather}, {zip}.
arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving
program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System
Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and
trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC
outperformed ARC on both compression and speed while largely
retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type which
could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out
of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are
small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of PKARC was
changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing
suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare
and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better
compression algorithms.
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}, {parm}, {var}.
armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.
asbestos: adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect
one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos
longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more
generally.
asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer}
so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made,
and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been
nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as
to the intended application of the cork should consult the
etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a
select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn
this dubious dignity --- but there's no agreement on *which*
few.
asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET}
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
{flamage}. Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat',
etc.
ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
/as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including one version of ASCII) used fewer. This change
allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters, a major {win} --- but
it did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms
not used in English (such as the German esszett and the ae-ligature
used in Norwegian and some other languages). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how.
Common jargon names for ASCII characters are collected here. See
individual entries for {bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques},
{semi}, {shriek}, {splat}, {twiddle}, {what}, 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, common names are given in rough order of popularity
followed by names which are reported but rarely seen; official
ANSI/CCITT names are parenthesized. Square brackets mark
the particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}.
`!'
Common: {bang}, pling, excl, shriek, (exclamation mark).
Rare: factorial, exclam, smash, cuss, boing, yell, wow, hey,
wham, [spot-spark], soldier.
`"'
Common: double quote, quote. Rare: literal mark,
double-glitch, (quotation marks), (dieresis), dirk,
[rabbit-ears].
`#'
Common: (number sign), pound, pound sign, hash, sharp,
{crunch}, hex, [mesh], octothorpe. Rare: flash, crosshatch,
grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, thud, {splat}.
`$'
Common: dollar, (dollar sign). Rare: currency symbol, buck,
cash, string (from BASIC), escape (from {TOPS-10}), ding,
cache, [big money].
`%'
Common: percent, (percent sign), mod, grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
`&'
Common: (ampersand), amper, and. Rare: address (from C),
reference (from C++), andpersand, bitand, background (from
`sh(1)'), pretzel, amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand';
what could be sillier?]
`''
Common: single quote, quote, (apostrophe). Rare: prime,
glitch, tick, irk, pop, [spark], (closing single quotation
mark), (acute accent).
`()'
Common: left/right paren, left/right parenthesis, left/right,
paren/thesis, open/close paren, open/close, open/close
parenthesis, left/right banana. Rare: lparen/rparen,
so/already, [wax/wane], (opening/closing parenthesis),
left/right ear, parenthisey/unparenthisey, open/close round
bracket.
`*'
Common: star, {splat}, (asterisk). Rare: wildcard, gear,
dingle, mult, spider, aster, times, twinkle, glob (see
{glob}), {Nathan Hale}. [INTERCAL called this `splat']
`+'
Common: (plus), add. Rare: cross, [intersection].
`,'
Common: (comma). Rare: (cedilla), [tail].
`-'
Common: dash, (hyphen), (minus). Rare: [worm], option, dak,
bithorpe.
`.'
Common: dot, point, (period), (decimal point). Rare: radix
point, full stop, [spot].
`/'
Common: slash, stroke, (slant), forward slash. Rare:
diagonal, solidus, over, slak, virgule, [slat].
`:'
Common: (colon). Rare: [two-spot].
`;'
Common: (semicolon), semi. Rare: weenie, [hybrid].
`<>'
Common: (less/greater than), left/right angle bracket,
bra/ket, left/right broket. Rare: from/{into,towards}, read
from/write to, suck/blow, comes-from/gozinta, in/out,
crunch/zap (all from UNIX), [angle/right angle].
`='
Common: (equals), gets. Rare: quadrathorpe, [half-mesh].
`?'
Common: query, (question mark), {ques}. Rare: whatmark,
[what], wildchar, huh, hook, buttonhook, hunchback.
`@'
Common: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl,
[whirlpool], cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage,
(commercial at).
`V'
Rare: vee, [book].
`[]'
Common: left/right square bracket, (opening/closing bracket),
bracket/unbracket, left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare,
[U turn/U turn back].
`\'
Common: backslash, escape (from C/UNIX), reverse slash, slosh,
backslant. Rare: bash, backwhack, (reverse slant), reversed
virgule, [backslat].
`^'
Common: hat, control, uparrow, caret, (circumflex). Rare:
chevron, [shark (or shark-fin)], to the (`to the power of'),
fang.
`_'
Common: (underline), underscore, underbar, under. Rare:
score, backarrow (from the ASCII-1963 graphic), [flatworm].
``'
Common: backquote, left quote, left single quote, open quote,
(grave accent), grave. Rare: backprime, [backspark],
unapostrophe, birk, blugle, back tick, back glitch, push,
(opening single quotation mark), quasiquote.
`{}'
Common: open/close brace, left/right brace, left/right
squiggly, left/right squiggly bracket/brace, left/right curly
bracket/brace, (opening/closing brace). Rare: brace/unbrace,
left/right squirrelly, curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit,
[embrace/bracelet].
`|'
Common: bar, or, or-bar, v-bar, pipe. Rare: vertical bar,
(vertical line), gozinta, thru, pipesinta (last three ones
from UNIX), [spike].
`~'
Common: (tilde), squiggle, {twiddle}, not. Rare: approx,
wiggle, swung dash, enyay, [sqiggle (sic)].
The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S. but
a bad idea; {{Commonwealth Hackish}} has its own rather more apposite
use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound
graphic happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes call `#'
on a US-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error).
The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of
using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading.
The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the U.S.
Also note that the `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not
quite the same as tilde in typeset material
but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle
brackets}).
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#',
`$', `>', and `&' chars, for example, are all
pronounced "hex" in different communities because various
assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in
particular, `$' in the 6502 world, `>' at Texas
Instruments, and `&' on the Sinclair and some other Z80
machines).
The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the
world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits
look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of
international networks continues to increase (See {software
rot}). The assumption, which continues to be embedded in hardware
and software from the US, that ASCII is the *universal*
character set, is a now a major irritant to people who want to use
a character set suited to their own language.
attoparsec: n. `atto-' is the official SI prefix for
multiplication by 10 ^ -18, a parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26
light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26e-18 light years, or about
3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/{microfortnight} equals about 1
inch/sec). This unit is reported to be in use (though probably not
very seriously) among hackers in Great Britain. See {micro-}
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: 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language developed by
Aho, Weinberg, and Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It
is 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. n.
Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal
regular expression facilities. 3. vt. To process data using
`awk(1)'.
= B =
=====
back door: n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in
place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not
always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of
the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service
or the vendor's maintenance programmers.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known.
The infamous RTM worm of late 1988, for example, used a back door
in the {BSD} UNIX `sendmail(8)' utility.
Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the
existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have
qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time.
The binaries of the C compiler had code in them which would
automatically patch itself into the output executable whenever the
compiler itself was being recompiled, and also patch the
`login' command, when *it* was being recompiled, to
accept a password that gave Thompson entry to the computer whether
or not an account had been created for him! Thompson describes
this hack as a {Trojan horse}. This talk was published as
`Reflections on Trusting Trust', Communications of the ACM
27,8 (August 1984) pp. 761-763. Although Thompson didn't say
whether the hacked version ever made it off site, it is commonly
believed that this back door was in fact propagated through
hundreds of machines without any clue to it ever showing up in
source.
Syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also
{iron box}, {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}.
backbone cabal: n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed
through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {USENET}
during most of the 1980s. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late
1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the net hardly noticed.
backbone site: n. A key USENET and email site; one which processes
a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it's the home
site of any of the regional coordinators for the USENET maps.
Notable backbone sites as of early 1991 include `uunet' and the
mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western
Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of
Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.
backgammon:: See {bignum}, {moby}, and {pseudoprime}.
background: n.,adj. 1. [techspeak] A task running in background
is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often
running at a lower priority); oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this
term is primarily associated with {UNIX}, but it appears first to
have been used in this sense on OS/360. 2. 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.
Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or
in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' which
connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity.
Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they've
queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often
fruitfully take when encountering an obstacle in creative work).
Compare {amp off}, {slopsucker}.
backspace and overstrike: interj. Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest
that someone just said or did something wrong. Common among
APL programmers.
backward combatability: /bak'w@rd k@m-bat'@-bil'@-tee/ [corruption
of "backward compatibility"] adj. A property pertaining to
hardware or software in which all previous protocols, formats, and
layouts are discarded in favor of the `new and improved'
protocols, formats, and layouts. Occurs usually when making the
transition between major releases. When the change is so drastic
that the old formats are not retained in the new version, it is
said to be `backward combatable'. See {flag day}.
BAD: [IBM; acronym, Broken As Designed] adj. Said of a program
which is {bogus} due to bad design and misfeatures rather than
due to bugginess. See {working as designed}.
Bad Thing: [from the 1962 Sellars & Yeatman parody `1066 and
All That'] 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}. British correspondents confirm
that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right
Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the
etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings, but Bad
Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the
British side of the pond.
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. adj. `bagbiting'
Having the quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't
let me compute the factorial of a negative number." Compare
{losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under
{barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}). 4. `bite
the bag' vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing
every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting
the bag." The original loading of these terms was almost
undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in
their current usage they have become almost completely sanitized.
bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound made
by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's
vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD})
electronic fora when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance
or exit. 2. The sound of magical transformation, used in virtual
reality fora like sense #1. 3. [from `Don Washington's
Survival Guide'] n. Acronym for `Bad-Ass Mother Fucker', used to
refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters on an LPMUD or
similar MUD.
banana label: n. The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape}
reels, so called because they're shaped roughly like blunt-ended
bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current
but visibly headed for obsolescence.
banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I
know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not
knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare
{fencepost error}). One may say there is a banana problem of an
algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions,
or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing
to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping
featuritis}). See also item 176 under {HAKMEM}.
bandwidth: n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical
meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer,
person or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing
graphics but I missed some of the detail --- not enough bandwidth,
I guess." 2. Attention span. 3. 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 #b0100001),
especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken
hackish. In elder days this was considered a CMUish usage, with
MIT and Stanford hackers preferring {excl} or {shriek}; but the
spread of UNIX has carried {bang} with it (esp. via the term
{bang path}) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name
for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic
written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang"
(except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to
specify the exact characters `FOO!', one would speak "Eff oh oh
bang". See {shriek}, {{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation
signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The
dynamite has cleared out my brain!". Often used to acknowledge
that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has
been called on it.
bang 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'.
In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers
became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses
using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from
*several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent
might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example:
...!{seismo, ut-sally, gatech}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths
of 8 to ten hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late night dial-up
uucp links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths
were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as
messages would often get lost. See {{Internet address}},
{network, the}, and {sitename}.
banner: n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print
spoolers see {spool}. Typically includes user or account ID
information in very large character-graphics capitals. 2. A
similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold
paper) from user-specified text, e.g. by a program such as UNIX's
`banner([16])'. 3. On interactive software, a first screen
containing a logo and/or author credits and/or copyright notice.
bar: /bar/ n. 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after {foo}
and before {baz}. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR.
FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to {foo} to produce
{foobar}.
bare metal: n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such
snares and delusions as an {operating system}, {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 such as overlapping instructions
(or, as in the famous case described in Appendix A, interleaving of
opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the
device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less
common as the relative costs of programming time and machine
resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained
environments like industrial embedded systems. See {real
programmer}.
In the personal computing world, bare metal programming (especially
in sense #1 but sometimes also in sense #2) is often considered a
{Good Thing}, or at least a necessary thing (because these
machines have frequently been sufficiently slow and poorly designed
to make it necessary; see {ill-behaved}). There, the term
usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS interface and writing
the application to directly access device registers and machine
addresses. "To get 19.2 on the serial port, you need to get down
to the bare metal." People who can do this sort of thing held in
high regard.
barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj.
Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the
Valspeak `gag me with a spoon' (Like, euwww!). See {bletch}. 2.
To say "Barf!" or emit some similar expression of disgust. "I
showed him my latest hack and he barfed" means only that he
complained about it, not that he literally vomited. 3. vi. To fail
to work because of unacceptable input. May mean to give an error
message. Examples: "The division operation barfs if you try to
divide by 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." See
{choke}, {gag}. Note that in Commonwealth hackish, `barf' is
generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'. {barf} is sometimes also
used as a metasyntactic variable like {foo} or {bar}.
barfulation: interj. Variation of {barf} used around the Stanford
area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some
particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote
this, Quux?"
barfulous: adj. (also `barfucious') Said of something which would
make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.
baroque: adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on
excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has
many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is
less extreme and not pejorative in itself. See also {rococo}.
BartleMUD: /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs which are derived from
the original MUD game (see {MUD}) or use the same software
drivers. BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat)
humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object
descriptions, so a player is likely to come across `brand172', for
instance (see {brand brand brand}). Some mudders intensely
dislike Bartle and this term, preferring to speak of `MUD-1'.
batch: adj. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more
loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in
particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare
it to receive non-interactive command input are often referred to
as `batch mode' switches. A `batch file' is a series of
instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running
in batch mode.
bathtub curve: n. Common term for the curve (resembling an
end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs)
that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time:
initially high, dropping to near zero for most of the system's
lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'. See also {burn-in
period}, {infant mortality}.
baud: /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per
second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousand bits per second. The
technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides
with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or stop
bits. Hackers are generally aware of these nuances but blithely
ignore them.
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/ [Stanford corruption of {bar}] n. 1. The third
metasyntactic variable, after {foo} and {bar} and before
{quux} (or, occasionally, `qux'). "Suppose we have three
functions FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which calls
BAZ...." 2. interj. A 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'.
bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1.
Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems
running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET
{newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup generally
marks one either as a {newbie} fresh in from the BBS world or as
a real old-timer pedating USENET). 2. At CMU and other colleges
with similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin
boards. 3. The term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to
refer to a old-fashioned, non-electronic cork memo board. At CMU,
it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge.
In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the
name of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or
`market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read
bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in [at CMU] "Don't
post for-sale ads on general".
BBS: [acronym, Bulletin Board System] n. An electronic bulletin
board system; that is, a message database where people can log in
and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into
topic areas. Thousands of local BBS systems are in operation
throughout the U.S., typically run by amateurs for fun out of their
homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Fans of
USENET and Internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards like
CompuServe or GEnie tend to consider local BBSes the `low-rent
district' of the hacker culture, but they serve a valuable function
by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the
personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange code
at all.
beam: [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To
transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in
combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to
his site'. Compare {blast}, {snarf}, {BLT}.
beep: n.,v. Syn. {feep}. This term seems to be preferred among micro
hobbyists.
beige toaster: n. A Macintosh. See {toaster}; compare
{Macintrash}, {maggotbox}.
bells and whistles: [by analogy with steam calliopes] 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.
bells, whistles, and gongs: n. A standard elaborated form of
{bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic
accent on the `gongs'.
benchmark: [techspeak] n. An inaccurate measure of computer
performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of
lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include
Whetstone, Dhrystone, the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see
{gabriel}), Rhealstone (see {h}) and LINPACK. See also
{machoflops}, {MIPS}.
Berkeley Quality Software: adj. (often abbreviated `BQS') Term used
in a pejorative sense to refer to software which was apparently
created by rather spaced-out hackers late at night to solve some
unique problem. It usually has nonexistent, incomplete, or
incorrect documentation, has been tested on at least two examples,
and usually core dumps when anyone else attempts to use it. This
term was frequently applied to early versions of the `dbx(1)'
debugger. See also {Berzerkeley}.
berklix: /ber'kliks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `Berkeley UNIX'] See
{BSD}. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more common among
{suit}s attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers,
who usually just say `BSD'.
berserking: vi. A {MUD} term meaning to gain points *only*
by killing other players and mobiles (non-player characters).
Hence a Berserker-Wizard is a player character that has achieved
enough points to become a wizard, but only by killing other
characters. Berserking is sometimes frowned upon because of its
inherently antisocial nature, but some MUDs have a `berserker
mode' in which a player becomes *permanently* berserk, can
never flee out of a fight, cannot use magic, gets no score for
treasure, but *does* get double kill points. "Berserker
wizards can seriously damage your elf!"
Berzerkeley: [from "berserk"] /b@r-zer'klee/ [from the name of a
now-deceased record label] n. Humorous distortion of `Berkeley'
used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the {BSD} UNIX
hackers. See {software bloat}, {Missed'em-five}, {Berkeley
Quality Software}.
beta: /be't@/, /bay't@/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't@/ n. 1. In the
{Real World}, software often goes through two stages of testing:
Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Software is said to be
`in beta'. 2. Anything that is new and experimental is in
beta. "His girlfriend is in beta." 3. Beta software is
notoriously buggy, so `in beta' connotes flakiness.
Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a
pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software
by making it available to selected customers and users. This term
derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints,
first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry.
`Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta
Test' was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier
A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and
manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design
and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the
engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test
(corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early
samples of the production design.
BFI: n. See {brute force and ignorance}. Also encountered in the
variant `BFMI', `brute force and *massive* ignorance'.
bible: n. 1. One of a small number of fundamental source books
such as {Knuth} and {K&R}. 2. The most detailed and
authoritative reference for a particular language, operating
system, or other complex software system.
BiCapitalization: adj. The act said to have been performed on
trademarks such as NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TKsolver,
EasyWriter and others which have been raised above the hoi polloi
of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many
{marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even
the 2,317th time they do it. Compare {studlycaps}.
BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the
prototypical {newbie}. Articles from BIFF are characterized by
all 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!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode}
abbreviations, a long {sig block} (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.
biff: /bif/ vt. To notify someone of incoming mail; from the BSD
utility `biff(1)' which was in turn named after the
implementor's dog; it barked whenever the mailman came.
Big Grey Wall: n. What greets a {VMS} user searching for
documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation
taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before adding layered
products such as compilers, databases, multivendor networking,
programming tools, etc. Recent (since VMS V5) DEC documentation
comes with grey binders; under VMS V4 the binders were orange
(`big orange wall'), and under V3 they were blue. See {VMS}.
big iron: n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally
of {number-crunching} supercomputers such as Crays, but can include
more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of
approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose {dinosaur}.
Big Red Switch: [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the
`Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch
on an IBM-PC where it really is large and red. "This !@%$%
{bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch."
Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's passion for
{TLA}s, this is often acronymized as `BRS' (this has also
become established on FidoNet and in the PC {clone} world). It
is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually
fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on
more recent machines physically drop a block into place so that
they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them,
especially inappropriately (see also {molly-guard}). Compare
{power cycle}, {three-finger salute}.
big win: n. Serendipity. To `win big' is to experience
serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a
two-for-one sale." See {win}.
big-endian: [From Swift's `Gulliver's Travels' via a famous
paper `On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace' by Danny Cohen,
USC/ISI IEN 137 dated 1 April 1980] 1. adj. Describes a computer
architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric
representation, the most significant byte comes first (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 mid-1991 are
big-endian. See {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI
problem}. 2. adj. An {{Internet address}} the wrong way round.
Most of the world follows the Internet standard and writes email
addresses starting with the name of the computer and ending up with
the name of the country. In the UK the Joint Networking Team
decided to do it the other way round; e.g. `me@uk.ac.wigan.cs'.
Most gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in their mailers to handle
this, but can still be confused. In particular the address above
could be in the UK (code `uk') or Czechoslovakia (code `cs').
bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MacLISP] n. 1. [techspeak] A
multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers.
More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at
the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!" 2.
[Stanford] n. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice are called
`bignums', especially a roll of double fives or double sixes.
See also {El Camino Bignum}.
Sense #1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages
provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer integers
are usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than
2 ^ 31 (2,147,483,648) or (on a losing {bitty box}) 2 ^ 15
(32,768). If you want to work with numbers larger than that, you
have to use floating-point numbers, which are usually accurate to
only six or seven decimal places. Computer languages that provide
bignums can perform exact calculations on very large numbers, such
as 1000! (the factorial of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998
times ... times 2 times 1). For example, this value for 1000!
was computed by the MacLISP system using bignums:
40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000.
bigot: n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular
computer, language, operating system, editor or other tool (see
{religious issues}). Usually found with a specifier; thus,
`cray bigot', `APL bigot', `VMS bigot', `EMACS
bigot'. True bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or
zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even
when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to
obsolesce the favored tool. It is said "You can tell a bigot, but
you can't tell him much." Compare {weenie}.
bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `binary digit'] n. 1.
[techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes
are equally probable 2. [techspeak] A computational quantity that
can take on one of two values, such as true and false, or 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.)
"I just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating that
you intend only a short interruption for a question which can
presumably be answered with a yes or no.
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. See also {flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}.
bit bang: n. Transmission of data on a serial line, when 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 Z80 micros with a
Zilog PIO but no SIO). The technique is a simple loop with eight
OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte. Input is more
interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the same
time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {wannabee}s.
bit bashing: n. (also, `bit diddling' or `bit twiddling') Term
used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming
characterized by manipulation of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble} and other
smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data: these include
low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and
error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics
programming (see {bitblt}), and assembler/compiler code generation.
May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more
usually the former). "The command decoding for the new tape
driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control
registers still has bugs." See also {bit bang}, {mode bit}.
bit bucket: n. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical
receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a
register during a shift instruction). Data that is discarded,
lost, or destroyed is said to `go to the bit bucket'. On {UNIX},
often used for {/dev/null}. 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. This appears to have been a
mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about which the same
legend was current; old-time hackers also report that trainees used
to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was
actually pulling them "out of the bit box". See also {chad box},
{null device}.
bit decay: n. See {bit rot}. People with a physics background
tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. See
also {computron}, {quantum bogodynamics}.
bit rot: n. Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence
of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs
or features will often stop working after sufficient time has
passed, even if `nothing has changed'. The theory explains that
bits decay as if they were radioactive. As time passes, the
contents of a file or the code in a program will become
increasingly garbled.
There actually are physical processes that produce such effects
(alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip
packages, for example, can change the contents of a computer memory
unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can
corrupt files in mass storage) but they are quite rare (and
computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate
for them). The notion long favored among hackers that {cosmic
rays} are among the causes of such events turns out however to be a
myth; see the {cosmic rays} entry.
The term {software rot} is almost synonymous.
bit-paired keyboard: n. obs. A non-standard keyboard layout which
seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained
common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33
was a mechanical device (see {EOU}), so the only way to generate
the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage.
The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic
pattern which could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or
CTRL key were pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of
a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group
characters which shared the same basic bit pattern on one key.
Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:
3 high 4 low bits
bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001
010 space ! " # $ % & ' ( )
011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
That's why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a
Teletype. This was *not* the weirdest variant of the
{QWERTY} layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should
probably go to one of the (differing) arrangements on IBM's even
clunkier 026 and 029 card punches.
When electronic terminals became popular in the early 1970s there
was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be
laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard,
while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make
their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives
became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To
a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and
because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type,
there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt
keyboards to the typewriter standard.
The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale
introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office
environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use
the equipment. The `typewriter-paired' standard became universal,
`bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty
corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a 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}. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
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 have only a photocopy
of the Jargon File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?".
See {softcopy}, {source of all good bits}.
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, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. Pejorative.
More generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see {Get a real
computer!}). See also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}.
bixie: /biks'ee/ n. Variant {emoticon}s used on BIX (the Byte
Information Exchange). The `smiley' bixie is <@_@>, apparently
intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others
have been reported.
black art: n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by
implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular
application or systems area. VLSI design and compiler code
optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples
of black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and
once standard textbooks had been written became merely {heavy
wizardry}. The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels
for spreading around new computer-related technologies during the
last twenty years has made both the term `black art' and what it
describes less common than formerly. See also {voodoo
programming}.
black hole: n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears
mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is,
without returning a {bounce message}) it is commonly said to have
"fallen into a black hole". 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 (see
{drop on the floor}). The implied metaphor of email as
interstellar travel is interesting in itself. Compare {bit
bucket}.
blast: 1. vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data
sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage:
uncommon. The variant `blat' has been reported. 2. vt.
[HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense #3). Sometimes the
message "Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?" would
appear in the command window upon logout.
blazer: n. (also `'blazer') 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, poss.
via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj. Term of disgust.
Often in "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.
bletcherous: /blech'@-rus/ adj. Disgusting in design or function;
esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people.
"This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very
well, or are misplaced). See {losing}, {cretinous}, {bagbiter},
{bogus}, and {random}. {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of
the thing so described; similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast,
something that is {losing} or {cretinous} 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 computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. 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
entirety 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 watchen 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, some of which
actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'. It is reported, by
the way, that an analogous travesty in mangled English is posted in
German computer laboratories.
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 {blit}s it all back
down again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast},
{snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation (such as
toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2.
All-capitalized as `BLIT': An early experimental bit-mapped
terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as
the AT&T 5620. The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent
Terminal' is incorrect.
blitter: n. A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to
perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of
bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros
have these, but in 1991 the trend is away from them (however, see
{cycle of reincarnation}).
blivet: [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten
pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable
problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware which can't be fixed or
replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so
many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable
tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development
effort.
This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; in
particular, among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of
various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose
(similar to hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to
describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a
three-pronged fork which appears to depict a three-dimensional
object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an
impossible way.
block: [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi.
To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're blocking
until everyone gets here." Compare {busy-wait}. 2. `block
on' vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked on
Phil's arrival."
block transfer computations: n. From the 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 an EPROM: v. To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with
an embedded system. This term arises because the programming
process involves intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the
chip.
blow away: vt. To remove files and directories from permanent 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: vt. To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The server blew
past the 5K reserve buffer."
blow up: vi. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests
that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon
overflow or at least go {nonlinear}.
BLT: /bee ell tee/, /bl@t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. Synonym
for {blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the
ancestor of {bitblt}. In these versions the usage has outlasted
the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT}
derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always
means `Branch if Less Than zero'.
Blue Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
references on the page-layout and graphics-control language
PostScript (`PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook', Adobe
Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN 0-201-10179-3);
the other two official guides are known as the {Green Book} and
{Red Book}. 2. Informal name for one of the three standard
references on Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its
Implementation', David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64,
ISBN 0-201-11371-63 (this is also associated with green and red
books). 3. Any of the 1988 standards issues by the CCITT 9th
plenary assembly. Until now, they have changed color each review
cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1992 would be {Green Book}); however,
it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before
1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and
the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book titles}}.
Blue Glue: [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture) an
incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} protocol suite widely
favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The
official IBM definition is "That which binds blue boxes
together." See {fear and loathing}. It may not be irrelevant
that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M product that is
commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable
panel floors so common in computer installations. A correspondent
at U. Minn. reports that the CS dept. there has about 80 bottles of
Blue Glue hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to
be done as `using the blue glue'.
blue goo: n. Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray
goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back
into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and to promote truth,
justice, and the American way, etc., etc. See {{nanotechnology}}.
BNF: /bee-en-ef/ n. 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur
Form', a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of
programming languages, command sets and the like. Widely used for
language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it
must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider
this BNF for a postal address:
<postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part>
<name-part> ::= <first-name> [<middle-part>] <last-name> <EOL>
<middle-part> ::= <middle-name> | <middle-initial> "."
<street-address> ::= [<apt>] <street-number> <street-name> <EOL>
<zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <zip-code> <EOL>
This translates into English as: A postal-address consists of a
name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a
zip-code part. A 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 somewhere
nearby. See also {parse}.
A major reason BNF is listed here is that the term is also used
loosely for any number of variants and extensions, possibly
containing some or all of the {glob} wildcards. In fact the
example above isn't the pure form invented for the Algol-60 report;
it uses [], which was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/1
definition but is now universally recognized.
2. In {{Science-Fiction Fandom}}, BNF expands to `Big Name Fan'
(someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan started handing out
black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions. This confused the
hacker contingent terribly.
boa: [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor
in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a
ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and
flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is rumored
within IBM that 370 channel cables are limited to 200 feet because
beyond that length the boas get dangerous ... and it is worth
noting that one of the major cable makers uses the trademark
`Anaconda'.
board: n. 1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used
even for USENET newsgroups. 2. An electronic circuit board
(compare {card}).
boat anchor: n. 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that the
offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. 2. Also used
of people who just take up space.
bogo-sort: n. The archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as
opposed to {bubble sort}, which is merely the generic *bad*
algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to throwing a deck of cards in
the air, picking them up, then testing whether they are in order.
If not, repeat. Used as a sort of canonical example of awfulness.
Usage: when one is looking at a program and sees a dumb algorithm,
one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare
{bogus}, {brute force}.
bogometer: n. See {bogosity}. Compare the `wankometer' described
in the {wank} entry.
bogon: /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas
Adams's `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 synecdoche, used to refer to any
bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got
to go to the weekly staff bogon." 5. A person who is bogus or who
says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but
has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1-4.
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}. 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.". More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer."
means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it
is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest
possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my
bogometer."). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat
(uL). The consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for
everyday use. 2. The potential field generated by a bogon flux;
see {quantum bogodynamics}.
[Historical note: microLenat was invented as a attack against noted
computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate student}.
Doug had failed him on the AI Qual after the student gave "AI is
bogus" as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally
considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless.
Some of Doug's friends argue that `of course' a microLenat is
bogus, since it's only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have
suggested that the unit should be re-designated after the grad
student, as the microReid.]
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' jargon rather than a self-conscious
joke in jargon about jargon.
bogue out: /bohg owt/ vi. To become bogus, suddenly and
unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked
him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but
{flame} afterwards."
bogus: adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches
are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3.
False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That
algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved
the halting problem for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus."
6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." Astrology is bogus.
So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who
makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem.
(This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of
{random}.)
It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense
at Princeton, in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by
Michal Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus
words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see
{autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into
hackerdom from CMU and MIT. By the early 1980s, it was also
current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen
slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent at
Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on
British nerves; in Britain the word means rather specifically
`counterfeit' as in "a bogus 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, perh. from the TV series
`Moonlighting'] 1. To have sex with; compare {bounce},
sense #3. (This is mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the
variant `bonk' is more common. 2. After the original Peter
Korn `Boinkon' {USENET} parties, used for almost any net social
gathering, e.g. Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in
1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks,
Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Compare {@-party}.
bomb: 1. v. General synonym for {crash} (sense #1), esp. used
of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K
stack, it'll bomb out." 2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh
equivalents of a UNIX `panic' or Amiga {guru} (sense 2),
where icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are
displayed indicating the system has died. On the Mac, this may be
accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number
indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga GURU MEDITATION
number (see {guru}). {MS-DOS} machines tend to get {locked
up} in this situation.
bondage-and-discipline language: A language such as Pascal, Ada,
APL, or Prolog that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed
so as to enforce an author's theory of `right programming' even
though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking
or even vanilla general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated
`B&D'; thus, one may speak of things "having the B&D nature", etc.
See {{Pascal}}; oppose {languages of choice}.
bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. In the {MUD} community, it has
become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the
offending person. There is a convention that one should
acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and a myth to the effect that
failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much
trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special
commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk mode},
{posing}.
book titles:: There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally
tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the
dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous
feature of the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon
under their own entries.
See also {Blue Book}, {Red Book}, {Green Book}, {Silver
Book}, {Purple Book}, {Orange Book}, {White Book}, {Yellow
Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Aluminum Book}, {Dragon Book},
{Wizard Book}, {Cinderella Book}.
boot: [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] v.,n. To load and
initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no
longer jargon but has given rise to some derivatives which still
are.
The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been
down for long, even that the boot is a {bounce} intended to clear
some state of {wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of human
thought processes, as in the following exchange: "You've lost
me." "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).
Another variant: `soft boot', re-initialization of only part of a
system, under control of other software that's still running: "If
you're running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will
cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the
system running."
Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility
towards or frustration with the machine being booted. "I'll have
to hard-boot this losing Sun" or "I recommend booting it hard."
Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short
program which was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in
from the front panel switches. This program was always very short
(great efforts were expended on making it short in order to
minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in),
but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex
program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it
handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the
application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk
drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up
by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the
bootstrap is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first
stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot
block'. When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to
load the actual OS and hand control over to it.
bottom-up implementation: n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term
`top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most
programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels
of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in
increasing detail until you get to actual code. Hackers often find
(especially in exploratory designs which cannot be closely
specified in advance) that it works best to `build' things in
the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive
operations and then knitting them together.
bounce: v. 1. [UNIX, perhaps from the image of a thrown ball
bouncing off a wall] 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. from the expression `bouncing the mattress', but
influenced by Piglet's psychosexually loaded "Bounce on me too,
Tigger!" from the Winnie-the-Pooh books. Compare {boink}. 4.
To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient
problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [IBM] To
{power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it.
bounce message: [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by
a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet address}}
recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}).
Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a
down relay site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with
occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}.
The collective `bounce mail' is also common.
box: n. 1. [within IBM] A computer; esp. in the construction "foo
box" where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or
the name of an OS (thus, `UNIX box', `MS-DOS box', etc. 2.
Without qualification but within an SNA-using site (see {Blue
Glue}), this refers specifically to an IBM front-end processor or
FEP /eff-ee-pee/. An FEP is a small computer necessary to enable
an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of the
{dinosaur pen}. Typically used in expressions like the cry that
goes up when an SNA network goes down, "Looks like the {box} has
fallen over." (see {fall over}.) See also {IBM}, {fear and
loathing}, {Blue Glue}.
boxed comments: n. Comments (explanatory notes in code) which occupy
several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler and C
code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something like
this:
/*************************************************
*
* This is a boxed comment in C style
*
*************************************************/
Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column two or
add a matching row of asterisks closing the right end of the box.
The sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters at
the extreme left; the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged
comments}.
boxen: /bok'sn/ [by analogy with {VAXen}] pl.n. Fanciful plural of
{box} often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen', used to
describe commodity {UNIX} hardware. The connotation is that any
two UNIX boxen are interchangeable.
boxology: /bok-sol'@-jee/ n. 1. The fine art of drawing diagrams
using the `box' characters (mainly, `|', `-', and
`+') in ASCII-monospace fonts. Also known as `character
graphics' or `ASCII graphics'. 2. Boxological drawings.
"His report has a lot of boxology in it". Compare {macrology}.
BQS: adj. Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.
brain dump: n. The act of telling someone everything one knows
about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone
is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually
analogous to an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a
lot of useful {state} before an exit. Example: "You'll have to
give me a brain dump on FOOBAR, before you start your new job at
HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense #4). At Sun, this is also
known as `TOI' (transfer of information).
brain-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}.
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 {jump off into
never-never land}, {hyperspace}.
brand brand brand: n. Humorous catch-phrase from {BartleMUD}s, in which
players were described carrying a list of objects, the most
common of which would usually be a brand. Often used as a joke
in {talk mode} as in "Fred the wizard is here, carrying brand
ruby brand brand brand kettle broadsword flamethrower". Prob.
influenced by the infamous Monty Python `Spam' skit.
break: 1. vt. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your
latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. v.
(of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The
place where it stops is a "breakpoint". 3. [techspeak] vi. To
send an RS-232 break (125 msec. of line high) over a serial comm
line. 4. [UNIX] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the
tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally break
(sense 3) or delete does this.
breakage: 1. Brokenness and the consequent mess. 2. [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.
breath-of-life packet: [Xerox PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that
contained bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working
computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the
network that had happened to crash. The machines had hardware or
firmware that would wait for such a packet after a catastrophic
error.
bring X to its knees: v. Of a machine, operating system, piece of
software, or algorithm; to present it with a load so extreme or
pathological that it grinds virtually to a halt. "To bring a
MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} --- or four
running {EMACS}." Compare {hog}.
brittle: adj. Said of software that's functional but easily broken
by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any
minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system which
responds inappropriately and disastrously to expected external
stimuli, e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a
power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to
describe the results of a research effort that were never intended
to be robust, but 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. See {network
meltdown}.
broken: adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving
strangely; especially, (when used of people) exhibiting extreme
depression.
broket: /broh'k@t/ or /broh'ket/ [by analogy with `bracket': a
`broken bracket'] n. Either of the characters `<' and
`>', when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This word
originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that
is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and apparently
in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called {angle
brackets}.)
Brooks's Law: prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project
makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the advantage from
splitting work between N programmers is O(N), but the complexity
and communications cost associated with coordinating and then
merging their work is O(N^2). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a
manager of IBMs OS/360 project and author of `The Mythical
Man-Month', an excellent early book on software engineering; the
myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer
time is fungible", and Brooks established conclusively that it is
not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often,
{management} does.
BRS: n. Syn. {Big Red Switch}. This abbreviation is fairly
common on-line.
brute force: adj. Describes a certain kind of primitive programming
style; broadly speaking, one in which the programmer relies on the
computer's processing power instead of using his/her own intelligence to
simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying
naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones.
The {canonical} example of a brute force algorithm is associated
with the `Travelling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical NP-hard
problem: suppose a person is in Boston and wishes to drive to N
other cities. In what order should he/she visit them in order to
minimize the distance travelled? The brute force method is to
simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances;
while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is
clearly very `stupid' in that it considers even obviously absurd
routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New
York, in that order). For small N it works well, but it rapidly
becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N=15, there are
already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for
N=1000...well, see {bignum}). See also {NP-}.
A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding
the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing
program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the
first number off the front.
Note that whether brute-force programming should be considered
stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem isn't too big,
the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less
than the programmer time it would take to develop a more
`intelligent' algorithm. Alternatively, a more intelligent
algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing
than are justified by the speed improvement.
Ken Thompson, co-inventor of UNIX, is reported to have uttered the
epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended
this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original UNIX kernel's
preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over fragile
`smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the
success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software
design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned
cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering
savvy and delicate esthetic judgement.
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."
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 paged virtual memory, 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, ULTRIX,
and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the UNIX world until
AT&T's successful standardization efforts after about 1986, and are
still widely popular. See {UNIX}, {USG UNIX}.
bubble sort: n. Techspeak for a particular sorting technique.
Because it is not very good compared to other methods, and is the
one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers,
hackers consider it the canonical example of a naive algorithm.
The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is
{bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but
any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain-damage or willful
perversity.
bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ [primarily Stanford] n. The bits
produced by the CTRL, META, SUPER, and HYPER shift keys, esp. on a
Stanford or MIT (Knight) keyboard (see {space-cadet keyboard}).
By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any
keyboard, e.g. the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a
Macintosh.
It is rumored that 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 happens when you try to stuff more data
into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be due
to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and
consuming processes (see {overrun}), or because the buffer is
simply too small to hold all the data that needs to accumulate
before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text
processing tool that crunches newline-terminated lines, a short
line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long line
overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. See also
{spam}, {overrun screw}.
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." (i.e., Fred is a good
guy, but he has a few personality problems.)
Some have said this term came from telephone company usage, in
which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines,
but this appears to be an incorrect folk etymology. Admiral Grace
Hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing
{COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a
persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an
actual physical bug out from between the contacts of one of its
relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish
sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to
admit, she was not there when it happened). For many years the
logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question
(a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center;
it now resides in the Smithsonian. The entire story, with a
picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in
the Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 3, Number 3 (July
1981), on pages 285-286.
Interestingly, the text of the log entry (from September 9th,
1945), which reads "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First
actual case of bug being found", seems to establish that the term
was already in use at the time. Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean
an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's
time, and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to
Shakespeare! In the First Edition of Johnson's Dictionary one
meaning of `bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this
is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological
monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been
reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing
games.
In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects.
Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened:
"There is a bug in this ant-farm!"
"What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it."
"That's the bug."
bug-compatible: n. Said of a design or revision the design of which
has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with
{fossil}s or {misfeature}s in other programs or (esp.) previous
releases of itself.
bug-for-bug compatible: n. Same as {bug-compatible}, with the
additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring
that each (known) bug was replicated.
buglix: n. Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX operating
system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions. Still used to
describe ULTRIX but without venom. Compare {HP-SUX}.
bulletproof: adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered
extremely {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly
recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare
and valued quality. Syn. {armor-plated}.
bum: 1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space,
often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more
instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming
the interrupt code." 2. To squeeze out excess; to remove
something in order to improve whatever it was removed from (without
changing function; this distinguishes the process from a
featurectomy). 3. n. A small change to an algorithm, program, or
hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum
makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely
superseded by v. {tune} (and n. {tweak}, {hack}), though none
of these exactly capture sense #2. Note that both these uses are
rare in Commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of
English `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, and index
dummies in `for', `while', and `do-while' 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.
burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems
with {marginal} components before they get out the door; the
theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the
steepest part of the {bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality}).
2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person using a
computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets
basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, sex, etc. See {hack
mode}, {larval stage}.
busy-wait: vi. 1. [techspeak] To wait on an event by {spin}ning
through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on
each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and
continuing execution on another part of the task. A wasteful
technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where a
busy-waiting program may hog the processor. Syn. {spin-lock}.
2. May be used of human behavior to convey that one is busy
waiting for someone or something and that one intends to move
instantly as soon as it shows up (for example, if one is waiting at
the office door of a person in conference); thus that one cannot do
anything else at the moment.
buzz: vi. 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress
and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of
programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program
which is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, 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}; see also
{grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit
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; acronym, Buzz Word Quotient] The
percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly
proportional to {bogosity}. See {TLA}.
by hand: adv. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial
and/or tedious one) which ought to be performed automatically by
the computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously
through. "My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of
the message I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand". Compare
{eyeball search}.
byte:: [techspeak] n. A unit of memory or data equal to the amount
needed to represent one character; usually 8 bits, occasionally 9
(on 36-bit machines). The term originated in 1956 during the early
design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it was
described as one to six bits (typical I/O equipment of the period
used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte
happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and
promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The term `byte'
was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be
accidentally misspelt as {bit}. See also {nybble}.
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). See also {NUXI problem}.
= C =
=====
C: n. 1. The third letter of the Latin alphabet. 2. ASCII
#b1000011. 3. The name of a programming language designed by
Dennis Ritchie during the early 1970s and immediately used to
re-implement {UNIX}. 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 also {languages of choice}, {indent style}.
C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain
varying according to the speaker, as "a language which combines
all the elegance and power of assembly language with the
readability and maintainability of assembly language".
calculator: [Cambridge] n. Syn. for {bitty box}.
can: vt. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the
person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the
{{console}}". Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can
that print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!". Synonymous with
{gun}. It is said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN
(#b0011000) was used as a kill-job character on some early OSs.
canonical: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. The
usual or standard state or manner of something. This word has a
somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. 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
jargon meaning is a relaxation of the technical meaning (this
generalization is actually not confined to hackers, and may be
found throughout academia). Compare {vanilla}.
A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed
some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS
and RMS made a point of using it as much as possible in his
presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one
conversation, he used the word `canonical' in jargon-like fashion
without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking
jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just
used `canonical' in the canonical way."
Of course, canonicality depends on context, but is implicitly
defined as the way *hackers* normally do things. Thus, a
hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious
law" is *not* the canonical meaning of `canonical'.
card: n. 1. An electronic printed-circuit board (see also {tall
card}, {short card}. 2. obs. Syn. {{punched card}}.
card walloper: n. An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs
that do stupid things like print people's paychecks. Compare
{code grinder}. See also {{punched card}}, {eighty-column
mind}.
cargo-cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming
dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that
serve no real purpose. A cargo-cult programmer will usually
explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug
encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the
reason the code avoided the bug were ever fully understood (compare
{shotgun debugging}).
The term cargo-cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that
grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of
these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and
military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of
the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the
war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's
characterization of certain practices as "cargo-cult science" in
his book `Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman' (W. W Norton &
Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
case and paste: [from `cut and paste'] n. 1. The addition of a new
{feature} to an existing system by selecting the code from an
existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes. Common in
telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are
selected using case statements. Leads to {software bloat}.
In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by
Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of
text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere.
The term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting
mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to
integrate the code for two similar cases.
casters-up mode: /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
what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes},
{examining the entrails}; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight
in Appendix A.
cat: [from `catenate' via {UNIX} `cat(1)'] vt. 1.
[techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
output sink without pause. 2. By extension, to dump large
amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of
browsing it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside UNIX
sites. See also {dd}, {BLT}.
Among UNIX-haters, `cat(1)' is considered the {canonical}
example of poor user-interface design. This because it is more
often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to
concatenate two files. The name `cat' for the former
operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}.
catatonic: adj. Describes a condition of suspended animation in
which something is so {wedged} or {hung} 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). Compare {buzz}.
cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from LISP] vt. To skip past the first
item from a list of things (generalized from the LISP operation on
binary tree structures). In the form `cdr down', to trace down
a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage:
silly. See also {loop through}.
Historical note: the instruction format of the IBM 7090 that hosted
the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called
the `address' and `decrement' parts. The term `cdr' was originally
`Contents of Decrement part of Register'. Similarly, `car' stood
for `Contents of Address part of Register'.
The `cdr' and `car' operations have since become bases for
formation of compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls,
for example, a programming project in which strings were
represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character
operations were of course called CHAR and CHDR.
chad: /chad/ n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called
{selvage} and {perf}. 2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched
out of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff', `computer
confetti', and `keypunch droppings'.
Historical note: one correspondent believes `chad' (sense #2)
derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which
cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab
folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was
clear that if the `Chadless' keypunch didn't make them, then the
stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'.
chad box: n. {Iron Age} card punches contained boxes inside them,
about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large
wastebasket), that held the {chad} (squares of paper punched out
of punch cards). You had to open the covers of the card punch
periodically and empty the chad box. The {bit bucket} was
notionally the equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was
typically across the room in another great grey-and-blue box.
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 or successor 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 techspeak, but remains jargon 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 (interactively or on a large piece of paper printed
with hex {runes}) following dynamic data-structures. Only used
in a debugging context.
chemist: [Cambridge] n. Someone who wastes computer time on
{number-crunching} when you'd far rather the machine were doing
something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your
name or printing Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns.
May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.
Chernobyl packet: /cher-noh'b@l pak'@t/ n. A network packet that
induces {network meltdown} (the result of a {broadcast storm}),
in memory of the 1987 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
The typical case of this is an IP Ethergram that passes through a
gateway with both source and destination Ether and IP address set
as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being
gated between. Compare {Christmas tree packet}.
chiclet keyboard: n. A keyboard with small rectangular or
lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of
chewing gum (Chiclet is a brand-name and also the Spanish common
noun for the stuff). Used esp. to describe the original IBM PCjr
keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap,
and a lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using
them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and
chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch
any more.
Chinese Army technique: n. Syn. {Mongolian Hordes technique}.
choke: vt. To reject input, often ungracefully. "I tried building
an {EMACS} binary to use {X}, but `cpp(1)' choked on all
those `#define's." See {barf}, {gag}, {vi}.
chomp: vt. To lose; specifically, to chew on something of which
more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of
teeth. See {bagbiter}. A hand gesture commonly accompanies
this, 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. See {kamikaze packet}, {Chernobyl
packet}.
chug: vi. To run slowly; to {grind} or {grovel}. "The disk is
chugging like crazy."
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,
but they certainly are `pretty' chrome!" Distinguished from
{bells and whistles} by the fact that the latter are usually
added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness.
Church of the Sub-Genius: n. A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism}
launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the
`Reverend' Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for
promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre
imagery and references such as: `Bob' the divine
drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the
Stark Fist of Removal. Much Sub-Genius theory is concerned with
the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of `slack'.
See also {ha ha only serious}.
Cinderella Book: [CMU] n. `Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages, and Computation', by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman,
Addison-Wesley, 1979. So-called because the cover depicts a girl
(putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device
and holding a rope from that device. The back cover depicts the
girl with the Rube Goldberg in shambles after having pulled on the
rope. See also {{book titles}}.
CI$: n. Hackerism for `CIS', Compuserve Information Service. The
dollar refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often
used in {sig block}s just before a CompuServe address.
Classic C: /klas'ik see/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. The C
programming language as defined in the first edition of {K&R},
with some small additions. It is also known as `K&R C'. The
name came into use during the standardization process for C by the
ANSI X3J11 committee. Also `C Classic'. This is sometimes
applied elsewhere: thus, `X Classic' where X = Star Trek (referring
to the original TV series), or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus
machines as opposed to the PS/2 series). This construction is
especially used of product series in which the newer versions are
considered serious losers relative to the older ones.
clean: 1. adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies
`elegance in the small', that is, a design or implementation which
may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is
reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the
outside. The antonym is `grungy' or {crufty}. 2. v. To remove
unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter. "I'm
cleaning up my account", or "I cleaned up the garbage and now have
100 Meg free on that partition".
CLM: /see el em/ [Sun, `Career Limiting Move'] 1. n. An action
endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and
raises, also possibly one's job. "He used a {bubble sort}!
What a CLM!" 2. adj. Denotes extreme severity of a bug,
discovered by a customer and obviously due to poor testing:
"That's a CLM bug!"
clobber: vt. To overwrite; usually unintentionally. As in "I
walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare
{mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash the stack}.
clocks: n. Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally
corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The
relative execution times of instructions on a machine are usually
discussed in clocks rather than absolute fractions of a second.
Compare {cycle}.
clone: n. 1. An exact duplicate, as in "Our product is a clone of
their product." Implies a legal re-implementation from
documentation or by reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower
price. 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 clone'; a PC-BUS/ISA or
EISA-compatible 80x86 based microcomputer (this use is sometimes
spelled `klone' or `PClone'). These invariably have much
more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble. 5.
In the construction `UNIX clone': An OS designed to deliver a
UNIX-lookalike environment sans UNIX license fees, or with
additional `mission-critical' features such as support for
real-time programming. 6. v. To make an exact copy of something.
"Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that paper so I
can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that file before
you {mung} it".
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: [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n. Synonymous with
{evil} --- a weak, verbose, and flabby language used by {card
walloper}s to do boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes.
Hackers believe all COBOL programmers are {suit}s or {code
grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having
learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without
ritual expressions of disgust or horror. See also {fear and
loathing}, {software rot}.
COBOL fingers: /koh'bol fing'grs/ n. Reported from Sweden, a
(hypothetical) disease one might get from programming in COBOL.
The language requires code verbose beyond all reason. 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 would give me COBOL fingers!"
code grinder: n. 1. A {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in
legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement
payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In his
native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to
reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch
optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if
long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It
seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from
hackerdom as you can get and still touch a computer; the term
connotes pity. See {Real World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a
hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability;
connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique,
rule-boundedness, 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 that try to do too much with source code may turn
into codewalkers. As in "This new `vgrind' feature would require a
codewalker to implement."
coefficient of x: n. Hackish speech makes rather heavy use of
pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones
involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index' and
`quotient'. They are often loosely applied to things you
cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle
distinctions between them that convey information about the way the
speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing.
`Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something
for which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical
example is {fudge factor}. It's not important how much you're
fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed.
You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor.
Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two
opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient."
This could also be, "I would have won except for the luck factor",
but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck
overpowering good luck.
`Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply
that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that
can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or
person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less
likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests
that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane
cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a
fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice
between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some
people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus
say "coefficient of bogosity", whereas others might feel it is a
combination of factors and thus say "bogosity index".
cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character,
particularly one 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. After the demise of
the {space-cadet keyboard}, cokebottle faded away as serious
usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe an
(unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be
due for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif window manager,
mwm, has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of
keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not)
`control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). Since the exclamation point
looks a lot like an upside down coke bottle, Motif hackers have
begun referring to this keystroke as cokebottle. See also
{quadruple bucky}.
COME FROM: n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go
to'; COME FROM <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a
sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control
would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement
following the COME FROM. COME FROM was first proposed in a
{Datamation} article of December 1973 (reprinted in the April
1984 issue of Communications of the ACM) that parodied the
then-raging `structured programming' {holy wars} (see
{considered harmful}). Mythically, some variants are the
`assigned come from', and the `computed come from'
(parodying some nasty control constructs in FORTRAN and some
extended BASICs). Obviously, multi-tasking (or non-determinism)
could be implemented by having more than one COME FROM statement
coming from the same label.
In some ways the FORTRAN DO looks like a COME FROM statement.
After the terminating label/CONTINUE is reached, control continues
at the statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs would
allow arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the
label, leading to examples like this
DO 10 I=1,LIMIT
C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the original DO
C statement lost in the spaghetti...
WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)
10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)
in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labelled 10.
While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this
form of COME FROM statement isn't completely general. After all,
control will eventually pass to the following statement. The
implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN,
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. More horrible things had already been perpetrated
in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate
COBOL's `ALTER' verb.
COME FROM 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.
command key: [Mac users] n. The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf
graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower',
`clover', `propellor', or `beanie' (an apparent reference to the
propellor on a beanie). The Mac's equivalent to an {ALT} key.
comm mode: /kom mohd/ [from the ITS feature supporting on-line
chat, spelled with one or two Ms] Syn. for {talk mode}; also
spelled `com mode'.
comment out: vt. To surround a section of code with comment
delimiters or to prefix every line in the section with a comment
marker; this prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. Often
done when the code is redundant or obsolete, but you want to leave
it in the source to make the intent of the active code clearer;
also when the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass
it in order to debug some other part of the code. Compare
{condition out}, usually the preferred technique in languages
(like {C}) that make it possible.
Commonwealth Hackish:: n. Hacker jargon as spoken outside the
U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that
Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce `char', `soc',
etc. as spelled (/char/, /sok/) as opposed to American /keir/ or
/sohsh/. Dots in {newsgroup} names tend to be pronounced more
often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wi'bble/ rather than /sohsh
wib'ble/). The prefix {meta} may be pronounced /mee't@-/;
similarly, Greek letter beta is often /bee't@/, zeta is often
/zee't@/ and so forth. Preferred metasyntactic variables include
EEK, OOK, FRODO, and BILBO; WIBBLE, WOBBLE, and in emergencies
WUBBLE; BANANA, WOMBAT, FROG, {fish}, and so on and on (see
{foo}, sense #4).
Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama',
`frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy) and `city' (as in "barf
city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note
that the American terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (),
[], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers
`brackets', `square brackets', and `curly brackets'. Also, the
use of `pling' for {bang} is common outside the United States.
See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console
jockey}, {fish}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal},
{leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {noddy},
{psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {seggie},
{spin-lock}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features},
{weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under
{Bad Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {chase pointers},
{cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk},
{mess-dos}, {nybble}, {root}, {tweak}, and
{xyzzy}.
compact: adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it
can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means
the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility
and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Note
that compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for
example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful
than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting
{feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall
design scheme.
compress: [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers
to {crunch}ing 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} itself in this sense is
rare among UNIX hackers.
computer confetti: n. Syn {chad}. Though this term is common,
this use of the punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces
are stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS
reports that he once attended a wedding at MIT during which he and
a few otherguests enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. The
groom later grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the
evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair.
computer geek: n. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One
who fulfills all 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 proto-hacker in {larval stage}. Also
called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also
{clustergeeking}, {wannabee}, {terminal junkie}.
computron: /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. A notional unit of computing power
combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned
roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times
megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU EMACS, it
doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in
metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good
like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a
real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. 2. A mythical subatomic particle
that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much
the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge
(see {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. (This may owe something to the group of fantasy stories
by Larry Niven, beginning with `What Good is a Glass Dagger?',
in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called
`mana').
condition out: vt. To prevent a section of code from being compiled
by surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose
condition is always false. The {canonical} example is
`#if 0' and `#endif' in C. Compare {comment out}.
condom: n. The protective plastic baggy that accompanies 3.5"
microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, used of (paper) disk envelopes.
Unlike the write protect, the condom (when left on) not only
impedes the practice of {SEX}, it has been shown to have a high
failure rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk --- and
can even fatally frustrate insertion!
connector conspiracy: [probably came into prominence with the
appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors matched anything
else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension,
programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products
which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy
either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The KL-10
Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, which
then refused to license the design and thus effectively locked
third parties out of competition for the lucrative Massbus
peripherals market.
In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen
somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that
standards are great! There are so *many* of them. Compare
{backward combatability}.
cons: /konz/ or /cons/ [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 W. Dijkstra's infamous March 1968
Communications of the ACM note, `Goto Statement Considered
Harmful', fired the first salvo in the `structured programming'
wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony
sufficiently harmful that they will (by policy) no longer print an
article which takes up that assertive a position against a coding
practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious
papers and parodies have borne titles of the form `X considered Y'.
The `structured programming' wars eventually blew over with the
realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has
remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly'
found at various places in this lexicon is related).
console:: n. 1. The operator's station of a {mainframe}. In times
past, this was a privileged location which conveyed godlike powers
to him (almost invariably a `him') with his fingers on the keys. Under
UNIX and other modern timesharing OSs, it is just the {tty} the system
was booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is
traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from
/dev/console. 2. On microcomputer UNIX boxes: the main screen and
keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking to a
serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics or
run {X}. See also {CTY}.
console jockey: n. See {terminal junkie}.
content-free: adj. Ironic analogy with `context-free', used of a
message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though
this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually
connotes derision for communication styles 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". See also
{four-color glossies}.
Conway's Law: prov. The rule that the organization of the software and
the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally
stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll
get a four-pass compiler."
This was originally promulgated by Melvin Conway, an early
proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called
SAVE. The name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that
you lost fewer decks and listings because they all had SAVE written
on top of them.
cookie: n. A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement
between cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me
back a cookie." Compare {magic cookie}; see also {fortune
cookie}.
cookie file: n. A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format
that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several
different ones in public distribution, and site admins often
assemble their own from various sources including this lexicon.
cookie monster: [from `Sesame Street'] n. Any of a family of
early (1970s) hacks reported on {TOPS-10}, {ITS}, {Multics},
and elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a
time-sharing machine) or the {{console}} (on a batch
{mainframe}), repeatedly demanding "I WANT A COOKIE". The
required responses ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through
"HAVE A COOKIE" and upward. See also {wabbit}.
copper: n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable, which uses
copper as a core conductor --- or aluminum! Opposed to {light
pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.
copy protection: n. A class of clever methods for preventing
incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers
from using it. Considered silly.
copybroke: adj. [play on `copyright'] Used to describe an
instance of a copy-protected program which has been `broken'; that
is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled. Syn.
{copywronged}.
copyleft: /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The
copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}
{EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting 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.
copywronged: [play on `copyright'] adj. Syn. for {copybroke}.
core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
memory; now archaic most places outside IBM, but also still used in
the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound
like same. Some derived idioms are quite current; `in core',
for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both
{core dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced
by one are terms in favors.
core dump: n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1. A
copy of the contents of {core} produced when a process is aborted
by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for
humans passing out, vomiting, or registering extreme shock. "He
dumped core. All over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about
... 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; compare {brain dump}). See
{core}.
core leak: n. Syn. {memory leak}.
Core Wars: n. A game between `assembler' programs in a simulated
machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by
overwriting it. This was popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column in
`Scientific American' magazine, but is said to have been first
devised by Victor Vyssotsky as a PDP-1 hack, during the early '60s
at Bell Labs. It is rumored that the game is a civilized version
of an amusement called DARWIN common on multitasking machines
before the advent of protected address segments. 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}. However, this is
a semi-independent usage which may be invoked as a humorous way to
{handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the
bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric --- I just got a burst of
garbage on my {tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I
guess." Compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem
to prefer the usage `cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also
heard, because stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip
can cause single-bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely
as memory sizes and densities increase).
Factual note: alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not
(generally, except for spaceborne computers possibly). Intel could
not explain random bit drops in their early chips. One hypothesis
was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, 25
tons of lead, and used two identical boards for testing. One was
placed in the safe, one outside. Hypothesis was that if cosmic
rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a statistically
significant difference between the error rates on the two boards.
Result: hypothesis disproven. Further investigation demonstrated
conclusively that it was alpha particle emission from thorium (and
to a much lesser degree uranium) in the encapsulation material.
Since it is impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are
uniformly distributed through the earth's crust, with the
statistically insiginificant exception of uranium mines) it became
obvious that you have to design memories to withstand these hits.
cough and die: v. Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is
throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or
oversight.
cowboy: [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] n. Synonym for
{hacker}. It is reported that, at Sun, this is often said with
reverence.
CP/M: /see-pee-em/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and
Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s 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 OS for
the IBM PC 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: /see-pee-yoo worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas
Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of
`IPM' (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the
peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers). This rather
transparent allegory featured many references to {ADVENT} and the
immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!"
(uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper). It is alleged that
the author subsequently received a letter of appreciation on IBM
company stationery from the 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}.
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). There had been an earlier attempt to establish `worm'
in this sense around 1981-1982 on USENET; this largely failed.
crank: [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the
performance of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This
box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of
twice that on vectorized operations."
crash: 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of
the {system} (q.v., sense #1), sometimes of magnetic disk drives.
"Three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk crash."
A disk crash which involves the read/write heads dropping onto the
surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be
referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system
crash' usually, though not always, implies that the operating
system or other software was at fault. 2. vi. To fail suddenly.
"Has the system just crashed?" See {down}. Also used
transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person
or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing {SPACEWAR}
crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the
sack after a long {hacking run}; see {gronk} (sense #4).
crash and burn: vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the
conclusion of the car chase scene from the movie `Bullitt' and
many subsequent imitators. Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback
transformer and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are
notable crash and burn generators. The construction
`crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer used
exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing bugs
(i.e., not for development). The implication is that it wouldn't
be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since only the testers
would be inconvenienced.
crawling horror: n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that 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. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of
supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at
all. 3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.
The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a
noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous
vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented
by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image.
cray instability: n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm which
manifests itself only when running a large problem on a powerful
machine. Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in
smaller problems running on a workstation or mini.
crayola: n. A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some
reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance for an
unreasonably low price. Might also be a {killer micro}.
crayon: n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More
specifically 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. 2. A {computron} that participates
only in {number-crunching}. 3. A unit of computational power
equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a standard joke about
this that derives from an old Crayola crayon promotional gimmick:
when you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener.
creationism: n. The (false) belief that large, innovative designs
can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked
out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally
talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly
that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory
interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population ---
and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored.
creeping elegance: n. Describes a tendency for parts of a design to
become {elegant} past the point of diminishing return. This often
happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the design,
schedule, and other things deemed important in the {Real World}.
See also {creeping featurism}, {second-system effect}, {tense}.
creeping featurism: /kree'ping fee'ch@r-izm/ n. 1. Describes a
systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and {feature}s onto
systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed
when originally designed. See also {feeping creaturism}. "You
know, the main problem with {BSD} UNIX has always been creeping
featurism." 2. More generally, the tendency for anything
complicated to become even more complicated because people keep
saying, "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature
too." (See {feature}.) The result is usually a patchwork
because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being
planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one
extra little feature to help someone... and then another...
and another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's
like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer
programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the
IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes
afflicts conscious redesigns; see {second-system effect}. See
also {creeping elegance}.
creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'-c@r-ie`t@s/ n. Variant of
{creeping featurism}, with its own Spoonerization as `feeping
creaturitis'. Some people like to reserve this form for the
disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as
opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds. After
all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis usually
means `inflammation of'.)
cretin: /kre'tn/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious
person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed
that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation
/kre'tn/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is thought this may
be due to the insidious phonetic influence of Monty Python's Flying
Circus.
cretinous: /kre't@n-uhs/ or /kree't@n-uhs/ adj. Wrong;
non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used pejoratively of
people. Synonyms: {bletcherous}, `bagbiting' (see
{bagbiter}), {losing}, {brain-damaged}.
crippleware: n. 1. Software that has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
working version. See also {guiltware}. 2. [Cambridge]
{guiltware} that exhorts you to donate to some charity.
critical mass: n. In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable
material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software
product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one
bug introduces one plus {epsilon} bugs. When software achieves
critical mass, it can only be discarded and rewritten.
crlf: /ker'l@f/, sometimes /kru'l@f/ or /see-ar-el-eff/ n. (often
capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR) followed by a line
feed (LF). More loosely, whatever it takes to get you from the end
of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. See
{newline}, {terpri}. Under {UNIX} influence this usage has
become less common (UNIX uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF').
crock: [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward
feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner.
Example: Using small integers to represent error codes without the
program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, UNIX
`make(1)', which returns code 139 for a process that dies due
to {segfault}). 2. A technique that works acceptably, but which
is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example
depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so
that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven,
almost completely unmodifiable structure. See {kluge},
{brittle}. Also in the adjectives `crockish' and
`crocky', and the noun `crockitude'.
cross-post: [USENET] vi. 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. Cross-posting is frowned upon, as it tends to
cause {followup} articles to go to inappropriate newsgroups as
people respond to only one part of the original posting (unless the
originator is careful to specify a newsgroup for followups.)
crudware: /kruhd'weir/ n. Pejorative term for the hundreds of
megabytes of low-quality {freeware} circulated by user's groups
and BBS systems in the micro-hobbyist world. "Yet *another*
set of disk catalog utilities for {MS-DOS}? What crudware!"
The related usage `fuckware' is reported for software so bad it
mutilates your disk, broadcasts to the Internet, or perpetrates
some similar fiasco.
cruft: /kruhft/ 1. [back-formation from {crufty}] 1. n. An unpleasant
substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft. 2. n.
The results of shoddy construction. 3. vt. [from hand cruft, pun on
hand craft] to write assembler code for something normally (and
better) done by a compiler (see {hand-hacking}). 4. n. Excess;
superfluous junk. Esp. used of redundant or superseded code.
cruft together: vt. (also `cruft up') To throw together
something ugly but temporarily workable. Like vt. {kluge up},
but more pejorative. "There isn't any program now to reverse all
the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in about
ten minutes." See {hack together}, {hack up}, {kluge up},
{crufty}.
cruftsmanship: /kruhfts'man-ship / 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 fanciful theory of the origin of `crufty'
holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to DEC
software so old that the S characters were tall and skinny, looking
more like `f' characters. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the
touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with
peanut butter and catsup. 3. Generally unpleasant. 4.
(sometimes spelled `cruftie') n. A small crufty object (see
{frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the scheme of
things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties
(or, collectively, {random} cruft)."
crumb: n. Two binary digits; a {quad}. Larger than a {bit},
smaller than a {nybble}. Syn. {tayste}.
crunch: 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or
complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is
nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the
triviality being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000.
"FORTRAN programs do mostly {number-crunching}." 2. vt. To
reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit
configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as
by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document
would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such
compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods
such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly appropriate. (This
meaning is usually used in the construction `file crunch(ing)' to
distinguish it from `number crunch(ing)'.) See {compress}. 3.
n. The character `#'. Usage: used at Xerox and CMU, among
other places. See {{ASCII}}. 4. vt. To squeeze program source
into a minimum-size representation that will still compile or
execute. The term came into being specifically for a famous
program on the BBC that crunched BASIC source in order to make it
run more quickly (it was a wholly interpretive BASIC).
{Obfuscated C Contest} entries are often crunched, see the first
example under that entry.
cruncha cruncha cruncha: /kruhn'ch@ kruhn'ch@ kruhn'ch@/ interj.
An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a
serious {grovel}. Also describes a notional sound made by
grovelling hardware. See {wugga wugga}, {grind} (sense #3).
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}. The name {ITS} ("Incompatible
Time-sharing System") was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and
to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O
services should be presented to user programs.
CTY: /sit'ee/ or /see tee wie/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically
associated with a computer's system {{console}}. The term is a
contraction of `Console {tty}', that is, `Console TeleTYpe'.
This {ITS}- and {TOPS-10}-associated term has become less common
than formerly, as most UNIX hackers simply refer to the CTY as `the
console'.
cube: n. 1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan
offices used at many programming shops. "I've got the manuals in
my cube". 2. A NeXT machine.
cubing: [parallel with `tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel
Personal SuperComputer) hypercube. "Louella's gone cubing
*again*!!" 2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles,
either physically or mathematically. 3. An indescribable form of
self-torture (see sense #1).
cursor dipped in X: n. There are a couple of metaphors in English
of the form `pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X
are `acid', `bile' and `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this
hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind,
when one is composing on-line).
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 that performs well and interfaces well to
users is cuspy. See {rude}. 3. [NYU] Said of an attractive
woman, especially one regarded as available. Implies a certain
curvaceousness.
cut a tape: [poss. fr. mainstream `cut a check' or from the
recording industry's `cut a record'] vi. To write a software or
document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment. Has nothing
to do with physically cutting the medium! Though this usage is
quite widespread, one never speaks of analogously `cutting a disk'
or anything else in this sense.
cybercrud: /sie'ber-kruhd/ [coined by Ted Nelson] n. Obfuscatory
tech-talk. Verbiage with a high {MEGO} factor. The computer
equivalent of bureaucratese.
cyberpunk: /sie'ber-puhnk/ [orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or
editor Gardner Dozois] n.,adj. A subgenre of SF launched in 1982
by William Gibson's epoch-making novel `Neuromancer' (though
its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's `True Names' (see
Appendix C) to John Brunner's 1975 novel, `The Shockwave
Rider'). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the
present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role
of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since
found both irritatingly 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. 1. 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 (mid-1991), serious efforts to
construct {virtual reality} interfaces modelled explicitly on
Gibsonian cyberspace are already under way, using more conventional
devices such as glove sensors and binocular TV headsets. Few
hackers are prepared to outright deny the possibility of a
cyberspace someday evolving out of the network (see {network,
the}). 2. Occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a
person in {hack mode}. Some hackers report experiencing strong
eidetic imagery when in hack mode; interestingly, independent
reports from multiple sources suggest that there are common
features to the experience. In particular, the dominant colors of
this subjective `cyberspace' are often gray and silver, and the
imagery often involves constellations of marching dots, elaborate
shifting patterns of lines and angles, or moire patterns.
cycle: 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 jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so
many cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer, the
cycles get divided up among the users. The more cycles the
computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's,
the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants
more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to
respond.
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. This is an
inevitable result of Parkinson's Law applied to timesharing.
Usually the only solution is to buy more computer. Happily, this
has rapidly become easier in recent years, so much so that the very
term `cycle crunch' now has a faintly archaic flavor; most
hackers now use workstations or personal computers as opposed to
traditional timesharing systems.
cycle drought: n. A scarcity of cycles. It may be due to a {cycle
crunch}, but 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."
cycle of reincarnation: [coined by Iven Sutherland c.1970] n. Term
used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a
computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose
peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves 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.
cycle server: n. A powerful machine that exists primarily for
running large batch jobs. Implies that interactive tasks such as
editing are done on other machines on the network, such as
workstations.
= D =
=====
daemon: /day'm@n/ or /dee'm@n/ [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 would then print 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} are often used interchangeably, but
seem to have distinct connotations. The term {daemon} was
introduced to computing by {CTSS} people (who pronounced it
dee'mon) and used it to refer to what ITS called a {dragon}.
While the meaning and pronunciation have drifted, we think this
glossary reflects current (1991) usage.
dangling pointer: n. A reference that doesn't actually lead
anywhere (in C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't
actually point at anything valid). Usually this is because it
formerly pointed to something which has moved or disappeared. Used
as jargon in a generalization of its techspeak meaning; a local
phone number for a person who's since moved to the other coast, for
example.
Datamation: n. A magazine that many hackers assume all {suit}s
read. Used to question an unbelieved quote, as in "Did you read
that in Datamation?" It used to publish something hackishly
funny every once in a while, like the original paper on {COME
FROM} in 1973; but since then it's become much more exclusively
{suit}-oriented.
day mode: n. See {phase} (sense #1). Used of people only.
D. C. Power Lab: n. The former site of the {SAIL}. Hackers
thought this was very funny because the obvious connection to
electrical engineering was nonexistent --- the lab was named for a
Donald C. Power. Compare {Marginal Hacks}.
dd: /dee-dee/ [from IBM {JCL}] vt. Equivalent to {cat} or
{BLT}. This was originally the name of a UNIX copy command with
special options suitable for block-oriented devices. Often used in
heavy-handed system 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 designed 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 like somebody's idea of a joke. The jargon
usage is now very rare outside UNIX sites and now nearly obsolete
even there, as `dd(1)' has been {deprecated} for a long time
(though it has no 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 archaic, having been widely
displaced by `debugger' or names of individual programs like
`dbx', `adb', or `sdb'. 2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled
{ITS} operating system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN) was
also used as the {shell} or top level command language used to
execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense
#1) supported on early DEC hardware. The DEC PDP-10 Reference
Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the
documentation for DDT which illuminates the origin of the
term:
Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1
computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging
Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program
has propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs
are now available for all DEC computers. Since media other
than tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name
"Dynamic Debugging Technique" has been adopted, retaining
the DDT 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 after the {suit}s took over and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.
de-rezz: /dee-rez'/ [from the movie `Tron'; poss. related to
`hi-res' used for a graphics mode on early Apples] (also `derez')
1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; the image that goes with it is of
an object breaking up into raster lines and static and then
dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to have
suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than physically. Usage:
extremely silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented as
*fictional* hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of irony by
real hackers years after the fact. 2. vt. On a Macintosh, many
program structures (including the code itself) are managed in small
segments of the program file known as `resources'. The standard
resource compiler is Rez. The standard resource decompiler is
DeRez. Thus decompiling a resource is `derezzing'. Usage: very
common.
dead code: n. Routines that can never be accessed because all calls
to them have been removed, or code which cannot be reached because
it is guarded by a control structure which provably must always
transfer control somewhere else. The presence of dead code may
reveal either logical errors due to alterations in the program or
significant changes in the assumptions and environment of the
program (see also {software rot}); a good compiler should report
dead code so a maintainer can think about what it means. Syn.
{grunge}.
deadlock: n. 1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more
processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of
the other to do something. A common example is a program
communicating to a server, which may find itself waiting for output
from the server before sending anything more to it, while the
server is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling
program before outputting anything. (It is reported that this
particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a `starvation
deadlock', though the term `starvation' is more properly used for
situations where a program can never run simply because it never
gets high enough priority. Another common flavor is
`constipation', where each process is trying to send stuff to
the other, but all buffers are full because nobody is reading
anything.) See {deadly embrace}. 2. Also used of
deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when two people meet
in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving aside
to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side
without making any progress because they always both move the same
way at the same time.
deadly embrace: n. Same as {deadlock}, though usually used only when
exactly two processes are involved. This is the more popular term in
Europe, while {deadlock} predominates in the United States.
death star: [from the movie `Star Wars'] The AT&T corporate
logo, which appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears an uncanny
resemblance to the `Death Star' in the movie. This usage is
particularly common among partisans of {BSD} UNIX, who tend to
regard the AT&T versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy. Copies
still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape
with a space fighter labelled 4.2BSD streaking away from a broken
AT&T logo wreathed in flames.
AT&T's internal magazine, `Focus', uses `death star' for
an incorrectly done AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top
left is dark instead of light --- a frequent result of dark-on-light
logo images.
DEC Wars: n. A 1983 {USENET} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr,
spoofing the `Star Wars' movies in hackish terms. Some years
later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings/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.
DEChead: /dek'hed/ n. 1. A DEC {field servoid}. Not flattering.
2. [from `deadhead'] A Grateful Dead fan working at DEC.
deckle: [from dec- and {nickle}] /dek'l/ n. Two {nickle}s; 10
bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the
Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but
10-bit-wide ROM.
deep hack mode: n. See {hack mode}.
deep magic: [poss. from C.S. Lewis's `Narnia' books.] n. An
awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one
not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare
{black art}); one which could only have been composed by a true
{wizard}. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of
{OS} design used to be {deep magic}; many techniques in
cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are.
Compare {heavy wizardry}. Esp. found in comments of the form
"Deep magic begins here...". Compare {voodoo programming}.
deep space: adj. 1. Describes the notional location of any program
which has gone {off the trolley}. Esp. used of programs which
just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some
output is expected. Compare {buzz}, {catatonic},
{hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed
and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity}
that he/she no longer responds coherently to normal communication.
Compare {page out}.
defenestration: [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of
assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic
retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was
*awful*!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of
exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a
full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of
`defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3.
[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." Compare {logical}.
dehose: vt. To clear a {hosed} condition.
delint: vt. To modify code to remove problems detected when linting.
See {lint}.
delta: n. 1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a
small or incremental one (this use is general in physics and
engineering). 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}, 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 jargon usage of {delta} and
{epsilon} stems from the traditional use of these letters in
mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in
`epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the differential
calculus). The term {delta} is often used once {epsilon} has
been mentioned to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than
{epsilon} but still very small. 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 half of the hacker community.
To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably
identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major
demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of
{UNIX} and {C}) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of
{EMACS}). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of
someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major
software project has been driven to completion by the author's
veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also {net.god}, {true-hacker}.
demo: /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a
product or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to
manifest than any number of {test} runs, especially when
important people are watching. 2. n. The act of demoing.
demo mode: [Sun] n. The state of being {heads down} in order to
finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday.
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.
depeditate: /dee-ped'@-tayt/ [by analogy with `decapitate'] vt.
Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When using some computer-aided
phototypesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a
page or above a rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders.
Such letters are said to have been depeditated.
deprecated: 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.
deserves to lose: adj. Said of someone who willfully does the
{Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be
{marginal}. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences
of one's {losing} actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use
{mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" (ITS fans used to say this of
UNIX; many still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}.
desk check: n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code
mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs.
No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast
compiles, and sophisticated debuggers, though some maintain stoutly
that it ought to be. Compare {eyeball search}, {vdiff},
{vgrep}.
devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a
development group. See also {doco} and {mango}.
dickless workstation: n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for
`diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50
and other machines designed exclusively to network with an
expensive central disk server. These combine all the disadvantages
of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal
computers.
diddle: 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly
serious manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't
double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and
see if the problem goes away." See {tweak} and {twiddle}.
2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also {tweak},
{twiddle}, {frob}.
diff: n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences between
(and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used
in the plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon
File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2. Specifically, such a listing
produced by the `diff(1)' command, esp. when used as
specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can
actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a
common method of distributing patches and source updates in the
UNIX/C world. Se {diff}, {mod}.
digit: /dij'it/ n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation.
See also {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {TOPS-10}, {DEChead},
{double DECkers}, {field circus}.
dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire
from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan
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 informational objects such as
sections of code.
ding: /ding/ n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among
hackers, but commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged': what
happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about
something, esp. something you consider trivial. "I was dinged for
having a messy desk".
dink: adj. Said of a machine which has the {bitty box} nature; a
machine too small to be worth bothering with, sometimes the current
system you're forced to work on. First heard from an MIT hacker
(BADOB) working on a CP/M system with 64K in reference to any 6502
system, then from fans of 32-bit architectures about 16-bit
machines. "GNUMACS will never work on that dink machine."
Probably derived from mainstream `dinky', which isn't sufficiently
pejorative.
dinosaur: n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special
power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes 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}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative
user; a {zipperhead}.
dinosaur pen: n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with
raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air
conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See
{boa}.
dinosaurs mating: n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron}
merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that
these signal another stage in the long-drawn-out death throes of
the {mainframe} industry. In its glory days of the Sixties, it
was `IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General
Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out
early and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,
Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out
by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984, this
was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined), and at time of
writing AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first
six years in the hardware industry after buying NCR. More such
earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
dirty power: n. Electrical mains voltage which is unfriendly to
the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average
voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain
noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity.
Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-@n-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
millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of
Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the
Illuminati. See Appendix B, {Church of the Sub-Genius}, and {ha ha
only serious}.
disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled
with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).
display hack: n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a
kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks
include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX
`rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes,
and the {X} kaleid program. Display hacks can also be
implemented without programming by creating text files containing
numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal;
one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with
twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack
value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of
the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the
size of the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.
Dissociated Press: n. An algorithm for transforming any text into
potentially humorous garbage, even more efficiently than passing it
through a {marketroid}. You start by printing any N consecutive
words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step you search for
any random occurrence in the text of the last N words (or letters)
already printed and then print the next one. EMACS has a handy
command for this. Here is a short example of word-based
Dissociated Press applied to this Jargon File:
wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of
an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively
benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be
not worth paying attention to the medium in question.
Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to this
Jargon File:
window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't@/ prefer
to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a
chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech
makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual
abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!
A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press
to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding
an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window
sysIWYG' and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications
of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar
techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with
considerable satirical effect to the utterances of USENET flamers;
see {pseudo}.
distribution: n. 1. A software source tree packaged for
distribution; but see {kit}. 2. A vague term encompassing
mailing lists and USENET newsgroups; any topic-oriented message
channel with multiple recipients. 3. An information-space domain
(usually loosely correlated with geography) to which propagation of
a USENET message is restricted; a much-underutilized feature.
do protocol: [from network protocol programming] 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 for the check, calculate the
tip and everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate
change as necessary, and pay the bill. See {protocol}.
doco: /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A
documentation writer. See also {devo} and {mango}.
documentation:: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded,
steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern
software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}). Hackers
seldom read paper documentation and (too often) resist writing it;
they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line. See {drool-proof
paper}, {verbiage}.
dodgy: adj. Syn. with {flaky}. Preferred outside the U.S.
dogcow: n. See {Moof}.
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."] 1. n. A project of minimal
priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. 2. v.
To engage in such a project. Many games and much {freeware} get
written this way.
domainist: adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet address}} (as opposed to
a {bang path}) because the part to the right of the `@',
specifies a nested series of `domains'; for example,
`eric@snark.thyrsus.com' specifies the machine called
`snark' in the subdomain called `thyrsus' within the
top-level domain called `com'. 2. Said of a site, mailer or
routing program which knows how to handle domainist addresses.
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." (or "So don't
do that!"). Compare {RTFM}.
dongle: /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security device for commercial
microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized EPROM and some
drivers in a D-25 connector shell. Programs that use a dongle
query the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter,
and terminate if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed
validation code. Thus, users can make as many copies of the
program as they want but must pay for each dongle. The idea was
clever but initially a failure, as users disliked tying up a serial
port this way. Most dongles on the market today (1991) will pass
data through the port and monitor for `magic codes' (and
combinations of status lines) with minimal if any interference with
devices further down the line (this innovation was necessary to
allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of software). The
devices are still not widely used, as the industry has moved away
from copy-protection schemes in general. 2. By extension, any
physical electronic key or transferrable ID required for a program
to function. See {dongle-disk}.
dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/ n. See {dongle}; a `dongle-disk' is a
floppy disk with some coding that 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 jargon; it dates from the
days of ferrite-core memories in which each bit was represented by
a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop. Compare {core}.
doorstop: n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and
halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept
around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "When we
get another Wyse-50 in here, that 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 to the directory lister).
double bucky: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The
command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."
This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and
was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at MIT.
A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford {bucky bits} (control
and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of
them; you could only type 512 different characters on a Stanford
keyboard. 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' (Simon and
Schuster 1971, ISBN 671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May
27, 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard.
Double Bucky
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
--- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)
[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk} --- ESR]
See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}.
double DECkers: n. Used to describe married couples in which both
partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.
doubled sig: [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included
twice in a {USENET} article or, less 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 operating. "The up escalator is down." 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. With respect to computers, this
usage has passed into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds
of machine is still hackish. 2. `go down' vi. To stop functioning;
usually said of the {system}. The message 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." See {crash}; oppose {up}.
download: vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host'
system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller
`client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral
device. Oppose {upload}.
DP: n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers,
use of it marks one immediately as a {suit}. See {DPer}. 2.
Common abbrev for {Dissociated Press}.
DPB: /d@-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop
something down in the middle. Usage: silly. 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. This usage has been kept alive by the Common Lisp function
of the same name.
DPer: n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that {suit}s
use this term self-referentially. "*Computers* process data,
not people!" See {DP}.
dragon: n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it
is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform
various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting
program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates
load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed
a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were
running, etc. along with some random picture (such as a unicorn,
Snoopy, or the Enterprise) which was generated by the `name
dragon'. Usage: rare outside MIT --- under UNIX and most other OSs
this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}. The
best-known UNIX example of a dragon is `cron(1)'. At SAIL,
they called this sort of thing a `phantom'.
Dragon Book: n. Aho, Sethi, and Ullman's classic text
`Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools', so called
because of the cover design depicting a knight slaying a dragon
labelled `compiler complexity'. This actually describes the `Red
Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier edition (sans Sethi and titled
`Principles Of Compiler Design') was the `Green Dragon Book'
(1977). There is now a third edition of the Dragon Book that has
the knight sitting in front of what, for all the world, looks like
a video-game display of the dragon, with the real dragon behind it.
The term `White Dragon Book' has been proposed. See also
{{book titles}}.
drain: [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense #2). Has a connotation
of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking
it offline.
dread high-bit disease: n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a
PR1ME) minicomputers which results in all the characters having
their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes
transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to
mention talking to true eight-bit devices. It is reported that
PRIME adopted the reversed-eight-bit convention in order to save 25
cents per serial line per machine. This probably qualifies as one
of the most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta
bit}.
DRECNET: /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `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 in a way that made it incompatible. See also {connector
conspiracy}.
driver: n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program; the
code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution. 2. In
`device driver', code designed to handle a particular
peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape.
drool-proof paper: n. Documentation that has been obsessively dumbed
down, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is
said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to
have been `written on drool-proof paper'. For example, this is
an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose
your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."
drop on the floor: vt. To react to an error condition by silently
discarding messages or other valuable data. 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}, {bit bucket}.
drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious
characters appearing on a terminal or console due to line noise or
a system malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these are
interspersed with your own typed input. Compare {drop-outs}.
drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch});
momentary zero voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing
characters in typed input due to software malfunction or system
saturation (this can happen under UNIX, for example, when a bad
connect to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
interrupts). 3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing
those occasions when the mind just seems to shut down for a couple
of beats. See {glitch}, {fried}.
drugged: adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid,
heading towards {brain-damaged}. Often accompanied by a
pantomime of toking a joint (but see Appendix B). 2. Of hardware,
very slow relative to normal performance.
drunk mouse syndrome: n. A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing
device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse
cursor on the screen to move 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 rotate your optical mouse pad 90 degrees.
dumbass attack: /duhm'ass @-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a
novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while
running as root under UNIX, e.g. typing `rm -r *' or
`mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare {adger}.
dump: n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a
problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the
slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most
especially one consisting or hex and octal {runes} describing the
byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. In elder
days, debugging was generally done by `grovelling over a dump'
(see {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages and
interactive debuggers has made this uncommon, and the term `dump'
now has a faintly archaic flavor. 2. A backup. This usage is
typical only at large timesharing installations.
dup killer: /d[y]oop killer/ [FidoNet] n. Software which is
supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message which may
have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.
dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An
incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate
duplicate messages on one or more {echo}s, with different
identification information that renders {dup killer}s
ineffective. If such a duplicate message eventually reaches a
system which it has already passed through (with the original
identification information), all systems passed on the way back to
that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.
dusty deck: n. Old software (especially applications) with which
one is obliged to remain compatible (or to maintain). The term
implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch
days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
{number-crunching} software, much of which was written in FORTRAN and
very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to
replace. See {fossil}.
DWIM: /dwim/ [Do What I Mean] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes
even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided.
2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to
accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors.
See {hairy}. 3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a
balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping over
legalisms (see {legalese}).
DWIM is 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 proofs of program correctness
were in vogue, there were also jokes about `DWIMC': Do What I
Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is
DTRT (Do The Right Thing), see {Right Thing}.
dynner: /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage:
rare and extremely silly. See also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}.
= E =
=====
earthquake: [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for
computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the
Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test quality
assurance procedures at its California plants.
Easter egg: 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 caused them to respond to the command `make
love' with `not war?'. Many personal computers have much more
elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers'
names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case)
graphics images of the entire development team.
Easter egging: [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or
less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers
consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and
do not love them for it. Compare {shotgun debugging}.
eat flaming death: imp. A construction popularized among hackers by
the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously
turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic which ran
"Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort
(however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975
album `In The Next World, You're On Your Own' included the
phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been
an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of
hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"
EBCDIC:: /eb's@'dik/, /eb'see-dik/, or /eb'k@-dik/ [Extended Binary
Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged character set used on
IBM {dinosaur}s. It exists in six mutually incompatible
versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter
sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters
fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which
characters are absent vary according to which version of EBCDIC
you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC from {{punched card}} code
in the early 1960s and promulgated it as a customer-control tactic
(see {connector conspiracy}), spurning the already established
ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems company,
but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert
between them is still internally classified top-secret,
burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very *name* of
EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest {evil}. See
also {fear and loathing}.
echo: [FidoNet] n. A topic group on {FidoNet}'s echomail system. Compare
{newsgroup}.
eighty-column mind: [IBM] n. The sort said to be 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 `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge is the bottom
of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1422 and 1602
card readers, and referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called
`The Last Bug', which ends:
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
customer base, and its thinking. See {{punched card}}, {IBM},
{fear and loathing}, {card walloper}.
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 defines
{logical} north and south even though it doesn't really run N/S
many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University
and so is familiar to hackers. The Spanish word `real' (which has
two syllables /ray-ahl'/) means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the
royal road'. In the FORTRAN language, a `real' quantity is a
number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a `double
precision' quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to
perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar
`real' types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976 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 that are both
conspicuous {hog}s (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 (and, like a pachyderm, difficult
to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make
trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the
mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare
`has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative
{monstrosity}. See also {second-system effect} and
{baroque}.
elevator controller: n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems
application, like {toaster}. During the deliberations of ANSI
X3J11, the C standardization committee, this was the canonical
example of its type. "You can't require `printf(3)' to be
part of the default runtime library --- what if you're targeting an
elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important
rhetorical weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}.
EMACS: /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of
hacker editors, a program editor with an entire LISP system 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
an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the
editor doesn't include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too
heavyweight and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as
`Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on
keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions
include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping', `Eventually
malloc()s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow'
(see {{recursive acronyms}}). See also {vi}.
email: /ee'mayl/ 1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed through
computer networks and/or via modems common-carrier lines. Contrast
{snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network
address}. 2. vt. To send email to a person.
Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED; it
means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or arranged in a net work"!
A use from 1480 is given, and the word is derived from French
`emmailleure', network.
emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-con/ 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 humor, laughter, or friendliness)
:-( Frowney face (indicates sadness, anger, or upset)
;-) Half-smiley ({ha ha only serious})
Also known as "semi-smiley" or "winkey face".
:-/ Wry face
It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on
the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980. He later wrote "I wish I
had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for
posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." (GLS
confirms that he remembers this original posting).
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 synonymous with {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 fairly sure sign that
you've gone over the line.
empire: n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a
game written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are 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.
engine: n. 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function
but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. Today we
have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer.
2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot
of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.
The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had
not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that
he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.
English: n.,obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any
language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced
from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real
hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is
at least as readable as English. Usage: used mostly by old-time
hackers, though recognizable in context.
enhancement: n. {Marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse
of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence
into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call
the fix a {feature} --- or perhaps save some effort by declaring
the bug itself to be a feature.
ENQ: /enkw/ [from the ASCII mnemonic `ENQuire' for #b0000101] ques.
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.
Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the usage of "FOO?" listed
under {talk mode}.
EOF: /ee-oh-ef/ [acronym, End Of File] n. 1. [techspeak]
Refers esp. to whatever pseudo-character value is returned by C's
sequential character input functions (and their equivalents in
other environments) when the logical end of file has been reached
(this was 0 under V6 UNIX but, 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."
See also {EOL}.
EOL: /ee-oh-el/ [End Of Line] n. Syn. for {newline} derived
perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely
recognized and occasionally used because it's shorter. It's used
in the example entry under {BNF}. See also {EOF}.
EOU: /ee-oh-yoo/ n. 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 delimiter and
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.
epoch: [UNIX] [perhaps from astronomical timekeeping] n. The time
and date corresponding to zero in an operating system's clock and
timestamp values. Under most UNIX versions, 00:00:00 GMT, January
1, 1970. System time is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the
epoch. Note that weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps
around (see {wrap around}), and that this is not a necessarily a
rare event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed
32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The
1-tick-per-second clock of UNIX is good only until January 18,
2038, assuming word lengths don't increase by then. See also
{wall time}.
epsilon: [see {delta} for etymology] 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."
epsilon squared: n. A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as
small in comparison to it as it is to something normal; completely
negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the
cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon},
and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect the two is
{epsilon squared}. Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in
the noise}.
era, the: Syn. {epoch}. The Webster's Unabridged makes these words
almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time
rather than a point in time. The {epoch} usage is recommended.
Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named
Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting 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 Erics in hackerdom than
the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are
correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric
Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style}),
and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about
fourteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric
Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more
than one site.
Eris: /e'ris/ pn. The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion,
and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and
she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity
in the Classical original, she was 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 good electronics makes them warm.
essentials: n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure
hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a
20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk
supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP
via a 'blazer to a friendly Internet site, and thou."
evil: adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program,
person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not
worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the
{cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not
imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or
design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This is
more an esthetic and engineering 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 /eeee'vil/.
exa-: /ek's@/ pref. Multiplier, 10 ^ 18 or [proposed] 2 ^ 60. See
{kilo-}.
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}, {desk check}.
EXCH: /eks'ch@, eksch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the
other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and
say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH,
meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction
that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location.
Many newer hackers tend to be thinking instead of the PostScript
exchange operator (which is usually written in lowercase).
excl: /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See
{bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.
EXE: /eks'ee/, /eek'see/ n. An executable binary file. Some
operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TOPS-20/TWENEX) use the
extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally
found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX executables don't
have any required extension (in fact, the term `extension' in this
sense is not part of UNIX jargon).
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.
3. At IBM, the equivalent of a shell command file (this is among
VM/CMS users).
exercise, left as an: [from technical books] Used to complete a
proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one
entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof (or the rest) is left as
an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally
been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of
either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the capabilities
of their audiences.
eyeball search: n. To look for something in a mass of code or data
{by hand}, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matcher like
{grep} or any other automated search tool. Also called a
{vgrep}; compare {vdiff}, {desk check}.
= F =
=====
fab: /fab/ [from `fabricate'] v. 1. To produce chips from a
design that may have been created by someone at another company.
Fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a
{silicon foundry}. To a hacker, `fab' is practically never short
for `fabulous'. 2. `fab line': the production system
(lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip
manufacturer. Different `fab lines' are run with different
process parameters, die sizes, or technologies, or simply to
provide more manufacturing volume.
face time: n. Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as
opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face
time with him at the last Usenix."
fall over: [IBM] vi. Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}.
`Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.
fall through: v. (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through')
1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e. by having fulfilled its exit
condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits
from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old,
as in dating from the 1940s and '50s. It may no longer be live
jargon. 2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a
subroutine or other distant portion of code. 3. In C,
`fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a
switch statement reaches a `case' label other than by jumping
there from the switch header, passing a point where one would
normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial example:
switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green();
break;
case PINK:
do_pink();
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red();
break;
default:
do_blue();
break;
}
The effect of this code is to `do_green()' when color is
`GREEN', `do_red()' when color is `RED',
`do_blue()' on any other color other than `PINK', and
(and this is the important part) `do_pink()' *and then*
`do_red()' when color is `PINK'. Fall-through is
{considered harmful} by some, though there are contexts such as
the coding of state machines in which it is natural; it is
generally considered good practice to include a comment
highlighting the fallthrough, at the 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 frenetic
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. A compendium of accumulated
lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups in an attempt
to forestall Frequently Asked Questions. This lexicon itself
serves as a good example of a collection of one kind of lore,
although it is far too big for a regular posting. Several extant
FAQ lists do (or should) make reference to the Jargon File (the
on-line version of this lexicon). "How do you pronounce `char'?"
and "What's that funny name for the `#' character?" for
example, are both Frequently Asked Questions.
farming: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. What the heads of a
disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the
magnetic media. Associated with a {crash}. Typically used as
follows: "Oh no, the machine has just crashed; I hope the hard
drive hasn't gone {farming} again."
fascist: adj. 1. Said of a computer system with excessive or
annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The
implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from
getting interesting work done. The variant `fascistic' seems
to have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with
`touristic' (see {tourist}). 2. In the design of languages
and other software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most
restrictive and structured way of capturing a particular function;
the implication is that this may be desirable in order to simplify
the implementation or provide tighter error checking. Compare
{bondage-and-discipline language}; but that term is global rather
than local.
FAtt: [FidoNet] n. Written-only abbreviation for {File Attach}.
faulty: adj. Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as
{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
that are totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous --- Intel 8086s,
or {COBOL}, or {{EBCDIC}}, 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!"
feature: n. 1. A good property or behavior (as of a program).
Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended
property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is good or not
is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). 3. A
surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is
purposely inconsistent because it works better that way --- such an
inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This
kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry
for a classic example. 4. A property or behavior that is
gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute.
For example, one feature of Common LISP's FORMAT function is the
ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats
(see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behavior
that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your
way. 6. A bug that has been documented. To call something a
feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider
the particular case, and 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}, {creeping
featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}.
The relationship between bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
miswarts might be clarified by the following exchange between two
hackers on an airplane:
A: "This seat doesn't recline."
B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency
exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to
be kept clear."
A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
spacing between rows here."
B: "Yes. But if they'd only increased spacing in one section it
would have been a wart --- they would've had to make
nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced
seats."
A: "A miswart, actually. If they widened all the seats they'd
lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So unequal
spacing would actually be the Right Thing."
B: "Indeed."
Finally, note that {undocumented feature} is a common, allegedly
humorous euphemism for a {bug}.
feature creature: [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror
movie] n. One who loves to add features to designs or programs,
perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision, or {taste}. See
also {creeping featurism}.
feature shock: [from Alvin Toffler's title `Future Shock'] n.
A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a
package that has too many features and poor introductory material.
featurectomy: /fee`ch@r-ek'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 electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal
(except for a VT-52!); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world
seems to prefer {beep}). 2. vi. To cause the display to make a
feep sound. ASR 33s (the original TTYs) do not feep; they
have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: {beep},
`bleep', or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff
MacNelly, in his comic strip `Shoe', uses the word `eep' for
sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps
the closest written approximation yet.) The term `breedle' was
sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not
particularly `soft' (they sound more like the musical equivalent of
a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the
sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five
seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound
of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also {ding}.
feeper: /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually
a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the {feep} sound.
feeping creature: [from {feeping creaturism}] n. An unnecessary
feature; a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgement, is
the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch@r-izm/ n. Deliberate
Spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply that the
system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of
hacks. This term isn't really well-defined, but it sounds so neat
that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced
by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their
customary noises.
feetch feetch: interj. If someone tells you about some new
improvement to a program, you might respond, "Feetch, feetch!".
The meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With
enthusiasm, it means something like, "Boy, that's great! What a
great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't
know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated
thing." With a tone of resignation, it means, "Well, I'd rather
keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done."
fence: n. 1. One or more distinguished ({out-of-band})
characters (or other data items) used to delimit a piece of data
intended to be treated as a unit (the computer science literature
calls this a `sentinel'). The NUL character that terminates
strings in C is a fence. Hex FF is probably the most common fence
character after NUL. See {zigamorph}. 2. (Among users of
optimizing compilers) Any technique, usually exploiting knowledge
about the compiler, that blocks certain optimizations. Used when
explicit mechanisms are not available, or are overkill (e.g., a
single-point optimization block in an otherwise optimized
procedure, program, etc.) Typically a hack: "I call a dummy
procedure there to cause it to recompute the cse" can be expressed
by the shorter "that's a fence procedure.".
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 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?" Either 9 or 11
is a better answer than the obvious 10. For example, suppose you
have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m
through n; how many items are there? The obvious answer is `n
- m', but that is off by one; the right answer is `n - m + 1'.
A program that used the `obvious' formula would have a fencepost
error in it. See also {off-by-one error}, and note that not all
off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs
involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit
in `N - 1' chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors
come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or
vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count
one or both ends of a row. 2. Occasionally, an error induced by
unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for instance)
screw up your hash table.
fepped out: /fept owt/ adj. The Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine has a
front-end processor called a `FEP' (compare sense #2 of {box}).
When the main processor gets {wedged}, the FEP takes control of
the keyboard and screen. Such a machine is said to have
`fepped out'.
FidoNet: n. A world-wide hobbyist network of personal computers
which exchange mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984
and originally consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet
now includes such diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas,
and UNIX systems. Though it is much younger than USENET, FidoNet
is already a significant fraction of {USENET}'s size at some 8000
systems (early 1991).
field circus: [a derogatory pun on `field service'] n. The field
service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially
DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus
engineers:
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer with a flat tire?
A: He's changing each tire to see which one is flat.
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer who is out of
gas?
A: He's changing each tire to see which one is flat.
field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ n.
Representative of a Field Service organization (see {field
circus}).
Fight-o-net: [FidoNet] n. Deliberate distortion of {FidoNet},
often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular
{echo}, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see <'Snooze>).
File Attach: [FidoNet] 1. n. A file sent along with a mail message
from one BBS to another. 2. vt. Sending someone a file by using
the File Attach option in the BBS mailer.
File Request: [FidoNet] 1. n. The {FidoNet} equivalent of
{FTP}, in which one BBS system automatically dials another and
{snarf}s one or more files. Files are often announced as being
"available for {FReq}" in the same way that files are announced
as being "available for/by anonymous FTP" on the Internet.
2. vt. The act of getting a copy of a file by using the File
Request option of the BBS mailer.
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] 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 that
processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some
well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except possibly
on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a
{pipeline}.
fine: [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. The word
`fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit
comparison to the higher level implied by {cuspy}.
finger: [WAITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a
particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote
system. Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time,
terminal line, and terminal location (where applicable). May also
display a {plan file} left by the user. 2. vt. To apply finger
to a username. 3. vt. By extension, to check a human's current
state by any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and see
if she's idle.". 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters)
depicting `the finger'. Originally a humorous component of one's
plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense #2), it has entered
the arsenal of some {flamer}s.
finger-pointing syndrome: n. All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp.
in new or experimental configurations. The hardware vendor points
a finger at the software. The software vendor points a finger
at the hardware. All the poor users get is the finger.
firebottle: n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical
device, similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass,
metal, and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low
reliability, high-temperature operation, and high power
dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the U.S.
or a `valve' in England; another hackish term is {glassfet}.
firefighting: n. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late
nights at a project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also
{gang bang}, {Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term
`firefighting' connotes that the effort is going into chasing
bugs rather than adding features.
firewall code: n. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone
switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since
users always want to be able to do everything but never want to
suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is not just
a question of defensive coding but of interface presentation, so
that users don't even get curious about those corners of a system
where they can burn themselves.
firewall machine: n. A dedicated gateway machine with special
security precautions on it, used to service outside network
connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of
more loosely administered machines `hidden' behind it from
{cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based
UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and
public network ports on it but just one carefully watched
connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special
precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and even a
complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or
activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}.
fireworks mode: n. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when
it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.
fish: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. Another metasyntactic
variable. See {foo}. Derived originally from the Monty Python
skit in the middle of `The Meaning of Life' entitled `Find the
fish'.
FISH queue: [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)]
adj. First In, Still Here. A joking way of pointing out that
processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has
stopped dead. Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter
may be applied to any network that is running really slowly or
exhibiting extreme flakiness.
fix: n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many
times to be ignored.
flag: n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a
bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes
or is used to control which of two things is to be done. Examples:
"This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing
the message." "The program status word contains several flag
bits." See also {bit}, {hidden flag}, {mode 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 (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also
{backward combatability}.
flaky: adj. (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent {lossage}.
This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word,
to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A
system that is flaky is working, sort of, enough that you are
tempted to try to use it, but it fails frequently enough that the
odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth
hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.
flamage: /flay'm@j/ n. High-noise, low-signal postings to {USENET}
or other electronic fora. Often in the phrase `the usual
flamage'.
flame: v. 1. To post an email message intended to insult and
provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some
relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous
attitude. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy,
one might tell the participants, "Now you're just flaming" or
"Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to
speak).
USENETter Marc Ramsey, who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976 adds: "I
am 99% certain that the use of `flame' originated at WPI. Those
who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use
a TTY for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole lusers'.
Other particularly annoying people became `flaming asshole ravers',
which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'. I
remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't
think `flame on/off' was ever much used at WPI." See also
{asbestos}.
The term may have been independently invented at several different
places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean
something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions'
(late-night bull-sessions) at Carleton College during 1968-1971.
flame bait: n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one
that invites flames in reply.
flame on: vi. 1. To begin to {flame}. The punning reference to
Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized. 2. To
continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.
flame war: n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute,
especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as
{USENET}.
flamer: n. One who habitually flames others. Said esp. of obnoxious
{USENET} personalities.
flap: vt. 1. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap,
flap...). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the
disk was device 0 and microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting
to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a
cabinet near the disk! 2. By extension, to unload any magnetic
tape. See {microtape}, {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no
longer actually flap, but the usage has remained.
flarp: /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. Yet another metasyntactic
variable (see {foo}). Among those who use it, it is associated
with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp'
somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent on the
reliability of programs which *do* contain the magic word.
flat: adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure. "That
{bitty box} only has a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one."
The verb form is {flatten}. 2. Said of a memory architecture
like the VAX or 680x0 that is one big linear address space
(typically with each possible value of a processor register
corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a
`segmented' architecture like the 80x86 in which addresses are
composed from a base-register/offset pair (such designs are
generally considered {cretinous}).
flat-ASCII: adj. Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII
characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that
is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter
or markup language, and no {meta}-characters). Syn.
{plain-ASCII}. Compare {flat-file}.
flat-file: adj. A {flatten}ed representation of some database or
tree or network structure, as a single file from which the
structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ASCII}
form.
flatten: vt. To remove structural information, esp. to filter
something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of
leaves; also tends to imply mapping to {flat-ASCII}. "This code
flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent
{canonical} form."
flavor: n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two
flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and
small green ones." See {vanilla}. 2. The attribute that causes
something to be {flavorful}. Usually used in the phrase "yields
additional flavor." "This convention yields additional flavor by
allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down."
See {vanilla}. This usage was certainly reinforced by the
terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the
constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down,
strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green)
--- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The
term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the Lisp Machine
Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been superseded
(notably by the Common Lisp CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is
still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.
flavorful: adj. Full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. See
{random} and {losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for
{taste} and {elegant}.
flippy: /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for
double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called
because it must be flipped over for the second side to be
accessible. No longer common.
flowchart:: [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow
specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various
shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely
silly, and associate them with {COBOL} programmers, {card
walloper}s, and other lower forms of life. This is because (from a
hacker's point of view) they are no easier to read than code, are
less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that
they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it, or require
extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). See also
{pdl}, sense #3.
flush: v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous. "All
that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C] To force buffered
I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call. This is *not*
an abort as in sense #1, but a demand for early completion! 3.
To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a
meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 4. To
exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a person.
`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but
was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term
arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing
down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before
they can be printed. The UNIX/C usage, on the other hand, was
propagated by the `fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library
(though it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers
at DEC and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965).
UNIX/C hackers find the ITS usage confusing and vice versa.
flytrap: n. See {firewall machine}.
FOAF: [USENET] n. Written-only acronym for Friend Of A Friend. The
source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not
originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban
folklore), but is much better recognized on USENET and elsewhere
than in mainstream English.
FOD: v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a
spell-name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice
and with no regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the
wizard command `FOD <player>' results in the immediate and total
death of <player>, usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior.
This migrated to other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod
that process which is burning all the cycles." Compare {gun}.
In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g. what happens
when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway. Finger of Death
is an distressingly apt description of the usual results of this!
fold case: v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more
by people who don't *mind* that their tools smash case. It
also connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data
processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed.
followup: n. On USENET, a {posting} generated in response to
another posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email
rather than being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the
{parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers can use
this information to present USENET news in `conversation' sequence
rather than order-of-arrival. See {thread}.
foo: /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. n. Name used for
temporary programs, or samples of three-letter names. Other
similar words are {bar}, {baz} (Stanford corruption of
{bar}), and rarely `rag'. 3. Used very generally as a sample
name for absolutely anything. 4. First on the standard list of
metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See also:
{bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge}, {grault},
{garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}.
{foo} is the {canonical} example of a `metasyntactic variable'; a
name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is
under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under
discussion. To avoid confusion, hackers never use `foo' or other
words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a
common convention is that any filename beginning `foo' is a scratch
file which may be deleted at any time.
The etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. When used in
connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era army
slang acronym FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), later
bowdlerized to {foobar}.
However, the use of the word `foo' itself has more complicated
antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.
The old `Smokey Stover' comic strips by Bill Holman often
included the word `FOO', in particular on license plates of cars;
allegedly, `FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's
`Pogo' strips. In a 1938 cartoon Daffy Duck holds up a sign
saying "SILENCE IS FOO!" It is even possible that hacker usage
actually springs from the title `FOO, Lampoons and Parody' of
a comic book first issued 20 years later, 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.
An old-time member reports that in the semi-legendary 1959
"Dictionany of the TMRC Language", compiled at at TMRC (the Tech
Model Railroad Club at MIT, pronounced /tmerk'/), there was an
entry which went something like this:
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME
HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.
By 1962, TMRC's legendary model-railroad layout was already a
marvel of complexity for which the control system alone featured
about 1200 relays. There were {scram switch}es located at
numerous places around the room which could be pressed if something
undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full-bore at
an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a digital clock
on the dispatch board. Normally it ran at some multiple of real
time, but if someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the
display was replaced with the word "FOO".
Almost the entire AI staff was involved with the TMRC, so it's not
clear that anyone can say which group introduced the other to the
word FOO.
Very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives
through all these channels from Yiddish `feh' and/or English
`fooey!'.
foobar: n. Another common metasyntactic variable; see {foo}.
Note that hackers do *not* generally use this to mean FUBAR!
fool: n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is
not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person
with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed,
in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too
effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin}, {loser}.
footprint: n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of
hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed
program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also
{toeprint}.
for free: adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or
hardware equipment which is available by its design without needing
cleverness to implement, e.g, "In APL, we get the matrix
operations for free", or "And owing to the way revisions are
stored in this system, you get revision trees for free." Usually
it refers to a serendipidous feature of doing things a certain way.
Compare {big win}.
for the rest of us: [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the
rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose
affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often)
used sarcastically to describe {spiffy}, but very overpriced
products. 2. Describes a program with a limited interface,
deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to
compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not
`confuse' a naive user. This places an upper bound on how far that
user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the task
instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh
software which doesn't provide obviously necessary capabilities
(and which are obvious to implement) because it is thought that the
users wouldn't need them, wouldn't understand them, and other
applicable patronizing terms. Becomes `the rest of *them*'
when used in third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an
attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means
a program which superficially is neat but has no depth beyond the
surface flash. See {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash}.
foreground: [UNIX] adj.,vt. 1. [techspeak] On a time-sharing
system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input
from and return output to the user; oppose {background}.
Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {UNIX}, but it
appears first to have been used in this sense on OS/360. Normally,
there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal
window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the
keyboard is a good way to {lose}. 2. By extension, to
`foreground a task' is to bring it to the top of one's
{stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in
this sense for non-computer tasks.
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 call `fork(2)')
and taking up all the process table entries.
Fortrash: n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language, referring to its
primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control
constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.
fortune cookie: [UNIX] n. A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or
maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at
logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as
fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.
fossil: n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable
only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so
as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as
default base for string escapes in {C}, in spite of the better
match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern byte-addressable
architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a
feature with past but no present utility. Example: the
force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} UNIX tty driver,
designed for use with monocase terminals. In a perversion of the
usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually
been expanded and renamed in some later {USG UNIX} releases as
the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog
Standard Interface Level) driver specification for serial-port
access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in the IBM PC ROMs.
Fossils are used by most MSDOS {BBS} software in lieu of
programming the {bare metal} of the serial ports, as the ROM
routines do not support interrupt-driven operation or setting
speeds above 9600. Since the FOSSIL specification allows
additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the
{hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named
with a modifier, as in `video fossil'.
four-color glossies: 1. Literature created by {marketroid}s
allegedly containing technical specs, but in fact as superficial as
possible without being totally {content-free}. "Forget the
four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied
even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in B&W as an
indication of superficiality. Four-color-glossy manuals are
*never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by
extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to
diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired
output.
fred: n. 1. 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. Unlike {J.
Random Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', this name has no positive
or negative loading (but see {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}). 2. An acronym
for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be
substituted for "flipping".
frednet: /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some {random} and
uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing
bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."
freeware: n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and
distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local
bulletin boards, {USENET}, or other electronic media. At one
time, `freeware' was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author
of the well-known MS-DOS comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't
enforced after his mysterious disappearance in 1984. See
{shareware}.
freeze: v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document
against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability.
Carries the strong implication that the item in question will
`unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll
freeze for release."
FReq: [FidoNet] written-only abbreviation for {File Request}.
fried: adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out.
Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch'
(see {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or other electrical
event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits!
In particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt
down, emitting noxious smoke. However, this term is also used
metaphorically.) Compare {frotzed}. 2. Of people, exhausted.
Said particularly of those who continue to work in such a state.
Often used as an explanation or excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix
destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put it in."
fritterware: n. An excess of capability that serves no productive
end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac
(see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge
amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function, but seduces
people into using it anyway.
frob: /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The official Tech Model Railroad Club
definition was `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. vt. Abbreviated form of {frobnicate}. 3. [from the
{MUD} world] To request {wizard} privileges on the `professional
courtesy' grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere.
frobnicate: /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [Poss. derived from {frobnitz}, and
usually abbreviated to {frob}, but `frobnicate' is recognized
as the official full form.] To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.
One frequently frobs bits or other two-state devices. Thus:
"Please frob the light switch." (that is, flip it), but also
"Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it." One also sees the
construction `to frob a frob'. See {tweak} and {twiddle}.
Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote
points along a continuum. `Frob' connotes aimless manipulation;
`twiddle' connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for
a proper setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting
it, he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking
at the screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing
it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant
`frobnosticate' has been recently reported.
frobnitz: /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' (frob'nit-zm) n. An
unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic
black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to `frotz',
or more commonly to {frob}. Also used are `frobnule'
(/frob'n[y]ool/) and `frobule' (/frob'nool/). Starting perhaps
in 1979, `frobozz' /fruh-boz'/, 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. 4. n. Of people, somewhere
in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy': adj. Similar to
`bagbiting' (see {bagbiter}), but milder. "This froggy
program is taking forever to run!"
front end: n. 1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and
filtering for another (usually more powerful but less friendly)
machine (a `back end'). 2. What you're talking to when you
have a conversation with someone who is making replies without
paying attention. "Look at the dancing elephants!" "Uh-huh."
"Do you know what I just said?" "Sorry, you were talking to the
front end." See also {fepped out}. 3. Software which provides
an interface to another program `behind' it, which may not be as
user-friendly. Probably from analogy with hardware front-ends (see
sense #1) which interfaced with mainframes.
frotz: /frotz/ 1. n. See {frobnitz}. 2. `mumble frotz': An
interjection of very mild disgust.
frotzed: /frotzt/ adj. {down} due to hardware problems. Compare
{fried}. A machine which is merely frotzed may be fixable
without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously
damaged.
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. [techspeak] n. The File
Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the
Internet. 2. vt. To {beam} a file using the File Transfer
Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers
not using {FTP}. "Lemme get 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: /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found
his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM
sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might
be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to
persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with
competitors' equipment. This was traditionally done by promising
that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but
Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or
software. See {IBM}.
FUD wars: /fuhd worz/ n. [from {FUD}] Political posturing engaged in
by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to
standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to
protect their own shares. The UNIX International vs. OSF conflict,
for example.
fudge: 1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable
way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I
didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged
it --- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The resulting code.
fudge factor: n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way
to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and
{slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided
leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary
because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is
better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not
having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be
tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the `fuzz'
typically allowed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being
compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount;
if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate,
while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate.
Fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers
who don't fully understand their import. See also {coefficient
of x}.
fuel up: vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to
hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a
{great-wall}!" See also {{Oriental Food}}.
fuggly: /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of {funky}; funky + ugly (or
possibly a contraction of `fuckin' ugly'). Unusually for hacker
jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. To say it
properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken.
Usage: humorous. "Man, the {{ASCII}}-to-{{EBCDIC}} code in that printer
driver is *fuggly*." See also {wonky}.
funky: adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly
strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to
change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to
describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has
bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is.
{TECO} and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is
extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they
age. "The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky;
if it bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it."
"This UART is pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in
interrupt mode, and active-low in DMA mode." See {fuggly}.
funny money: n. 1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or
storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course;
also called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit
opposition to real or `green' money). When your funny money
ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to
get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has
made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost
invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide
by with minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to
small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By
extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a
resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: `real
money'.
fuzzball: [TCP/IP hackers] n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite
of homebrewed software by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators,
used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol testbedding and
experimentation. These were used as NSFnet backbone sites in its
early 56KB-line days; a few 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 LISP hacker and
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}.
gang bang: n. The use of large numbers of loosely coupled
programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a
product in a short time. While there have been memorable gang
bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in
Steven Levy's `Hackers'), most are perpetrated by large
companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy
masses of code entirely lacking in orthogonality (see
{orthogonal}). When market-driven managers make a list of all
the features the competition has and assign one programmer to
implement each, they often miss the importance of maintaining a
coherent design. See also {firefighting}, {Mongolian Hordes
technique}, {Conway's Law}.
garbage collect: vi. (also `garbage collection', n.) See {GC}.
garply: /gar'plee/ [Stanford] n. Another meta-syntactic variable (see
{foo}); formerly popular among SAIL hackers.
gas: [as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and
hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous
quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some
loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A
suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of
mercy. "The system's wedging every few minutes. Gas!" 3. vt.
To {flush} (sense #1). "You should gas that old crufty
software." 4. [IBM] n. Dead space in nonsequentially organized
files that was occupied by data that has been deleted; the
compression operation that removes it is called `degassing' (by
analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term in vacuum
technology).
gaseous: adj. Deserving of being {gas}sed. Disseminated by Geoff
Goodfellow while at SRI; 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. He was eventually found not guilty by reason of
insanity.
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}. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use.
3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process.
`Garbage collection' is computer science jargon for a particular
class of strategies for dynamically reallocating computer memory.
One such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in
memory and determining what is no longer accessible; useless data
items are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be
recycled and used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP
language usually use garbage collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} is
more frequently used because it'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). 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}, 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 later played a major role in keeping
Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was itself
ditched for UNIX in the late 1980s when Honeywell retired its aging
{big iron} designs.
GECOS: n. See GCOS.
gedanken: /g@-dahn'kn/ adj. Ungrounded; impractical; not
well-thought-out; untried; untested. `Gedanken' is a German word
for `thought'. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your
head. In physics, the term `gedanken experiment' is used to
refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful
to consider because you can reason about it theoretically. (A
classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking
about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken
experiments are very useful in physics, but you have to be careful.
It 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 of an algorithm. See
also {DWIM}.
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."
gen: /jen/ n.,v. Short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken
and written contexts.
gender mender: n., A cable connector shell with either two male or
two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that
result when some {loser} didn't understand the RS232C
specification and the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp.
for RS-232C parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus
D-9 format. Also called a `gender bender', `gender
blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual adaptor';
there appears to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual
adapter' has pins on both sides (is male) or sockets on both sides
(connects two males).
General Public Virus: n. Pejorative name for some versions of the
{GNU} project {copyleft} or General Public License (GPL), which
requires that any tools or {app}s incorporating copylefted code
must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial terms as
GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software
generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software
that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's
official position as of January 1991 is that copyright law limits
the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating
significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not
passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted
(as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton).
Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language
is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU
tools and the GPL.
generate: vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or
program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect
of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of
{parse}. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (though
often humorously) when used of human behavior. "The guy is
rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him
and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."
gensym: [from MacLisp for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new
name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost
certainly not already in conflict with one already in use. 2. n.
The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is `Gnnnn'
where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognize
G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated data
structure with a gensymmed name. These are useful for storing or
uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).
Get a life!: imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person
to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see
{computer geek}). Often heard on {USENET}, esp. as a way of
suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of
{theology} too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by
William Shatner on a Saturday Night Live episode in a speech which
ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to
have been in use before then.
Get a real computer!: imp. Typical hacker response to news that
somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that (a)
is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address
space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991; note that
the threshold for `real computer' rises with time, and it may well
be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be
generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that
they already are in some circles). See {essentials}, {bitty
box} and {toy}.
GFR: /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 {GFR}ed it." See
also {prowler}, {reaper}. Compare {GC}, which discards only
provably worthless stuff.
gig: /jig/ or /gig/ n. Short for `gigabyte' (1024 megabytes);
used in describing amounts of {core} or mass storage. Also
written `GB'. "My machine just got upgraded to a quarter-gig".
See also {K} and {kilo-}.
giga-: /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ pref. Multiplier, 10 ^ 9 or 2 ^ 30. See
{kilo-}.
GIGO: /gie'goh/ [acronym] 1. Garbage In, Garbage out --- usually said
in response to {luser}s who complain that a program didn't complain
about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in
human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data.
2. Garbage In, Gospel Out --- this more recent expansion is a
sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive
trust in "computerized" data.
gillion: /jill'y@n/ n. 10 ^ 9. [From {giga-}, following
construction of mega/million and notional tera/trillion] Same as an
American billion or a British `milliard'.
GIPS: [analogy with MIPS] n. Gillons of Instructions per Second.
In 1991 this rather silly acronym is used of only a handful of
highly parallel machines, but this is expected to change.
glark: /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The
System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the
meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally
`glork'; the context was: "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish
English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic]
from context", 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} 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 the early
`dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM-3 (without cursor control). See
{tube}, {tty}. See Appendix A for an interesting true story
about a glass tty.
glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET the acronym for
Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor] n. Syn.
{firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.
glitch: /glich/ [from German `glitschen' to slip, via Yiddish
`glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in
electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch'. This is of grave concern
because it usually crashes all the computers. More common in
jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say,
"Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See
{gritch}. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen several
lines at a time. This derives from some oddities in the terminal
behavior under {WAITS}. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie},
sense #2.
All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has to hardware people. If the inputs of a
circuit change, and the outputs are supposed to change to some new
value, and they change to some random value for some very brief
time before they settle down to the correct value, then that is
called a glitch. This may or may not be harmful, depending on what
the circuit is connected to. This term is found in electronic
texts.
glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand special
characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action
is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for filename
wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers
use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on
technical topics. Those commonly encountered include:
* wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X}).
? wildcard for any character (generally only read this way
at the beginning or in the middle of a word).
[] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters.
{} alternation of comma-separated alternatives. Thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'.
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "That got posted to talk.politics.*" (all the
talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given
under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}.
Historical note: the jargon usage derives from `glob', the
name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic Bourne
Shell versions; this was necessary because early UNIX machines had
so little memory
glork: /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with
outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of two hours of
editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a
name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. vt. Similar to
{glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked
itself."
glue: n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that
connects between two component blocks. For example, the {Blue
Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything
used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks "glue logic".
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. ["GNU's Not UNIX!", see
{{recursive acronyms}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the
Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
(rms@mole.ai.mit.edu). GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two
tools designed for this project, have become very popular in
hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to
proselytize for RMS's position that information is community
property and all software source should be shared. One of its
slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this
remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of
designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors),
many hackers who disagree with him have nevertheless cooperated to
produce large amounts of high-quality software available for free
redistribution under the Free Software Foundation imprimatur. See
{EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX
hacker John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com), founder of USENET's anarchic
alt.* hierarchy.
GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard
abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}.
Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.
go flatline: [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces
upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To die,
terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is
used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too
serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. 2. To go completely
quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You
can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before
the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by
losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a bright horizontal line
bisecting the screen.
gobble: vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to
imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'.
"The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer."
"I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow."
See also {snarf}.
golden: adj. [perh. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to
describe a magnetic medium (e.g. `golden disk', `golden tape'),
describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship
software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.
golf-ball printer: n. A slow but letter-quality printing device
and terminal (the IBM 2741) based on the IBM Selectric typewriter.
The `golf ball' was a round object bearing mirror-image embossed
images of 88 different characters (arranged on four lines of
latitude); one could change the font by swapping in a different
golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a
non-ASCII (and in fact completely non-standard) character set; this
put it ten years ahead of its time---where it stayed, firmly
rooted, for the next twenty, until ASCII-based character displays
gave way to programmable bit-mapped displays with the flexibility
to support other character sets.
gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth
beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German
the term is (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, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're
pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some
sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk} (sense #4).
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}.
Good Thing: n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if
capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position
to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly
Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relaying
netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill
side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the
self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good
Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC
is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has
drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad
Thing}.
gorilla arm: n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a
mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early
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 selections, the arm begins to feel sore,
cramped, and oversized, hence `gorilla arm'. This is now
considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers;
"Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How's this gonna
fly in *real* use?".
gorp: /gorp/ [CMU, perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good
Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like
{foo} and {bar}.
GOSMACS: /goz'maks/ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] n. The first
{EMACS}-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by
{GNUMACS}. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now
modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author (James Gosling)
went on to invent {NeWS}.
Gosperism: /gos'p@r-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}.
gotcha: n. A {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming
language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes
because it behaves in an unexpected way. For example, a classic
gotcha in {C} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}' is
syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the value
of b into a and then executes `code' if a is non-zero. What
the programmer probably meant was `if (a==b) {code;}' which
executes `code' if a and b are equal.
GPL: n. Abbrev. for `General Public License' in widespread use; see
{copyleft}.
GPV: n. Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in widespread use.
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 {sagan}s of
sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies
of themselves out of whatever is available. The image that goes
with the term is one of the entire biosphere of Earth being
eventually converted to robot goo. This is the simplest of the
{{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments
from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue
goo}.
Great Renaming: n. The {flag day} on which all of the groups on the
{USENET} had their names changed from the net.- format to the
current multiple-hierarchies scheme.
Great Runes: n. Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some
archaic operating systems still emit these. See also {runes},
{smash case}, {fold case}.
great-wall: [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an
Oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style
and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food
to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of
N, which is the number of people in the group, can be inferred from
context (see {N}). See {{Oriental Food}}, {ravs},
{stir-fried random}.
Green Book: n. 1. One of the three standard PostScript references
(`PostScript Language Program Design', Adobe Systems,
Addison-Wesley 1988, QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN 0-201-14396-8); see also
{Red Book}, {Blue Book}). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: `Smalltalk-80: Bits of
History, Words of Advice', Glenn Krasner, Addison-Wesley 1983,
QA76.8.S635S58, ISBN 0-201-11669-3 (this, too, is associated with
blue and red books). 3. The `X/Open Compatibility Guide'.
Defines an international standard {UNIX} environment that is a
proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a
standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the
like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in
Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating
Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book".
5. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCITT 10th
plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review
cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1988 {Blue Book}); however, it is
rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992.
These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the
Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book titles}}.
green bytes: n. 1. Meta-information embedded in a file such as the
length of the file or its name; as opposed to keeping such
information in a separate description file or record. The term
comes from an IBM user's group meeting c.1962 where these two
approaches were being debated and the diagram of the file on the
blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn in green. 2. By extension,
the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "A GIF file
contains, among other things, green bytes describing the packing
method for the image."
green card: n. [after the `IBM System/360 Reference Data'
card] This is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if
the color is not green. Less frequently used now because of the
decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green
card so I can check the addressing mode for that instruction."
Some green cards are actually booklets.
The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370
was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM
refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room
at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask
another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and
passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser
turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never
to return. See also {card}.
green lightning: [IBM] n. 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on
the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being
downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as
some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that
`something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later
microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually
*programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any
bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or
marketing. E.g., "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000
architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
lightning". See also {feature}.
green machine: n. A computer or peripheral device that has been
designed and built to military specifications for field equipment
(that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature
and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform'
paint used for military equipment.
grep: /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where
re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the
Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it,
via {UNIX} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or 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?" See also {vgrep}.
grind: vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP
code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
{prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such operations.
2. [UNIX] To generate the formatted version of a document from the
nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source. The BSD program
`vgrind(1)' grinds code for printing on a Versatec bitmapped
printer. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a
connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind
a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole
system slow, e.g. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11". 5. `grind
grind' excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
grind crank: n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the
side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and
causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a
grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and
noise. See {grind}, and {wugga wugga}.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank --- the R1, a research machine built towards the the end of
the days of the great vacuum tube computers in 1959. R1 (also
known as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The
Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch
for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a
large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam
and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button.
This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down
to single-step 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}). 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 word meaning literally
`to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. 1. To
understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and
exhaustive knowledge. Contrast {zen}, similar supernal
understanding as a single brief flash. 2. Used of programs, may
connote merely sufficient understanding, e.g., "Almost all C
compilers grok void these days."
gronk: /gronk/ [popularized by the comic 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}". 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." 5. The sound
made by many 3.5" diskette drives. In particular, the floppies on
a Commodore Amiga go "grink, gronk".
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: /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which
makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is `dead' (can never be
accessed) due to changes in other parts of the program. The
preferred term in North America is {dead code}.
gubbish: /guh'bish/ [a portmanteau of "garbage" and "rubbish"?]
n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The
opposite portmanteau "rubbage" is also reported.
guiltware: n. 1. {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 freeloader if one does not immediately send the
poor suffering martyr gobs of money. 2. {Shareware} that works.
gumby: /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters, poss.
themselves named after the 1960s claymation character] 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. [UNIX] An 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: [from SF fandom] infix. A method of `marking' common words,
i.e. calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a
nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. 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, e.g. 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.
This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in
both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is
often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to
take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an
outsider, a {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. For further
enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also
{{Humor, Hacker}} and {AI koans}.
hack: 1. n. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed,
but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very
time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed.
3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this
heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In
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 `foo'" is roughly equivalent to
"`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I hack
solid-state physics." 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See
definition 3 and {hacker} (sense #6). 6. vi. To interact with
a computer in a playful and exploratory, rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for
{hacker}, which see. 8. [UNIX] n. A dungeon game similar to
{rogue} but more elaborate, distributed in C source over
{USENET} and very popular at UNIX sites and on PC-class machines.
Recent versions are called `nethack'.
Constructions on this term abound. They include: `happy
hacking', a farewell; `how's hacking?', a friendly greeting
among hackers; and `hack hack', a fairly content-free but
friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell. For more on
the meaning of {hack} see Appendix A. See also {neat hack},
{real hack}.
hack attack: [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack'; the variant
`big hack attack' is reported] n. Nearly synonymous with
{hacking run}, though the latter more strongly implies an
all-nighter.
hack mode: n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2.
More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem
which may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good
hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at
will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most
important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes
amplified as `deep hack mode'.
Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be
experienced as an physical shock, and the sensation of being in it
is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this
experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the
existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted
out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace}
(sense #2).
Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an
observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For
example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to
hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to
avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the
computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to
leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in
{hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense #2) in your
head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have
reached a good point to pause.
hack on: vt. To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
something one might {hack up}.
hack together: vt. To throw something together so it will work.
Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not
necessarily have negative connotations.
hack up: vt. To {hack}, but generally implies that the result is
a hack in sense #1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}.
To `hack up on' implies a quick and dirty modification to an
existing system. Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up},
{monkey up}, {cruft together}.
hack value: n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for
expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being
that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had
features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were
installed purely for hack value. This cannot be explained. As a
great artist once said of jazz, if you hafta ask, you ain't never
goin' to find out.
hack-and-slay: v. (also `hack-and-slash') 1. To play a {MUD}
or go mudding, especially with the intention of {berserking} for
pleasure. 2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking
session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace.
This term arose on the British academic network amongst students
who worked nights and logged onto Essex University's MUDs during
public-access hours (2 am to 7 am). Usually more mudding than
work was done in these sessions.
hacked off: [analogous with `pissed-off'] adj. Said of system
administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy due to
suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized
by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or
even overtly criminal activities. For example, having unreadable
files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot'
would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and
stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.
hacked up: adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the
surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare
{critical mass}). Note that not all programs which are hacked
become `hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to
coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge
better for the experience. Contrast {hack up}.
hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n.
1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most
users who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively), or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who
is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular
program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in
`a UNIX hacker'. (Definitions 1 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. One who enjoys the
intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing
limitations. 8. (deprecated) A malicious meddler who tries to
discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence
`password hacker', `network hacker'. See {cracker}.
hacking run: [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A
hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially
one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard
way' (see {phase}).
Hacking X for Y: [ITS] n. The information ITS made publically
available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in
which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these
fields were combined into a project description of the form
"Hacking X for Y" (e.g., `"Hacking perceptrons for
Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has
since been carried over to other systems with more general
facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s).
hackish: /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said of
something which is or involves 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 something 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: n. The quality of being or involving a hack. See
{hackitude}.
hackitude: n. Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered silly.
hair: [back-formation from {hairy}] n. The complications that
make something hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a
certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite
hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous'
(tending to promote hair growth): "GNUMACS Elisp encourages lusers
to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous
all right." (or just: "Hair squared!")
hairy: adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly
hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows
this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See
also {hirsute}.
HAKMEM: /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary
collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed
by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really
is "HAKMEM", which is a six-letterism for `hacks memo'.) Some of
them are very useful techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting
unsolved problems, but most fall into the category of mathematical
and computer trivia. A sampling of the entries (with authors),
slightly paraphrased:
Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less
than 2 ^ 18.
Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most *probable* suit
distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,
which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the
world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying
things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state
of lowest disordered energy.
Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5
(that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25
such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same
number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that
differ only by rotation and reflection.
Item 154 (Gosper): The myth that any given programming language is
machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of
powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1 with sign +, you
are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops with period =
1 at -1, you are on a twos-complement machine. If the result loops
with period greater than 1, including the beginning, you are on a
ones-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater
than 1, not including the beginning, your machine isn't
binary---the pattern should tell you the base. If you run out of
memory, you are on a string or bignum system. If arithmetic
overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind
is trying to enforce machine independence. But the very ability to
trap overflow is machine dependent. By this strategy, consider the
universe, or, more precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many
powers of two = ...111111 Now add X to itself: X + X = ...111110
Thus, 2X = X - 1, so X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine
(the universe) that is two's-complement.
Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only
number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an
integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two
representations are identical.
Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when
processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed
out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the
text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out,
and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output
occurs in the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We
note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one
sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are
nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the
first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By
Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a
loop. An option to find overlapped instances would be useful,
although it would require backing up N-1 characters before seeking
the next N character string.
HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.
hakspek: /hak'speek/ n. Generally used term to describe a method of
spelling to be found on many British academic bulletin boards and
{talker system}s. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are
replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which are
phonetically similar or equivalent, whilst multiple letters are
usually dropped. Hence, `for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to'
become `2'; `ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow"
becomes "b4 i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986,
and was probably caused by the slow speed of available talker
systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating
systems, and no standard methods of communication. Has become
rarer nowadays. See also {talk mode}.
hamster: n. A particularly slick little piece of code that does one
thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is of a
hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel.
hand-hacking: n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s
from an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to
coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and
the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {bum}; syn.
with v. {cruft}. 2. More generally, manual construction or
patching of data sets that would normally be generated by a
translation utility and interpreted by another program, and aren't
really designed to be read or modified by humans.
handshaking: n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or
keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do
protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might
watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate
that they've heard each others' points and say "Oh, they're
handshaking!". See also {protocol}.
handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians]
1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to
support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty
logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"
If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or
"Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", it is
a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these
constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone
else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory behind
this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the
listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you
have said is {bogus}. Failing that, if a listener does object,
you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand.
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands
up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting
at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the
handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position
while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In
context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker
makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave
your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than
words could express, that his logic is faulty.
hang: v. 1. 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}, {hung}. 2. To wait for some
event to occur; to hang around until something happens. "The
program displays a menu and then hangs until you type a
character." Compare {block}. 3. To attach a peripheral
device, esp. in the construction `hang off'. "We're going to
hang another tape drive off the file server". Implies a device
attached with cables, rather than something that's strictly inside
the machine's chassis.
Hanlon's Razor: prov. A corollary of {Murphy's Law} similar 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.
hardcoded: adj. 1. Data inserted directly into a program, where
it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some
{profile}, resource (see {de-rezz} sense #2), or environment
variable that a {user} or hacker can easily modify. 2. In C,
this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a preprocessor
`#define''d (see {magic number}).
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}.
hardwired: adj. 1. In software, syn. for {hardcoded}. 2. By
extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the sense
of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.
has the X nature: [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the
form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker
construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone
who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded in it
truly has the {loser} nature!"
hash bucket: n. A notional receptacle into which more than one
thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped.
This is used as techspeak with respect to code that uses actual
hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human associative memory
as well. Thus, two things "in the same hash bucket" may be
confused with each other. Compare {hash collision}.
hash collision: [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash
clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative
memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see
{thinko}). True story: one of us [ESR] was once on the phone
with a friend about to move out to Berkeley. When asked what he
expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied "Well, I have
this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but
I think that's just a collision in my hash tables." Compare
{hash bucket}.
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.
heads down: [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so
long that everything outside the focus area is missed. See also
{hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it's not confined to
fledgling hackers.
heartbeat: n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet
transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the
collision-detection circuit is still connected. 2. A periodic
synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a bus
clock or a periodic interrupt. 3. The `natural' oscillation
frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division
down to the machine's clock rate. 4. A signal emitted at regular
intervals by software to demonstrate that it's still alive.
Sometimes hardware is designed to reboot the machine if it stops
hearing a heartbeat. See also {breath-of-life packet}.
heavy metal: [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.
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 similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here...". Compare
{voodoo programming}.
heavyweight: adj. High-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive;
featureful, but costly. Esp. used of communication protocols,
language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum
generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at the
expense of mundane considerations like speed, memory utilization,
and start-up time. {EMACS} is a heavyweight editor; {X} is an
`extremely' heavyweight window system. This term isn't
pejorative, but one man's heavyweight is another's {elephantine}
and a third's {monstrosity}. Oppose `lightweight'.
heisenbug: /hie'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in
quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior
when one attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of {Bohr bug}.
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 that {smash the stack}.
Helen Keller mode: n. State of a hardware or software system that
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}, {catatonic}.
hello sailor!: interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of {hello,
world}; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with
the game {Zork} (which also included "hello aviator" and "hello
implementor"). Originally from the traditional hooker's
greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of course.
hello wall!: excl. See {wall}.
hello, world: interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in
the C/UNIX universe. 2. Any of the minimal programs that emit
this message. 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 (and indeed it is the first example
program in {K&R}). Environments that generate an unreasonably
large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy}
compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to
{lose} (see {X}). 2. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an
entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello,
world! Is the {VAX} back up yet?"
hex: n. 1. Short for {{hexadecimal}}, base 16. 2. A six-pack
of anything (compare {quad}, sense #2). Neither usage has
anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is
appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. True story: as a
joke, some hackers once offered some surplused ICs for sale to be
worn as protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were,
of course, hex inverters.
hexadecimal:: n. Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to
replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for
stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.
Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take `binary'
to be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base
10, for examples, is `denary' (compare `binary'), which comes from
`deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive' number;
the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like
`sendenary'. `Decimal' is from an ordinal number; the
corresponding prefix for six would imply something like
`sextidecimal'. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this
context and `hexa-' is Greek. The word `octal' is similarly
incorrect; correct forms would be `octaval' (to go with decimal),
or `octonary' (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a
base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the
unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two `correct' forms;
both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim to this throne.
hexit: /hek'sit/ n. A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A--F or a--f).
Used by people who claim that there are only *ten* digits,
dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, regardless
of what some keyboard designs might seem to imply (see
{space-cadet keyboard}).
hidden flag: [scientific computation] n. An extra option added to a
routine without changing the calling sequence. For example,
instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine
to give extra diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a
test for some otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs,
such as a negative mass. Liberal use of hidden flags can make a
program very hard to debug and understand.
high bit: [from `high order bit'] n. 1. The most significant bit
in a byte. 2. 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." See also {meta 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 wakes being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's
last {ITS} machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the high
moby and the other the low moby. All parties involved grokked this
instantly. See {moby}.
highly: [scientific computation] adv. The preferred modifier for
overstating an understatement. As in: `highly nonoptimal', the
worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either
impossible or requiring a major research project; `highly
nonlinear', completely erratic and unpredictable; `highly
nontechnical', drivel written for {luser}s, oversimplified to the
point of being misleading or incorrect (compare {drool-proof
paper}). In other computing cultures, postfixing of {in the
extreme} might be preferred.
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}.
hobbit: n. 1. The High Order Bit of a byte; same as the {meta
bit}. 2. The non-ITS name of vad@ai.mit.edu (*Hobbit*), master
of lasers.
hog: n.,vt. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem
to eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp.
those which noticeably degrade interactive response. *Not*
used of programs that are simply extremely large or complex or
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 war}s
over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that
popularized the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in
connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled
`On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace'. Other perennial Holy
Wars have included: {EMACS} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs.
everyone else's personal computer, {ITS} vs. {UNIX}, {UNIX}
vs. {VMS}, {BSD} UNIX vs. {USG UNIX}, {C} vs. {{Pascal}},
{C} vs. {LISP}, etc. ad nauseam. The characteristic that
distinguishes {holy wars} from normal technical disputes is that
most participants spend their time trying to pass off personal
value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical
evaluations. See also {theology}.
home box: n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she
owns. "Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2BSD, so
there!"
hook: n. A software or hardware feature included in order to
simplify later additions or changes by a user. 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 hairy but powerful hook; one can then write a
routine to print numbers as Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew
characters, and plug it into the program through the hook. Often
the difference between a good program and a superb one is that the
latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places. Both may do
the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is
much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities ({EMACS},
for example, is *all* hooks). The term `user exit' is
synonymous but much more formal and less hackish.
hop: n. One file transmission in a series required to get a file
from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network. On such
networks (including {UUCPNET} and {FidoNet}), the important
inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest path
between them, rather than their geographical separation. See
{bang path}.
hose: 1. vt. 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 that
represent performance bottlenecks. 3. n. Cabling, especially
thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes called `bit hose' or
`hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. See also
{washing machine}.
hosed: adj. Same as {down}. Used primarily by UNIX hackers.
Humorous: also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to
reverse. Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser'
popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV. See
{hose}. It is also widely used of people in the mainstream sense
of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.
Once upon a time, a Cray which had been experiencing periodic
difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been {hosed}.
It was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of
some coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then
assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed.
hot spot: n. 1. [primarily C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] It
is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code
eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction
visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge
spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called
`hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or
{hand-hacking}. The term is especially used of tight loops and
recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say)
initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See
{tune}, {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." 3. In a massively
parallel computer with shared memory, the one location that all ten
thousand processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps
because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same lock).
house wizard: [prob. from ad-agency lingo, `house freak'] n. A
hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position
at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have
influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and
still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of UNIX wizards. The
term `house guru' is equivalent.
HP-SUX: /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 respondent claims that the proper pronunciation
is /aych-pee ukkkhhhh/ as though one were spitting. Another such
alternate spelling and pronunciation is "H-PUX" /aych-puhks/.
Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computer that was swallowed
by HP in 1989) have been heard to complain that Mr. Packard should
have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the
greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. Compare {buglix}.
See also {Telerat}, {sun-stools}, {terminak}.
huff: v. To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs
that use such methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant
thereof. Oppose {puff}. Compare {crunch}, {compress}.
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 Minnesota during the
1970s and early '80s) but was later sighted on early UNIX systems.
humungous: /hyoo-muhng'g@s/ alt. `humongous' (hyoo-mohng'g@s)
See {hungus}. This is now used in a similar sense in mainstream
slang, but seems to have been in common use among hackers for years
before it became established there. Some hackers believe it
originated at the MIT AI lab in the Sixties and spread outward from
there; alternatively, it may have been an early import from surfer
slang via Stanford.
Humor, Hacker:: n. A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor
found among hackers, having the following distinctive
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 red index card in front of him/her
with "GREEN", or vice-versa (note, however, that this is only
funny the first time).
2) Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs such
as specifications (see {write-only memory}), standards documents,
language descriptions (see {INTERCAL}), and even entire scientific
theories (see {quantum bogodynamics}, {computron}).
3) Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4) Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5) A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive
currents of intelligence in it, for example: old Warner Brothers
and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, The Marx Brothers, the early
B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor 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}, {retrocomputing}, and Appendix B. If you have an
itchy feeling that all six of these traits are really aspects of
one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you
are (a) correct and (b) responding like a hacker. These traits are
also recognizable (though in a less marked form) throughout
{{Science-Fiction Fandom}}.
hung: [from `hung up'] adj. Equivalent to {wedged}. but more
common at UNIX/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with
{locked up}, {wedged}; compare {hosed}. See also {hang}.
A hung state is distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, where the
program or system is also unusable but because it is not running
rather than because it is waiting for something. However, the
recovery from both situations is often the same.
hungry puppy: n. Syn. {slopsucker}.
hungus: /huhng'g@s/ [perhaps related to current slang `humungous';
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 that is *far*
away from where the program counter should be pointing, often
inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "Another core
dump... looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace
somehow", (compare {jump off into never-never land}). This
usage is from the SF notion of a spaceship jumping `into
hyperspace', that is, taking a shortcut through higher-dimensional
space --- in other words, bypassing this universe.
= I =
=====
I didn't change anything!: interj. An aggrieved cry often heard as
bugs manifest during a regression test. The {canonical} reply to
this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did before,
doesn't it?" See also {one-line fix}. This is also heard from
applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications
problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a
divide-by-zero fault after terminals were added to a network.
Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close
questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the
program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion,
but actually hosed the code completely.
i14y: n. Written-only abbrev. for `interoperability', which is an
`i' followed by 14 letters followed by `y'. Used in the {X}
community.
i18n: n. Written-only abbrev. for `internationalization', which is
an `i' followed by 18 letters followed by `n'. Used in the {X}
community.
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 does
count 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 some
rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within IBM's own
beleaguered hacker underground.
IBM discount: n. A price increase. Outside IBM, this derives from
the common perception that IBM products are generally overpriced
(see {clone}); inside, it is said to spring from a belief that
large numbers of IBM employees living in an area cause prices to
rise.
ice: [coined by USENETter Tom Maddox, popularized by William
Gibson's cyberpunk SF: acronym, `Intrusion Countermeasure
Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels, 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
mid-1991, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive and both
terms may develop a denotation in the 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. See also
{bare metal}. 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." Also seen in
variant forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO
(In My Arrogant Opinion).
in the extreme: adj. A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish
terms. See, for example, `obscure in the extreme' under {obscure},
and compare {highly}.
incantation: n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that
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".
include: vt. [USENET] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of
another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in a
reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response.
See the section on inclusion styles in the front matter. 2.
Derived from C: `#include <disclaimer.h>' has appeared in
{sig block}s to refer to a notional `standard disclaimer
file'.
include war: n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a
discussion {thread}, a practice which tends to annoy readers. In
a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as USENET, this can lead
to {flame}s and the urge to start a {kill file}.
indent style: [C programmers] n. The rules one uses to indent code
in a readable fashion; a subject of {holy wars}. There are four
major C indent styles, as described below; all have the aim of
making it easier for the reader to visually track the scope of
control constructs. The significant variable is the placement of
`{' and `}' with respect to the statement(s) they
enclose and the guard or controlling statement (if, else, for
while, or do) on the block, if any.
`K&R style' --- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the
examples in {K&R} are formatted this way. Also called `kernel
style' because the UNIX kernel is written in it, and the `One True
Brace Style', abbr. 1TBS, by its partisans. The basic indent shown
here is 8 spaces (or 1 tab) per level; 4 or 2 is occasionally seen,
but is much less common.
if (cond) {
<body>
}
`Allman style' --- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who
wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called
`BSD style'). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and
Algol. Basic indent per level shown here is 8 spaces, but 4 is
just as common (esp. in C++ code).
if (cond)
{
<body>
}
`Whitesmiths style' --- popularized by the examples that came
with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent
per level shown here is 8 spaces, but 4 is occasionally seen.
if (cond)
{
<body>
}
`GNU style' --- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always 4
spaces per level, with { and } halfway between the outer and
inner indent levels.
if (cond)
{
<body>
}
Statistically, surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles
to be the most common, with about equal mind share. K&R/1TBS used
to be nearly universal, but is now much less common (the opening
brace tends to get lost against the right paren of the guard part
in an `if' or `while', which is a {Bad Thing}).
Defenders of 1TBS argue that any putative gain in readability is
less important than their style's relative economy with vertical
space, which enables one to see more code on one's screen at once.
Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subjects of {holy
wars}.
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'). See {bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}.
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." The word most likely to
follow `infinite', though, is {hair} (it has been pointerd out
that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair). These
uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. The term
"semi-infinite" denoting an immoderately large amount of some
resource is also heard. "This compiler is taking a semi-infinite
amount of time to optimize my program." See also {semi}.
infinity: n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a
particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type,
whatever). 2. `minus infinity': The smallest such value, not
necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus infinity.
In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is `2 ^ (N-1) -
1' but minus infinity is `- (2 ^ (N-1))', not `-(2 ^
(N-1) - 1)'. Note also that this is different from `time T
equals minus infinity', which is closer to a mathematician's usage
of infinity.
insanely great: adj. [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD UNIX
people via Bill Joy] Something so incredibly {elegant} that it is
imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of
{hacker}-natures.
INTERCAL: /in't@r-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 purposefully different from all other computer
languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language,
being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference
Manual will make the style of the language clear:
"It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if
one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:
DO :1 <- #0$#256
any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this
is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look
foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to
turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less
devastating for the programmer having been correct."
INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
more unspeakable. The Woods/Lyons implementation was actually used
by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language
has been recently 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,
and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient
Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Oppose
{trivial}, {uninteresting}.
Internet address:: [techspeak] n. 1. [techspeak] An absolute
network address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name,
bar is a {sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly
including periods itself. Contrasts with {bang path}; 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}, {domainist}. 2.
More loosely, any network address reachable through Internet; this
includes {bang path} addresses and some internal corporate and
government networks.
Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the
four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed
by a selection of geographical domains:
com
Commercial organizations.
edu
Educational institutions.
gov
U.S. government civilian sites.
mil
U.S. military sites.
Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in the
U.S. or Canada.
us
Sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains.
su
Sites in the Soviet Union (only one really active one so far!).
uk
Sites in the United Kingdom.
Within the `us' domain there are subdomains for the fifty
states, generally with a name identical to the state's postal
abbreviation. Within the `uk' domain there is an `ac' subdomain for
academic sites and a `co' domain for commercial ones. Other
top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.
interrupt: 1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that
interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts
flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also
{trap}. 2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker.
Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt --- have you seen Joe
recently?". See {priority interrupt}. 3. Under MS-DOS, the
term `interrupt' is nearly synonymous with `system call', because
the OS and BIOS routines are both called using the INT instruction
(see {{interrupt list, the}}) and because programmers so often have
to bypass the OS (going directly to a BIOS interrupt) to get
reasonable performance.
interrupt list, the:: [MSDOS] n. The list of all known software
interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for IBM PCs and
compatibles maintained and made available for free redistribution
by Ralf Brown (ralf@cs.cmu.edu). As of early 1991, it had grown to
approximately 1 megabyte in length.
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." The synonym `interrupts disabled' is
also common. Variations of this abound; "to have one's interrupt
mask bit set" or "interrupts masked out"is also heard. See also
{spl}.
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 Age: n. In the history of computing, 1961-1971 --- the formative
era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when {big iron}
{dinosaur}s ruled the earth (the hackish metaphors for the era
aren't quite paleontologically correct). These began with the
delivery of the first PDP-1, coincided with the dominance of
ferrite {core}, and ended with the introduction of the first
commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004) in 1971. See also
{Stone Age}.
iron box: [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap a
{cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough to be
traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the hacker's
movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep him
interested and logged on. See also {back door}, {firewall
machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's account in
`Cuckoo's Egg' of how he made and used one (see Appendix C).
ironmonger: [IBM] n. Derogatory. A hardware specialist. Compare
{sandbender}, {polygon pusher}.
ITS: /ie-tee-ess/ n. 1. 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
jargon derives from ITS folklore. After about 1982, most actual
work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes
run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community.
The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the
end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide
(see {high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden
is maintaining 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 A. 2. A mythical image of operating system
perfection worshipped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time
hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense #2). ITS
worshippers manage somehow to continue believing that an OS that
supported only character I/O and monocase 6-character filenames in
one directory per account remains superior to today's state of
commercial art (their venom against UNIX is particularly intense).
See also {holy wars}, {Weenix}.
IWBNI: [acronym] It Would Be Nice If. No pronunciation, as this is
never spoken, only written. Compare {WIBNI}.
IYFEG: [USENET] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic
Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to
avoid offending anyone. See {JEDR}.
= J =
=====
J. Random: /jay rand'm/ n. [generalized from {J. Random Hacker}]
Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; `any old'. `J. Random' is often
prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly
`some particular' or `any specific one'. "Would you let
J. Random Loser marry your daughter?". The most common uses are
`J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser' and `J. Random Nerd'
("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to {gun} down other
people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of
{random} in any sense.
J. Random Hacker: [MIT] /jay rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure
like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See
{random}, {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been
inspired or influenced by `J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee
whose name was a household word back in the early days of the MIT
Model Railroad Club.
jaggies: /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an
edge (esp. a linear edge of shallow or steep slope) is rendered on
a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).
JCL: n. 1. IBM's supremely {rude} `Job Control Language'.
JCL is the script language used to control the execution of
programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very {fascist}
syntax, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if two spaces
appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL
simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names.
Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL is
regarded with the mixed respect which one gives to someone who
memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at IBM
itself sometimes sing "I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the toune of
the Mickey Mouse Club theme to express their opinion of the beast
(think about the original lyrics). 2. Any very {rude} software
that a hacker is expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As
with {COBOL}, JCL is often used as an archetype of ugliness even
by those who haven't experienced it. See also {IBM}, {fear and
loathing}.
JEDR: n. Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, the
rec.humor.funny newsgroup on USENET tended to use JEDR instead of
{IYFEG} or <ethnic>; this stemmed from a nearly successful
attempt to kill the group once made by a loser with the initials
JEDR after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there (the
practice was rationalized by the expanding these initials as `Joke
Ethnic/Denomination/Race'). After much sound and fury JEDR faded
away; this term appears to be doing likewise.
JFCL: /jif'kl/ or /jaf'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') 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 co-authors, has
long had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW. Usage: rare except
among old-time PDP-10 hackers.
jiffy: n. 1. The duration 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 Canada, 1/50 most other places) but more recently 1/100
sec has become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies"
means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once
for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about 10 times a second. 2.
Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond
{wall time} interval. 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. See also {Real Soon Now}.
job security: n. When some piece of code is written in a
particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time
or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the
programmer was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by
making himself indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke
seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some
code together and one points at a section and says `job security',
the other one may just nod.
jock: n. 1. 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`/ n. 1. Code that is overly {tense} and
unmaintainable. "{Perl} may be a handy program, but if you look
at the source, it's complete joe code." 2. Badly written,
possibly buggy.
Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a
particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed
that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code'
was intended in sense #1.
JR[LN]: /jay ahr en/, /jay ahr el/ n. The names JRN and JRL were
sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID
used under {TOPS-10}; they were understood to be the initials of
(fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Nerd' and `J. Random
Loser' (see {J. Random}). For example, if one said "To log in,
type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "log 1,JRN"), the
listener would have understood that he should use his own computer
id in place of `JRN'.
jump off into never-never land: [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter
Pan'] v. Same as {branch to Fishkill}, but more common in
technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers that use the
term `jump' rather than `branch'. Compare {hyperspace}.
= K =
=====
K: /kay/ [from {kilo-}] n. A kilobyte. This is used both as a
spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for
megabyte and gigabyte). The formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is
`k'; some people use this strictly, reserving `K' for
multiplication by 1024. See also {kilo-}.
K&R: [Kernighan and Ritchie] n. Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie's
`The C Programming Language', esp. the classic and influential
first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978, ISBN 0-113-110163-3). Syn.
{White Book}, {Old Testament}. See also {New Testament}.
kahuna: /k@-hoo'nuh/ [IBM, from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n.
Synonym for {wizard}, {guru}.
kamikaze packet: n. The `official' jargon for what is more commonly
called a {Christmas tree packet}. RFC1025, `TCP and IP Bake Off'
says:
10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze"
packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test
segment, et al.). That is, correctly handle a segment with the
maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH
FIN segment with options and data).
See also {Chernobyl packet}.
ken: /ken/ n. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software
Support group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the
user community were both named Ken.
kgbvax: /kay-jee-bee-vaks/ n. See {kremvax}.
kill file: [USENET] n. (alt. `KILL file') Per-user file(s) used
by some {USENET} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's
`rn(1)') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading)
articles 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 one's newsreader in future. By extension,
it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in
other media. See also {plonk}.
killer 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 (see {poke}) in a memory-mapped
control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on
MMU-less {bitty box}es like the IBM PC and Commodore PET that can
overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. See also
{HCF}.
kilo-: [from metric measure] pref. 1. Used with anything that
naturally comes in powers of 2 (especially byte quantities),
`kilo-' usually denotes multiplication by 1024. 2. With units of
time or things that come in powers of 10, such as money, it retains
its usual meaning of multiplication of 1000.
Similarly, the higher metric prefixes may denote multiplication by
powers of 1024 = 2 ^ 10 rather than of 1000:
prefix binary decimal
kilo- 1024 ^ 1 = 2 ^ 10 1,024
mega- 1024 ^ 2 = 2 ^ 20 1,048,576
giga- 1024 ^ 3 = 2 ^ 30 1,073,741,824
tera- 1024 ^ 4 = 2 ^ 40 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1024 ^ 5 = 2 ^ 50 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1024 ^ 6 = 2 ^ 60 1,152,921,504,606,846,976.
Confusion of 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in
magnitude), for example, describing memory in units of 500K or 524K
(see {K}) instead of 512K, is a sure sign of the {marketroid}.
See also {mega-}, {giga-}, {tera-}, {peta-}, {exa-}.
KIPS: [acronym, by analogy with {MIPS} using {K}] n. Thousands
(*not* 1024s) of Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.
KISS Principle: n. "Keep It Simple, Stupid". A maxim often
invoked when discussing design to fend off {creeping featurism}
and control development complexity. Possibly related to the
{marketroid} maxim on sales presentations, "Keep It Short and
Simple".
kit: [USENET] n. A source software distribution that has been
packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and
installed according to a series of steps using only standard UNIX
tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain of
references from the top-level {README file}. The more general
term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more
stringent conditions on the host environment are required.
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. A plurality of
hackers pronounce this word /klooj/ but spell it incorrectly as
`kludge' (compare the pronunciation drift of {mung}). Some
observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning.] 1.
n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device in hardware or
software. (A long-ago {Datamation} article by Jackson Granholme
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. n. Something
that works for the wrong reason. 4. vt. To insert a kluge into a
program. "I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug,
but there's probably a better way." 5. [WPI] n. A feature that
is implemented in a {rude} manner.
kluge around: vt. To avoid a bug or difficult condition by
inserting a {kluge}. Compare {workaround}.
kluge up: vt. To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this
is milder than {cruft together} and has some of the connotations
of {hack up} (note, however, that the construction `kluge on'
corresponding to {hack on} is never used). "I've kluged up this
routine to dump the buffer contents to a safe place."
Knights of the Lambda Calculus: n. A semi-mythical organization of
wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers (the name refers to a mathematical
formalism invented by Alonzo Church with which LISP is intimately
connected). There is no enrollment list and the criteria for
induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known to
give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who they
are....
Knuth: [Donald Knuth's `The Art of Computer Programming'] n.
Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data
structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know, as
in "I think you can find that in Knuth." Contrast {literature,
the}. See also {bible}.
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 originated there by 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.
In fact, it was only 6 years later that the first genuine site in
Moscow, demos.su, joined USENET. Some readers needed convincing
that it wasn't another prank. Vadim Antonov (avg@hq.demos.su),
the major poster from Moscow up to at least the end of 1990, was
quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in his own
postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by
blandly admitting that he *was* a hoax! [Mr. Antonov also
contributed the Russian-language material for this File --- ESR]
= L =
=====
lace card: n. obs. A {{punched 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. Card punches
could also jam trying to produce these things due to power-supply
problems. When some practical joker fed a lace card through the
reader, you needed to clear the jam with a `card knife' ---
which you used 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 restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric)
applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A
language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the
five sentences scattered throughout a 200-plus page manual which
together imply the answer to your question "if only you had
thought to look there". Compare {wizard}, {legal},
{legalese}.
languages of choice: n. {C} and {LISP}. Essentially all hackers
know one of these and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk
and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities.
There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with
FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They
often prefer to be known as <real programmer>s, and other hackers
consider them a bit odd (see `The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer'
in Appendix A). Assembler is generally no longer considered
interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation,
glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems
programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific
programming.
Most hackers tend to frown at languages like {{Pascal}} and
{{Ada}} which don't give them the near-total freedom considered
necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and
to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {COBOL}
or other traditional {card walloper} languages as a total
{loss}.
larval stage: n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration
on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers.
Common symptoms include: the perpetration of more than one 36-hour
{hacking run} in a given week, neglect of all other activities
including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene, and
a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 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. See also {wannabee}. 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."
laser chicken: n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish
containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy
pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for
two reasons; it can {zap} you just like a laser, and the
sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams.
In a variation on this theme, it is reported that one group of
Australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon
chicken' as `Chernobyl Chicken'. The name is derived from the
color of the sauce, which is considered bright enough to glow in
the dark (mythically, like some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl).
laundromat: n. Syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}.
LDB: /l@'d@b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract
from the middle. "LDB me a slice of cake, please" This usage has
been kept alive by Common LISP's function of the same name. See
also {DPB}.
leaf site: n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET
news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic. Often
uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to
backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, the network
tends to develop bottlenecks. Compare {backbone site}, {rib
site}.
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}.
legal: adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the
relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints
defined by software. Thus one very frequently hears constructions
like `legal syntax', `legal input', etc. Hackers often model their
work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the
objective is to maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to
achieve a desired objective. Their use of `legal' is flavored as
much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one
having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare {language lawyer},
{legalese}.
legalese: n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description,
product specification, or interface standard; text that seems
designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to
{parse} it. While hackers are not afraid of high information
density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy
both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they
associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which
hackers generally get the short end of the stick.
LERP: /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a
verb or noun for the operation. E.g., Bresenham's algorithm lerps
incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.
let the smoke out: v. To fry hardware (see {fried}). See
{magic smoke} for the mythology behind this.
lexer: /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for `lexical
analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language
(the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers
get confused by the old-style compound ops like `=-'".
life: n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway
and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific
American, October 1970). 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!}.
light pipe: n. Fiber optic cable. Oppose {copper}.
like kicking dead whales down the beach: adj. A slow, difficult,
and disgusting process. First popularized by a famous quote about
the difficulty of getting work done under one of IBM's mainframe
OSs. "Well, you *could* write a C compiler in COBOL, but it
would be like kicking dead whales down the beach." See also
{fear and loathing}
like nailing jelly to a tree: adj. Used to describe a task thought
to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from poor
specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain.
line eater, the: [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete
versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ
bytes of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the
text of the article start with a space or tab. This bug was
quickly personified as a mythical creature called the `line
eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater
food'. Ironically, line eater food not preceded by whitespace
wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there
*was* whitespace before it, then the line eater would eat the
food *and* the beginning of the text which it was supposed to
be protecting. The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater'
continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the
wall}, and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself is
still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to be lurking in some
mail-to-netnews gateways. 2. See {NSA line eater}.
line starve: [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the
wrong way by one line (most printers 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) that suppresses a
{newline} or other character(s) 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 (for example) one is 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 (include directory) arguments on
older C preprocessors.
lint: [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named perhaps for the bits of
fluff it picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program closely
for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C,
esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the
UNIX utility `lint(1)' is used. This term used to be
restricted to use of `lint(1)' itself but (judging by
references on USENET) has become a shorthand for {desk check} at
some non-UNIX shops, even in languages other than C. See also
{delint}. 2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as in "this
draft has too much lint".
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 finally
meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says
"How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out
a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since
then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." The
fat one replies "Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and ate a
manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"
LISP: [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from
`Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] n. The name of
AI's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a)
variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, and (b)
the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Invented by
John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is actually older
than any other {HLL} still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly,
it has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years;
modern variants are quite different in detail from the original
LISP 1.5. The hands-down favorite of a plurality of hackers until
the early 1980s, LISP now shares the throne with {C}. See
{languages of choice}.
All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return
values; this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs,
gave rise to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar
Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything
and the cost of nothing."
literature, the: n. Computer science journals and other
publications vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the
speaker believes is {trivial}. Thus, one might answer an
annoying question "It's in the literature." Oppose {Knuth},
which has no connotation of triviality.
little-endian: adj. Describes a computer architecture in which,
within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have
lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). The
PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel microprocessors and
a lot of communications and networking hardware are little-endian.
See {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. The term
is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than
bytes; most frequently these are bits within a byte.
Live Free Or Die!: imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which
used to be on its car license plates. 2. A slogan associated with
UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw themselves as a
tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the windmills of
industry. The "free" referred specifically to freedom from the
{fascist} design philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on
commercial operating systems. Armando Stettner, one of the early
UNIX developers, used to give out fake license plates bearing this
motto under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors of green and
white. These are now valued collector's items.
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}. Less common.
lobotomy: n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management
training is said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term
is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter
doubtless intend it as a joke. 2. The act of removing the
processor from a microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it.
Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form
--- everything but the brain.
locked and loaded: [from military slang for an M-16 with magazine
inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable disk
volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the drive
and with the heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads are
`loaded' whenever the power is up, this description is never used
of {{Winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle).
locked up: adj. Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.
logic bomb: n. Code surreptitiously inserted 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 `logical' name] adj.
Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who has
long held a certain post left and was replaced, the replacement
would for a while be known as the `logical' Les Earnest (this
does not imply any judgement on the replacement). Compare
{virtual}.
At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote 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 Francisco and
physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that,
by definition, El Camino Real 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 reinforced 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 industry that has
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 might
describe these directions as `logical north' and `logical south',
to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding
to the usual denotation for those words. (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!)
loop through: vt. To process each element of a list of things.
"Hold on, I've got to loop through my paper mail." Derives from
the computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr
down' (under {cdr}) which is less common among C and UNIX
programmers. ITS hackers used to say `IRP over' after an
obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.
lord high fixer: [primarily British, prob. from Gilbert & Sullivan's
`lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who
knows the most about some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.
lose: [MIT] vi. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters
an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.
2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. 3. Of people, to
be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). See
also {deserves to lose}. 4. n. Refers to something which is
{losing}, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" or "What
a lose!".
lose lose: interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable
situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose,
lose."
loser: n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or
person. Someone who habitually loses (even winners can lose
occasionally). Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows
not. Emphatic forms are `real loser', `total loser', and
`complete loser' (but not `moby loser', which would be a
contradiction in terms). See {luser}.
losing: adj. Said of anything which is or causes a {lose} or
{lossage}.
loss: n. Something (not a person) which loses; a situation in which
something is losing. Emphatic forms include `moby loss',
`total loss', `complete loss'. Common interjections are
"What a loss!" and "What a moby loss!" (`moby loss' is OK even
though `moby loser' is not used; applied to an abstract noun, moby
is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person it implies
substance and has positive connotations) Compare {lossage}.
lossage: /los'@j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This is
a mass or 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.
lost in the noise: adj. Syn. {lost in the underflow}. This term
is from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude
cannot be separated from low-intensity noise in the system. Though
popular among hackers, it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists,
engineers, astronomers and statisticians all use it.
lost in the underflow: adj. Too small to be worth considering;
more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or
measurement. This is a reference to a condition called
`floating underflow' that can occur when a floating-point
arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its
limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast,
cold current that sometimes runs just outshore of a beach and can
be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the
stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that
effect gets lost in the underflow." See also {overflow bit}.
lots of MIPS but no I/O: adj. Used to describe a person who is
technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human
beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has
lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on I/O.
low-bandwidth: adj. Used to indicate a talk that although not
{content-free} was not terribly informative. "That was a
low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of
{suit}s." Compare {zero-content}, {bandwidth}, {math-out}.
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.
lunatic fringe: [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept
release 1 versions of software.
lurker: n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one
who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group
regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used
reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in `the
lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's
{flamage}-emitting regulars.
luser: /loo'zr/ n. A {user}; esp. one who is 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. Later one of the ITS machines supported `luser' as a
request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except
as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term
`luser' is often seen in program comments.
= M =
=====
M: /em/ or /meg/ [from {mega-}; techspeak] n. A megabyte (1,024
kilobytes, 1,048,576 = 2 ^ 20 bytes). Also written MB, in conflict
with scientific usage in which M denotes multiplication by
1,000,000. See also {kilo-}, {K}.
macdink: /mak'dink/ [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to
encourage such behavior] vt. 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." See also {fritterware}.
machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for
`millions of floating-point operations per second'] n. Refers to
artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer
manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to get half the quoted
speed. See {Your mileage may vary}, {benchmark}.
Macintrash: /mak'in-trash`/ n. The Apple Macintosh, as described by
a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from the *real
computer* by the interface. The term `maggotbox' has been
reported in regular use in the Research Triangle (Raleigh/Durham,
NC). See also {WIMP environment}, {drool-proof paper},
{user-friendly}.
macro: /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. A name (possibly followed by a
formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic
expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the
substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This
definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those
won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have
changed over time.
The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged
use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device.
During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous and
sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as HLLs, only to fall
from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler
programming (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is
most often used in connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one
of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion
facility (such as TeX or UNIX's [nt]roff suite).
Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective `macros'
is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application
control language (whether or not the language is actually
translated by text expansion) as well as other `expansions' such as
the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors (and PC TSR
or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).
macro-: pref. Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the mainstream
and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people)
this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to
restrict the latter to quantification.
macrology: /mak-ro'l@-jee/ n. 1. Set of usually complex or crufty
macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in {LISP},
{TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The art and science
involved in comprehending a macrology in sense #1. Sometimes
studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archeology,
ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. See
also {boxology}.
macrotape: /ma'kroh-tayp/ n. An industry standard reel of tape, as
opposed to a {microtape}.
maggotbox: n. See {Macintrash}. This is even more derogatory.
magic: adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain;
compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits."
"This routine magically computes the parity of an 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 that allows something otherwise impossible,
or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. Example:
The keyboard commands which override the screen-hiding features.
Compare {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}.
For more about hackish `magic', see Appendix A.
magic cookie: [UNIX] n. 1. Something passed between routines or
programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a
capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small
data objects which contain data encoded in a strange or
intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on non-UNIX OSes with a
non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell(3)' may
be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to
`fseek(3)', but not operated on in any meaningful way. The
phrase `it hands you a magic cookie' means it returns a result
whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the
same or some other program later. 2. An in-band code for
changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or
performing other control functions. Some older terminals would
leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic
cookies; this was also called a {glitch}. See also {cookie}.
magic number: [UNIX/C] n. 1. In source code, some non-obvious
constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program
and which is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}),
rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented
`#define'. Magic numbers in this sense are bad style. 2. A
number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in
some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers
used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear
congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense
actually predates and was ancestral to the more common #1. 3.
Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to
indicate its type to a utility. Under UNIX the system and various
applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between
types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Only a
{wizard} knows the magic to create magic numbers. How do you
choose a fresh magic number of your own? Simple --- you pick one
at random. See? It's magic!
magic smoke: n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables
them to function (also called `blue smoke'; compare
`phlogiston'). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens
when a chip burns up --- the magic smoke gets let out, so it
doesn't work any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.
USENETter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while
hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing
EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened.
One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that
*after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under
the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs --- the die was
glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased
it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know,
it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke
didn't get let out."
mailing list: n. (often shortened to `list') 1. An {email}
address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word is never
used in this connection) for many other email addresses. Some
mailing lists are simple `reflectors', redirecting mail sent to
them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or
programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by
humans are said to be `moderated'. 2. The people who receive
your email when you send it to such an address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
along with {USENET}. They predate USENET, and originated with the
first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for
private information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized ople in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike USENET) don't tie up a
significant amount of machine resources. Thus, they are often
created temporarily by working groups who can then collaborate on a
project without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the
material in this book was criticized and polished on just such a
mailing list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the
co-authors of the `The Hacker's Dictionary' first edition.
main loop: n. Software tools are often written to perform some
actions repeatedly on whatever input is handed to them, terminating
when there is no more input or they are explicitly told to go away.
In such programs, the loop that gets and processes input is called
the `main loop'. See also {driver}.
mainframe: n. This term originally referred to the cabinet
containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a
room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of
smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early Seventies, the
traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe
computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the
connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive
use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating
system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built
by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from
computing's {Stone Age}.
It is common wisdom among hackers that the mainframe architectural
tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for
{number-crunching} supercomputers (see {cray})), swamped by the
recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal
computing. As of 1991, corporate America hasn't quite figured this
out yet, though the wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among
traditional mainframe makers are certainly straws in the wind.
management: n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by
their distance from actual productive work and their chronic
failure to manage (see also {suit}). Spoken derisively, as in
"*Management* decided that...". 2. Mythically, a vast
bureaucracy responsible for all the world's minor irritations.
Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgmt'.
manged: /mahnjed/ [probably from the French `manger' or Italian
`mangere', to eat; perh. influenced by English n. `mange',
`mangy']. adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged,
usually beyond repair. "The disk was manged after the electrical
storm." Compare {mung}.
mangle: vt. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent
in its connotations; something that is mangled has been
irreversibly and totally trashed.
mangler: [DEC] n. A manager. Compare {mango}; see also
{management}. Note that {system mangler} is somewhat different
in connotation.
mango: /mang'go/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A manager.
Compare {mangler}. 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 {win}ning. "The power supply was rather marginal
anyway; no wonder it fried."
Marginal Hacks: n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the
Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the 1980s (from the
{D. C. Power Lab}).
marginally: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally
better than at Small Eating Place." See {epsilon}.
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 that are not actually
scheduled for inclusion, extremely difficult to implement, and/or
are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes
existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden
adspeak. Derogatory.
martian: n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address
of the test loopback interface (127.0.0.1). This means that it
will come back at you labelled with a source address that is
clearly not of this earth. As in "The domain server is getting
lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a martian
filter?"
massage: vt. Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of
a data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do
not lose information. Connotes less pain than {munch} or {crunch}.
"He wrote a program that massages X bitmap files into GIF
format." Compare {slurp}.
math-out: [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] n. A
paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other
formal notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device
for concealing the fact that it is actually {content-free}. See
also {numbers}, {social science number}.
Matrix: [FidoNet] n. 1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call
{FidoNet}. 2. Fanciful term for a {cyberspace} expected to
emerge from current networking experiments (see {network, the}).
Some people refer to the totality of present networks this way.
Mbogo, Dr. Fred: [Stanford] n. The archetypal man you don't want to
see about a problem, esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster.
Usage: "Do you know a good eye doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye
Care and Professional Dry Cleaning." The name comes from synergy
between {bogus} and the original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who
was Gomez Addams' physician on the old `Addams Family' TV
show. See also {fred}.
meatware: n. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.
meg: /meg/ n. A megabyte; 1024K. See {M} and {K}.
mega-: /me'g@/ pref. Multiplier, 10 ^ 6 or 2 ^ 20. See {M},
{kilo-}.
megapenny: /meg'@-pen'ee/ n. $10,000 (1 cent * 10 ^ 6). Used
semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost/performance
figures.
MEGO: /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/ [My Eyes Glaze Over, often Mine Eyes
Glazeth (sic) Over, attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn]
Also `MEGO factor'. 1. n. 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 {TLA}s. 2. excl. An appropriate response to
MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers this term often refers not to
behavior which causes the eyes to glaze, but the eye-glazing
reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of
technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.
meltdown, network: n. See {network meltdown}.
meme: /meem/ [coined on analogy with `gene' by Richard Dawkins]
n. An idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the
connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much
as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase `meme complex'
denoting a group of mutually supporting memes which form an
organized belief system, such as a religion. This dictionary is an
(epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme
complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However,
`meme' is often misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the
term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably
other tool-and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by
selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by
selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial
for tolerably obvious reasons.
meme plague: n. The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme},
esp. one 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 millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles
of exponential growth followed by collapse to small reservoir
populations.
memetics: /m@-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of
mid-1991, 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.
memory leak: n. An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation
logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading
to attempted hogging of main store and eventual collapse due to
memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called {core leak}. See
{aliasing bug}, {fandango on core}, {smash the stack},
{precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky heap}.
menuitis: /men`yoo-ie'tis/ n. Notional disease suffered by software
with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape.
Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the
flexibility of command-line or language-style interfaces,
especially those customizable via macros or a special-purpose
language in which one can encode useful hacks. See
{user-obsequious}, {drool-proof paper}, {WIMP environment},
{for the rest of us}.
mess-dos: /mes-dos/ [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-dross', and various combinations thereof. In Ireland it
is even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of toilet
cleanser.
meta: /me't@/ or /may't@/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't@/ [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 briefly, but much hacker humor turns
on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See {{Humor,
Hacker}}.
meta bit: n. The top bit of an 8-bit character, on in character
values 128-255. Also called {high bit}, {alt bit}, or
{hobbit}. Some terminals and consoles (see {space-cadet
keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others (including,
*mirabile dictu*, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have an
ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.
MFTL: /em-eff-tee-ell/ [acronym: My Favorite Toy Language] 1. adj.
Describes a talk on a programming language design which is heavy on
syntax, frequently BNF, sometimes even talks about semantics, e.g.,
type systems, but rarely, if ever, has any content (see
{content-free}). More broadly applied to talks even when the
topic is not a programming language, but the subject matter is gone
into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any
conceptual content. Usage: "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk".
2. n. Describes a language developed by an individual or group,
which they are passionate about, but which hardly anyone outside
the group cares about. Applied to the language by those outside
the group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL"
mickey: n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. In {OS/2}
there is a system call `MouGetNumMickeys()'. It has been
suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for
animation graphics performance.
micro-: pref. 1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a
quantifier prefix calling for multiplication by `10 ^ -6'.
Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to
fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced in
standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one CS
professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures
as a microcentury --- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also
{attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, and especially {microfortnight}).
2. Personal or human-scale --- that is, capable of being
maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This
sense is generalized from `microcomputer', and esp. used in
contrast with `macro-' (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning
`large'). 3. Local as opposed to global (or {macro-}). Thus a
hacker might say, for example, that buying a smaller car to reduce
pollution only solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of getting
to work might be better solved by using mass transit, moving to
within walking distance, or (best of all) telecommuting.
microfortnight: n. About 1.2 sec. The VMS operating system has a
lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility,
and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the system will wait
for an operator to set the correct date and time at boot if it
realizes that the current value is bogus. This time is specified
in microfortnights!
Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and
{nanofortnight} have also been reported.
microfloppies: n. 3-1/2" floppies, as opposed to 5-1/4" {vanilla}
or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete 8" 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. See
{stiffy}, {minifloppies}.
microLenat: n. See {bogosity}.
microReid: n. See {bogosity}.
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 across. Unlike normal drivers
for standard magnetic tapes, microtape drivers 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 coined the word `DECtape', which, of
course, sounded sexier to the {marketroid} types.
middle-endian: adj. Not {big-endian} or {little-endian}. Used
of byte orders like 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3 occasionally found in the
packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall
remain nameless. See {NUXI problem}.
milliLampson: /mil'i-lamp`sn/ n. A unit of talking speed
abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. Butler
Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded
among hackers; among other things, he wrote LaTeX, the most widely
used macro package for TeX) goes at 1000. A few people speak
faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes
widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and
actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer
architect J. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said (with
some awe) to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he
is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries
to keep up with his speeding brain.
minifloppies: n. 5-1/4" {vanilla} floppy disks, as opposed to
3-1/2" or {microfloppies} and the now-obsolescent 8-inch variety.
At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart Associates for
their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody paid any attention. See
{stiffy}.
MIPS: /mips/ [acronym] n. 1. A measure of computing speed;
formally, `Million Instructions Per Second' (that's `10 ^
6' per second, not `2 ^ 20'!); often rendered by hackers as
`Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in other
unflattering ways. This joke expresses a nearly universal attitude
about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said attitude being
one of the great cultural divides between hackers and
{marketroid}s. The singular is sometimes `1 MIP' even though
this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also {KIPS} and
{GIPS}. 2. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip
company; among other things, they designed the processor chips used
in DEC's 3100 workstation series.
misbug: /mis-buhg/ [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}. Usage: rare. Compare
{green lightning}.
misfeature: /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee`chr/ n. A feature that
eventually causes lossage, 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 substantial 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."
Missed'em-five: n. Pejorative hackerism for AT&T System V UNIX,
g at the end of a line, in
which case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged.
While this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly
inconsistent, it has been found through extensive experimentation
to be what most users want. This feature is a miswart.
moby: /moh'bee/ [MIT; seems to have been in use among model
railroad fans years ago. Derived from Melville's `Moby Dick' (some
say from `Moby Pickle').] 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 below). For a 680[1234]0 or VAX or most modern 32-bit
architectures, it is 4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes). 3.
A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used
to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent
hacker. "Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for
the Mac going?" 4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as
in `moby sixes', `moby ones', etc. Compare this with
{bignum} (sense #2): double sixes are both bignums and moby
sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of `moby' to
describe double ones is sarcastic). Standard emphatic forms:
`Moby foo', `moby win', `moby loss'. `Foby moo': a
spoonerism due to Greenblatt.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory of the
MIT-AI machine. Thus, a moby is classically, 256K 36-bit words,
the size of a PDP-10 moby (it had two). 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 implied that the computer could
timeshare six `full-sized' programs without having to swap programs
between memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces
are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto
a machine, so most systems have much *less* than 1 theoretical
`native' moby of core. Also, more modern memory-management
techniques (esp. paging) make the `moby count' less significant.
However, there is one series of popular chips for which the term
could stand to be revived --- the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their
incredibly {brain-damaged} segmented-memory designs. On these, a
`moby' would be the 1-megabyte address span of a
paragraph-plus-offset pair (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was
exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit bytes).
mod: vt.,n. 1. Short for `modify' or `modification'. Very
commonly used --- in fact these latter terms are considered markers
that one is being formal. The plural `mods' is used esp. with
reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or
software, most esp. with respect to {patch} sets or a {diff}.
2. Short for {modulo} but *only* used for its techspeak sense.
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 techspeak when used to
describe the state of a program, but the extended usage --- for
example, to describe people --- is definitely jargon. In
particular, see {hack mode}, {day mode}, {night mode},
{demo mode}, {fireworks mode}, and {yoyo mode}; also {talk
mode}.
One also often hears the verbs `enable' and `disable' used in
connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of
saying "I'm going to crash." is "I'm going to enable crash mode
now." One might also hear a request to "disable flame mode,
please".
mode bit: n. A {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects between
two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations
are different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are mainly
written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom read, and seldom
change over the lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic
example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status
Word of the IBM 360. Another was the bit on a PDP-12 that
controlled whether it ran the PDP-8 or LINC instruction set.
modulo: /mod'y@-low/ prep. Except for. From mathematical
terminology: one can consider saying that `4 = 22' except for
the 9s `(4 = 22 mod 9)'. "Well, LISP seems to work okay now,
modulo that {GC} bug." "I feel fine today modulo a slight
headache."
molly-guard: [University of Illinois] n. A shield to prevent
tripping of some {Big Red Switch} by clumsy or ignorant hands.
Originally used of some plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on
an IBM 4341 after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly)
frobbed it twice in one day. Later generalized to covers over
stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.
Mongolian Hordes technique: n. Development by {gang bang}
(compare the Sixties counterculture expression `Mongolian
clusterfuck' for a public orgy). Implies that large numbers of
inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed
by a few skilled ones. Also called `Chinese Army technique';
see also {Brooks's Law}.
monkey up: vt. To hack together hardware for a particular task,
especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely {crufty} and
consciously temporary solution. Compare {hack up}, {kluge up},
{cruft together}, {cruft together}.
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). See also {baroque}.
Moof: /moof/ [MAC users] n. The Moof or `dogcow' is a
semi-legendary creature that lurks in the depths of the Macintosh
Technical Notes hypercard stack V3.1; specifically, the full story
of the dogcow is told in technical note #31 (the particular Moof
illustrated is properly named `Clarus'). Option-shift-click will
cause it to emit a characteristic `Moof!' or `!fooM' sound.
*Getting* to tech note #31 is the hard part; to discover how
to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a hackerly
eye. Clue: {rot13} is involved. A dogcow also appears if you
choose `Page Setup...' with a LaserWriter selected and click on
the `Options' button.
Moore's Law: /morz law/ prov. The observation that the logic
density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed the
curve (bits per square inch) = 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. See
also {Parkinson's Law of Data}.
moria: /mor'ee-@/ n. Like {nethack} and {rogue}, one of the
large PD Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for
a wide range of machines and operating systems. Extremely
addictive and a major consumer of time better used for hacking.
MOTAS: /moh-tahs/ [USENET, Member Of The Appropriate Sex] n. A
potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See {MOTOS},
{MOTSS}, {SO}.
MOTOS: /moh-tohs/ [from the 1970 U.S. census forms via USENET,
Member Of The Opposite Sex] n. A potential or (less often) actual
sex partner. See {MOTAS}, {MOTSS}, {SO}. Less common than
MOTSS or {MOTAS}, which has largely displaced it.
MOTSS: /motss/ or /em-oh-tee-ess-ess/ [from the 1970 U.S. census
forms via USENET, Member Of The Same Sex] n. Esp. one considered as
a possible sexual partner, e.g. by a gay male or lesbian. The
gay-issues newsgroup on USENET is called `soc.motss'. See
{MOTOS} and {MOTAS}, which derive from it. Also see {SO}.
mouse ahead: vi. Point-and-click analog of `type ahead'. To
manipulate a computer's pointing device (almost always a mouse in
this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or command
buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in
anticipation of the program accepting the input. Handling this
properly is rare, but it can help make a {WIMP environment} much
more usable, assuming they are familiar with the behavior of the
user interface.
mouse around: vi. To explore public portions of a large system, esp.
a network such as Internet via {FTP} or {TELNET}, looking for
interesting stuff to {snarf}.
mouse belt: n. See {rat belt}.
mouse droppings: [MSDOS] n. Pixels (usually single) which are not
properly restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a
particular location on the screen, producing the appearance that
the mouse pointer has left behind droppings. The major causes for
this problem are programs which write to the screen memory
corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without
hiding the mouse pointer first and mouse drivers which do not quite
support the graphics mode in use.
mouse elbow: n. A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from
excessive use of a {WIMP environment}. Similarly, `mouse
shoulder'; GLS reports that he used to get this a lot before he
taught himself to be ambimoustrous.
mouso: /mow'soh/ n. [by analogy with `typo'] An error in mouse usage
resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the
screen. Compare {thinko}, {braino}.
MS-DOS: /em-es-dos/ [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] n. A
{clone} of {CP/M} for the 8088 crufted together in six weeks by
hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since.
Numerous features including vaguely UNIX-like but rather broken
support for subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines were
hacked into 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two
incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers
can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an
option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting mess
is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply
as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly
abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s,
when it was attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the
360). Some people like to pronounce DOS like "dose", as in "I
don't work on dose, man!", or to compare it with a dose of
brain-damaging drugs. See {mess-dos}, {ill-behaved}.
MUD: [abbr: Multi User Dungeon] 1. n. A class of {virtual reality}
experiments accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat
forums with structure; they have multiple `locations' like an
adventure game and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a
simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build
more structure onto the database that represents the existing
world. 2. vi. To play a MUD (see {hack-and-slay}). The acronym MUD
is often lower-cased and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going
mudding', etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU-
form) derive from an AI experiment by Richard Bartle and Roy
Trubshaw on the University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s,
and descendants of that game still exist today (see {BartleMUD}).
The title `MUD' is still copyright to the commercial MUD run by
Bartle on British Telecom (their motto: "You haven't *lived*
'til you've *died* on MUD!"); however, this did not stop
students on the European academic networks from copying/improving
on the MUD concept, from which sprung several new MUDs (VAXMUD,
AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of these had associated bulletin-board
systems for social interaction. Because USENET feeds have been
spotty and difficult to get in Great Britain and the British JANET
network doesn't support {FTP} or remote login via telnet, the
MUDs became major foci of hackish social interaction there.
LPMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and
quickly gained popularity in the US; they became nuclei for large
hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom
(some observers see parallels with the growth of USENET in the
early 1980s).
More recent MUDs (such as TinyMud), esp. in the US, have tended to
emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative
world-building as opposed to combat and competition. Whether this
represents a genuine long-term trend is hard to say; the state of
the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with new
simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. There is now
(early 1991) a move afoot to deprecate the term {MUD} itself, as
newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding
to the different simulation styles being explored. See also
{BartleMUD}, {berserking}, {bonk/oif}, {brand brand brand},
{FOD}, {hack-and-slay}, {mudhead}, {posing}, {talk mode},
{tinycrud}.
mudhead: n. Commonly used to refer to a {MUD} player who sleeps,
breathes, and eats MUD. Mudheads have frequently been known to
fail their degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however,
that they made wizard level. When encountered in person, all a
mudhead will talk about is two topics: the tactic, character, or
wizard that in his/her view is always unfairly stopping him/her
from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD, and the MUD he/she is
writing/going to write because all existing MUDs are so dreadful!
See also {wannabee}.
multician: /muhl-ti'shn/ [coined at Honeywell, c.1970] n.
Competent user of {Multics}. Perhaps oddly, no one has ever
promoted the analogous `Unician'.
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 was {CTSS}). Honeywell commercialized Multics after
buying out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful
(among other things, on some versions one was commonly 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}. For this and other
reasons, aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional
debate among hackers. See also {brain-damaged}.
multitask: n. Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for
computers, to describe a person doing several things at once (but
see {thrash}). The term `multiplex' from communications
technology (meaning to handle more than one channel at the same
time) is used similarly.
mumblage: /muhm'bl@j/ n. The topic of one's mumbling (see {mumble}).
"All that mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is
not quite clear 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' (see
{frotz}; interestingly, one does not say `mumble frobnitz' even
though `frotz' is short for `frobnitz'). 3. Yet another
metasyntactic variable, like {foo}.
munch: [often confused with `mung', q.v.] vt. 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
(c.1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a
trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for
successive values of T --- see {HAKMEM} items 146-148) to produce
an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the
screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which,
when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these,
later (re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened
`munching triangles' (try AND for XOR and toggling points
instead of plotting them), `munching w's', and `munching
mazes'. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an
impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, fo ing but some grow up
to be hackers after passing through a {larval stage}. The term
{urchin} is also used. See also {wannabee}, {bitty box}.
mundane: [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
acronyms}} `Mung Until No Good' became standard] vt. 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 is a consequence of {Murphy's Law}. See
{scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {nuke}. Reports from
{USENET} suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in
speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program comments
(compare the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of
{kluge}). 3. The kind of beans of which the sprouts are used
in Chinese food. (That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Murphy's Law: prov. The correct, *original* Murphy's Law reads:
"If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those
ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This
is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it's usually
given in mutant forms which are less descriptive of the challenges of
design for lusers. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug
symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP'; if it matters which way
it's plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical.
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled
experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test
human acceleration tolerances. One experiment involved a set of 16
accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body.
There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and
somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around.
Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the
test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a
few days later.
Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical
cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years
had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination,
mutating as they went. Obviously, pop-culture versions in the vein
of "Anything that can go wrong, will." demonstrate Murphy's Law
acting on itself!
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 electronic music, and the sort of elaborate
instrumental jazz/rock that used to be called `progressive' and
isn't recorded much any more. The hacker's musical range tends to
be wide; many can listen with equal appreciation to (say) Talking
Heads, Yes, Gentle Giant, Spirogyra, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream,
King Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, or 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 {mundane} types.
mutter: vt. To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes,
or fingers of ordinary mortals. Frequently in `mutter an
{incantation}'. See also {wizard}.
= N =
=====
N: /en/ quant. 1. A large and indeterminate number of objects;
"There were N bugs in that crock!"; also used in its original
sense of a variable name. "This crock has N bugs, as N goes to
infinity." 2. A variable whose value is inherited from 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 (see {great-wall}). 3.
`Nth': adj. The ordinal counterpart of N, senses #1 and #2.
"Now for the Nth and last time..." In the specific context
"Nth-year grad student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4,
and is usually 5 or more (see {tenured graduate student}). See
also {{random numbers}}, {two-to-the-n}.
nailed to the wall: [like a trophy] adj. Said of a bug finally
eliminated after protracted, and even heroic, effort.
nailing jelly: vi. See {like nailing jelly to a tree}.
naive: adj. Untutored in the perversities of some particular
program or system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive
way, rather than the right way (in really good designs these
coincide, but most designs aren't `really good' in the appropriate
sense). This is completely unrelated to general maturity or
competence or even competence at any other program. It is a sad
commentary on the primitive state of computing that the natural
opposite of this term is often claimed to be `experienced user' but
is really more like `cynical user'.
naive user: 1. n. A {luser}. Tends to imply someone who is
ignorant mainly due to inexperience; when applied to someone who
*has* experience, there is a definite implication of stupidity.
NAK: [from the ASCII mnemonic for #b0010101] interj. 1. On-line joke
answer to {ACK}? --- "I'm not here". 2. On-line answer to a
request for chat --- "I'm not available". 3. Used to politely
interrupt someone to tell them you don't understand their point or
that they have suddenly stopped making sense. See {ACK}, sense
#3. "And then, after we recode the project in COBOL...."
"Nak, Nak, Nak! I thought I heard you say COBOL!"
nano-: [in measurement, the next quantifier below {micro-};
meaning * 10 ^ -9] pref. Smaller than {micro-}, and used in the
same rather loose and connotative way. Thus, one has
{{nanotechnology}} (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by analogy
with `microtechnology'; and a few machine architectures have a
`nanocode' level below `microcode'. Tom Duff at Bell Labs
has also pointed out that "Pi seconds is a nanocentury". See
also {pico-}, {nanoacre}, {nanobot}, {nanocomputer},
{nanofortnight}.
nanoacre: /nan'o-ay`kr/ n. An areal unit (about 2 mm square) of
real estate on a VLSI chip. The term gets its giggle value from
the fact that VLSI nanoacres have costs in the same range as real
acres once one figures in design and fabrication-setup costs.
nanobot: /nan'oh-bot/ n. A robot of microscopic proportions,
presumably built by means of {{nanotechnology}}. As yet, only used
informally (and speculatively!). Also 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.
nanofortnight: [Adelaide University] n. 1 fortnight times 10 ^ -9,
or about 1.2 ms. This unit was used largely by students doing
undergraduate practicals. See {microfortnight}, {attoparsec}
and {micro-}.
nanotechnology:: /nan'-oh-tek-no`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 nanofabrication 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. See also {blue goo}, {gray goo},
{nanobot}.
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. A status report from an
unhappy, and probably picky, customer. "What'd the Germans say in
today's nastygram?" 4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a
{daemon}; in particular, a {bounce message}.
Nathan Hale: n. An asterisk (See also {splat}, {{ASCII}}). Oh,
you want an etymology? Notionally, from "I regret that I have only
one asterisk for my country!", a misquote of the famous remark
uttered by Nathan Hale just before he was hanged. Hale was a
(failed) spy for the rebels in the American War of Independence.
nature: n. See {has the X nature}.
neat hack: n. 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 (see Appendix A). See {hack}.
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 derived noun `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!".
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, many members 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 science fiction, {{Music}}, and {{Oriental
Food}}.
net.-: /net dot/ pref. [USENET] Prefix used to describe people and
events related to USENET. From the time before the {Great
Renaming}, when all non-local newsgroups had names beginning
`net.'. Includes {net.god}s, `net.goddesses' (various
charismatic net.women with circles of on-line admirers),
`net.lurkers', (see {lurker}), `net.person',
`net.parties' (a synonym for {boink} sense #2 (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, Mel, Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See
{demigod}.
net.police: n. (var. `net.cops') Those USENET readers who feel it is
their responsibility to pounce on and {flame} any posting which
they regard as offensive, or in violation of their understanding of
{netiquette}. Generally used sarcastically or pejoratively.
Also spelled `net police'. See also {net.-}, {code police}.
nethack: /net'hak/ n. See {hack}, sense #8.
netiquette: /net'ee-ket, net'i-ket/ [portmanteau from "network
etiquette"] n. Conventions of politeness recognized on {USENET},
such as: avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups, or
refraining from commercial pluggery on the net.
netnews: n. 1. The software that makes {USENET} run. 2. The
content of USENET. "I read netnews right after my mail most
mornings".
netrock: [IBM] n. A {flame}; used esp. on VNET, IBM's internal
corporate network.
network address: n. (also `net address') As used by hackers,
means an address on `the' network (see {network, the}; this is
almost always a {bang path} or {{Internet address}}). Such an
address is essential if one wants to be to be taken seriously by
hackers; in particular, persons or organizations that claim to
understand, work with, sell to, or recruit from among hackers but
*don't* display net addresses are quietly presumed to be
clueless poseurs and mentally flushed (see {flush}, sense #4).
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-dyed
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}, {domainist}.
network meltdown: n. A state of complete network overload; the
network equivalent of {thrash}ing. This may be induced by a
{Chernobyl packet}, See also {broadcast storm}, {kamikaze
packet}.
network, the: n. 1. The union of all the major noncommercial,
academic, and hacker-oriented networks such as Internet, the old
ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and {USENET}
`networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
time-sharing services (such as CompuServe) that gateway to them. A
site is generally considered `on the network' if it can be reached
through some combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP
(bang-path) addresses. See {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}).
In sense #1, `network' is frequently abbreviated to `net'. "Are
you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet
face to face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
New Jersey: [primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] adj. Generically,
brain-damaged or of poor design. This refers to the allegedly
wretched quality of such software as C, C++, and UNIX (which
originated at Bell Labs in New Jersey). "This compiler bites the
bag, but what can you expect from a compiler designed in New
Jersey?" See also {UNIX conspiracy}.
New Testament: n. [C programmers] The second edition of K&R's `The C
Programming Language' (Prentice-Hall 1988, ISBN 0-13-110362-8),
describing ANSI Standard C. See {K&R}.
newbie: /n[y]oo'bee/ n. [orig. from British public-school &
military slang contraction of `new boy'] 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 regular in another. The label `newbie'
is sometimes applied as a serious insult, to a person who has been
around USENET for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence
of having a clue. See {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 net-wide. These usually settle out within a week or two as
it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency
(usually, it doesn't). At times, especially in the completely
anarchic `alt' hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become
a form of comment or humor; e.g. the 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 {flamer}s, eg. `alt.weemba'.
newline: /n[y]oo'lien/ n. 1. [techspeak, primarily UNIX] The
ASCII LF character (#b0001010), used under {UNIX} as a text line
terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism;
interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon) it is said originally
to have been an IBM usage (though the term `newline' appears in
ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world
before UNIX). 2. More generally, any magic character, character
sequence, or operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required
to terminate a text record or separate lines. See {crlf},
{terpri}.
NeWS: /nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ [acronym; the Network
Window System] n. The road not taken in window systems, an elegant
Postscript-based environment that would almost certainly have won
the standards war with {X} if it hadn't been {proprietary} to
Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that many software
vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the
two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS
from `news' (the {netnews} software).
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 lunatic-fringe groups.
newsgroup: [USENET] n. One of {USENET}'s huge collection of topic
groups. Among the best-known are `comp.lang.c' (the C-language
forum), `comp.unix.wizards', `rec.arts.sf-lovers' (for
science-fiction fans), and `talk.politics.misc' (miscellaneous
political discussions and {flamage}).
nickle: [From `nickel', common name for the US 5-cent coin] 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 {deckle}.
night mode: n. See {phase} (of people).
Nightmare File System: n. Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network
File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there
is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others
often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and
(getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to
appear dead to some messages. Then another machine tries to reach
either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself
becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is
now trying both to access the down one and respond to the
pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This snowballs
very fast and soon the entire network of machines is frozen --- the
user can't even abort the file access that started the problem!
(ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of UNIX's alleged
bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none
of these problems in the early 1970s. Of course, ITS only had
6-character filenames and no subdirectories, so it was solving a
simpler problem.) See also {broadcast storm}.
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}.
no-op: /noh-op/ alt. NOP (nop) [no operation] n. 1. (also v.) A
machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in
assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or
to overwrite code to be removed in binaries). See also {JFCL}.
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."
noddy: [Great Britain; from the children's books] adj. 1. Small
and unuseful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often
written when learning a new language or system. The archetypal
noddy program is {hello, world}. Noddy code may be used to
demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real
hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This
editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program that is more or less
instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily
connote uselessness, but describes a {hack} sufficiently trivial
that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during
the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll just throw
together a noddy {awk} script to convert {crlf}s into
{newline}s." See {toy program}.
NOMEX underwear: [USENET] n. Syn. {asbestos longjohns}, used
mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. NOMEX
underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment
market, used as a fire resistance measure and required in some
racing series.
non-optimal solution: n. (also `sub-optimal solution') An
astoundingly stupid way to do something. This term is generally
used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person
speaking looks completely serious. Compare {stunning}. See also
{Bad Thing}.
nonlinear: adj. [scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and
unpredictable fashion. When used to describe the behavior of a
machine or program, it suggests that said machine or program is
being forced to run far outside of design specifications. This
behavior may be induced by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered
when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from its
expected course. 2. When describing the behavior of a person,
suggests a tantrum or a {flame}. "When you talk to Bob, don't
mention the drug problem or he'll go nonlinear for hours." In
this context, `go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion'
(proportion connotes linearity).
nontrivial: adj. Requiring real thought or significant computing
power. Often used as an understated way of saying that a problem
is quite difficult or impractical. The preferred emphatic form is
`decidedly nontrivial'. See {trivial}, {uninteresting},
{interesting}.
notwork: n. A network, when it's acting {flaky} or is {down}.
Compare {nyetwork}. Orig. referred to a particular period of
flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network, c.1988.
NP-: /en pee/ pref. Extremely. Used to modify adjectives
describing a level or quality of difficulty; the connotation is
often `more so than it should be' (NP-complete problems all seem to
be very hard, but so far no one has found a good a-priori reason
that they should be.) "Getting this algorithm to perform
correctly in every case is NP-annoying." This is generalized from
the computer science terms `NP-hard' and `NP-complete'. NP
is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that
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.
NSA line eater: n. The NSA (National Security Agency) trawling
program sometimes assumed to be reading {USENET} for the U.S.
Government's spooks. Most hackers describe it as a mythical beast,
but some believe it actually exists, more aren't sure, and many
believe in acting as though it exists just in case. Some netters
put loaded phrases like `Uzi', `nuclear materials', `Palestine',
`cocaine', and `assassination' in their {sig block}s in an
attempt to confuse and overload the creature. The {GNU} version
of {EMACS} actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch
of insidious anarcho-verbiage into your edited text.
There's a mainstream variant of this myth involving a `Trunk Line
Monitor', which supposedly used speech recognition to extract words
from telephone trunks. This one was making the rounds in the late
1970s, spread by people who had no idea of then-current technology
or the storage, signal-processing or speech recognition needs of
such a project. On the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would
have been cheaper to hire 50 high-school students and just let them
listen in. Speech recognition technology can't do this job even
now (1991), and amomost certainly won't in this millenium, either.
The peak of silliness came with a letter to an alternative paper in
New Haven, laying out the factoids of this Big Brotherly affair.
The letter writer then revealed his actual agenda by offering ---
at an amazing low price, just this once, we take VISA and
MasterCard --- a scrambler, guaranteed to daunt the Trunk Trawler,
and presumably allowing the would-be Baader-Meinhof gangs of the
world to get on with their business.
nuke: vt. 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. Often used to express a final verdict. "What do
you want me to do with that 80-meg {wallpaper} file?" "Nuke
it." 3. Used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent
verbal alias for `kill -9' on UNIX. 4. On IBM PCs, a bug
that results in {fandango on core} can trash the operating
system, including the FAT (the in-core copy of the disk block
chaining information). This can utterly scramble attached disks,
which are then said to have been `nuked'. This term is also
used of analogous lossages on Macintoshes and other micros without
memory protection.
null device: n. A {logical} input/output device connected to the
{bit bucket}; when you write to it nothing happens, when you read
from it you see an end-of-file condition. Useful for discarding
unwanted output or using interactive programs in a {batch mode}.
See {/dev/null}.
number-crunching: n. Computations of a numerical nature, esp.
those that make extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only
thing {Fortrash} is good for. This term is in widespread
informal use outside hackerom and even in mainstream slang, but is
cited here to record some additional hackish connotations: namely,
that the computations are mindless and involve massive use of
{brute force}. See also {crunch}.
numbers: [scientific computation] n. Output of a computation that
may not be significant results, but at least indicate that the
program is running. May be used to placate management, grant
sponsors, etc. `Making numbers' means running a program
because output --- any output, not necessarily meaningful output
--- is needed as a demonstration of progress. See {pretty
pictures}, {math-out}, {social science number}.
NUXI problem: /nuk'see pro'blm/ 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' (e.g. when transferring data from a
{little-endian} to a {big-endian}, or vice-versa). See also
{middle-endian}, {swab}, and {bytesexual}.
nybble: /nib'l/ (alt. `nibble') [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 jargon. Compare {{byte}}, {crumb}, {tayste},
{dynner}, see also {bit}, {nickle}, {deckle}. Apparently
this spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British
orthography suggests the pronunciation /nie'bl/.
nyetwork: [from Russian `nyet' = no] n. A network, when it's
acting {flaky} or is {down}. Compare {notwork}.
= O =
=====
Ob-: /ob/ pref. Obligatory. A piece of {netiquette} that
acknowledges the author has been straying from the newsgroup's
charter topic. 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. It is a sign of great winnitude when your Obs are more
interesting than most other peoples' whole postings.
Obfuscated C Contest: n. Annual contest run since 1984 over USENET
by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever
produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C
program; various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim.
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:
/*
* HELLO WORLD program
* by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985
*/
main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";
(!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));
**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}
Here's another good one:
/*
* Program to compute an approximation of pi
* by Brian Westley, 1988
*/
#define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;
int F=00,OO=00;
main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
{
_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
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_-_-_-_
}
See also {hello, world}.
obscure: adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to
imply total incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash
is obscure." "The `find(1)' command's syntax is obscure!"
The phrase `moderately obscure' implies that it could be
figured out but probably isn't worth the trouble. The construction
`obscure in the extreme' is the preferred emphatic form.
octal forty: /ok'tl for'tee/ n. Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing
a blank." Octal 40 is the {{ASCII}} space character, #b0100000; by
an odd coincidence, {hex} 40 (#b01000000) is the {{EBCDIC}} space
character. See {wall}.
off the trolley: adj. Describes the behavior of a program that
malfunctions and goes catatonic, but doesn't actually {crash} or
abort. See {glitch}, {bug}, {deep space}.
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 something to the person next to the one who
should have gotten it. Often confounded with {fencepost error},
which is properly a particular subtype of it.
offline: adv. Not now or not here. 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 {sig block}s
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 {K&R}, the
sacred text describing {Classic C}.
ONE BELL SYSTEM (IT WORKS): This was the output from the old UNIX
V6 `1' command. The `1' command then did a random number roll that
gave it a one-in-ten chance of recursively executing itself.
one-line fix: n. Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a
program that is thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to
the moment it crashes the system. Usually `cured' by another
one-line fix. See also {I didn't change anything!}.
one-liner wars: n. 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. A similar amusement was practiced among {TECO} hackers.
Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, once uttered the following
one-liner: given a number N, it produces a list of the prime
numbers from 1 to N! It looks like this
(2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN
where `o' is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a
single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.
ooblick: /oo'blik/ [from Dr. Seuss's `Bartholomew and the
Oobleck'] n. A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and
water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at
parties for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it
pours and splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will
even crack when hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers.
Here's a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:
1 cup cornstarch
1 cup baking soda
3/4 cup water
N drops of food coloring
This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch
ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.
open: n. Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' --- used when
necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP form
(DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open defun foo, open
eks close, open, plus eks one, close close."
open switch: [IBM, prob. from railroading] n. An unresolved
question, issue, or problem.
operating system:: [techspeak] 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 an operating system
provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely
strong influence on programming style and the technical cultures
that grows up around its host machines. Hacker folklore has been
shaped primarily by the UNIX, ITS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20/TWENEX, WAITS,
CP/M, MS-DOS, and Multics operating systems (most importantly by
ITS and UNIX). Each of these has its own entry, which see.
Orange Book: 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 D (least). Stock UNIXes
are roughly C2. See also {{book titles}}.
Oriental Food:: n. Hackers display an intense tropism towards
Oriental cuisine, especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier
varieties such as Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has
also been observed in subcultures 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}, {laser
chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. 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 PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all
registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to
any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. Or, in
logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal,
but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any
one of these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used
in comments on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the
discussion, but...".
OS: /oh ess/ 1. [Operating System] n. Acronym heavily used in email,
occasionally in speech. 2. n. obs. On ITS, an output spy. See
Appendix A.
OS/2: /oh ess too/ n. The anointed successor to MS-DOS for
Intel-286 and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't
get it right the second time, either. Cited here because
mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers ---
the design was so {baroque}, and the implementation of 1.x so
bad, that three years after introduction you could still count the
major {app}s shipping for it on the fingers of two hands --- in
unary. Often called `Half-an-OS'. On 28 January 1991, Microsoft
announced that it was dropping its OS/2 development to concentrate
on Windows, leaving the OS entirely in the hands of IBM; on 29
January they claimed the media had got the story wrong, but were
vague about how. It looks as though OS/2 is dead. See
{vaporware}, {monstrosity}, {cretinous}, {second-system
effect}.
out-of-band: [from telecommunications and network] adj. In
software, describes values of a function which are not in its
`natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some
kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example,
return either a nonnegative integral value or an out-of-band -1 to
indicate failure. Compare {hidden flag}.
overflow bit: n. 1. [techspeak] On some processors, an attempt to
calculate a result too large for a register to hold causes a
particular {flag} called an {overflow bit} to be set. 2.
Hackers use the term of human thought too. "Well, the {{Ada}}
description was {baroque} all right, but I could hack it OK until
they got to the exception handling...that set my overflow bit."
overrun: n. 1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of
data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line
communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly
one character per millisecond, so if your {silo} can hold only
two characters and the machine takes longer than 2ms to get to
service the interrupt at least one character will be lost. 2.
Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay my
electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four phone
calls in three minutes last night and lost your message to
overrun." When {thrash}ing at tasks, the next person to make a
request might be told "Overrun!" 3. More loosely, may refer to
a {buffer overflow} not necessarily related to processing time
(as in {overrun screw}).
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}
--- often resulting in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical
subtlety. The term {overrun screw} is used esp. of scribbles
beyond the end of arrays allocated with `malloc(3)'; this
typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the
{arena}, producing massive lossage within malloc and often
a core dump on the next operation to use `stdio(3)' or
`malloc(3)' itself. See {spam}, {overrun}; see also
{memory leak}, {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage},
{fandango on core}.
= P =
=====
P.O.D.: /pee-oh-dee/ Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a
code section). Usage: pedantic and rare. See also {pod}.
padded cell: n. Where you put lusers so they can't hurt anything.
A program that limits a {luser} to a carefully restricted subset
of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the
`rsh(1)' utility on UNIX). Note that this is different from
an {iron box} because it's overt and not aimed at enforcing
security so much as protecting others (and the luser him/herself!)
from the consequences of the luser's boundless naivete (see
{naive}). Also `padded cell environment'.
page in: [MIT] vi. 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] vi. 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}.
pain in the net: n. A {flamer}.
paper-net: n. Hackish way of referring to the postal service,
analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. USENET
{sig block}s not uncommonly include the sender's postal address
next to a "Paper-Net:" header; common variants of this are
"Papernet" and "P-Net". Compare {voice-net}, {snail-mail}.
param: /p@-ram'/ n. Shorthand for `parameter'. See also
{parm}; Compare {arg}, {var}.
parent message: n. See {followup}.
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] vt. 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'.
Parkinson's Law of Data: n. "Data expands to fill the space
available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of
more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the
last ten years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to
double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density
available for constant dollars tends to double about once every
twelve months (see {Moore's Law}) but the laws of physics dictate
that this cannot be expected to continue indefinitely.
parm: /parm/ n. Further-compressed spoken-only form of {param};
the plural is `parms' /parmz/. Compare {arg}, {var}.
Pascal:: n. An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on
the CDC 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional tool for elementary
programming. This language, designed primarily to keep students
from shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely restrictive
from a general-purpose-programming point of view, was later
promoted as a general-purpose tool and in fact became the ancestor
of a large family of languages including Modula-2 and Ada (see also
{bondage-and-discipline language}). The hackish point of view on
Pascal was perhaps best summed up by a devastating (and, in its
deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of
{K&R} fame) entitled `Why Pascal is Not My Favorite
Programming Language'. Part of his summation is worth repeating
here, because its criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself
after ten years of improvement and could also stand as an
indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages. At
the end of a summary of the case against Pascal, he wrote:
9. There is no escape
This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its
limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking when
necessary. There is no way to replace the defective run-time
environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler that
defines the "standard procedures". The language is closed.
People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal trap.
Because the language is impotent, it must be extended. But each group
extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it look like whatever
language they really want. Extensions for separate compilation,
Fortran-like COMMON, string data types, internal static variables,
initialization, octal numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the
utility of the language for one group but destroy its portability to
others.
I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond its
original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language, suitable
for teaching but not for real programming.
Pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by {C}) from the
niches it had acquired in serious application and systems
programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist language in
the MS-DOS and Macintosh worlds.
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. Compare {one-line
fix}. 2. vt. To insert a patch into a piece of code. 3. [in the
UNIX world] n. A {diff} (sense #2).
path: n. 1. A {bang path}; a node-by-node specification of a
link between two machines. 2. [UNIX] A filename, fully specified
relative to the root directory (as opposed to relative to the
current directory; the latter is sometimes called a `relative
path'). This is also called a `pathname'. 3. [UNIX & MS-DOS]
The `search path', an environment variable specifying the
directories in which the {shell} (COMMAND.COM, under MS-DOS)
should look for commands.
pathological: [scientific computation] adj. Used of a data set
that is grossly atypical of the expected load, esp. one which
exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An
algorithm that can be broken by pathological inputs may still be
useful if such inputs are very unlikely to occur in practice. 2.
When used of a test load, implies that it was purposefully
engineered as a worst case. The implication in both senses is that
someone had to explicitly set out to break an algorithm in order to
come up with such a crazy example.
payware: n. Commercial software. Oppose {shareware} or
{freeware}.
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-sighted 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 /puhd'l/ [acronym for Push Down List] 1. In ITS
days, the preferred MITism for {stack}. 2. Dave Lebling, one
of the co-authors of {Zork}; (his {network address} on the ITS
machines was at one time pdl@dms). 3. Program Design Language.
Any of a large class of formal and profoundly useless
pseudo-languages in which {management} forces one to design
programs. {Management} often expects it to be maintained in
parallel with the code. Used jokingly as in, "Have you finished
the PDL?" See also {{flowchart}}.
PDP-10: [Programmed Data Processor model 10] n. The machine that
made timesharing real. Looms large in hacker folklore due to early
adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing facilities and
research labs including the MIT AI lab, Stanford, and CMU. Some
aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field
instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. Later editions
were labelled `DECsystem-10' as a way of differentiating them from
the PDP-11. The '10 was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines
(descendants of the PDP-11) and dropped from DEC's line in the
early 1980s, and in mid-1991 to have cut one's teeth on one is
considered something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among
hackers. See {TOPS-10}, {ITS}, {AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT},
{DPB}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop},
{push}, Appendix A.
peek: n.,vt. (and {poke}) The commands in most microcomputer
BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an absolute
address; often extended to mean the corresponding constructs in any
{HLL}. Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros consists of
{peek}ing around memory, more or less at random, to find the
location where the system keeps interesting stuff. Long (and
variably accurate) lists of such addresses for various computers
circulate (see {{interrupt list, the}}). The results of {poke}s
at these addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing, useless
but neat, or (most likely) total {lossage} (see {killer poke}).
pencil and paper: n. An archaic information-storage and
transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on
bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based
technology include improved `write-once' update devices which use
tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit colored
pigment. These devices require an operator skilled at so-called
`handwriting' technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside
hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had
terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend
if anything to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for
this reason hackers deprecate pencil and paper technology and
often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.
peon: n. A person with no special ({root} or {wheel})
privileges on a computer system. "I can't create an account on
foovax for you; I'm only a peon there."
percent-s: /per-sent' 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). The term `perfory'
/per'f@-ree/ is also heard.
perfect programmer syndrome: n. Arrogance; the egotistical
conviction that one is above normal human error. Most frequently
found among programmers of some native ability but relatively
little experience (especially new graduates; their perceptions may
be distorted by a history of excellent performance bashing toy
problems). "Of course my program is correct, there is no need to
test it." Or "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here, but
*I'll* never type `rm -r /' while in {root}."
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
`rn(1)') and distributed over USENET. Superficially resembles
`awk(1)', but is much more arcane (see {awk}). Increasingly
considered one of the {languages 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'
vt. To make as bad as possible. These words are the obvious
Latin-based antonyms for `optimal' and `optimize', but for some
reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries, although
`pessimize' is listed in the OED.
pessimizing compiler: /pes'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.
peta-: /pe't@/ pref. Multiplier, 10 ^ 15 or [proposed] 2 ^ 50. See
{kilo-}.
PETSCII: /pet'skee/ [abbreviation of PET ASCII] n. The variation
(many would say perversion) of the {{ASCII}} character set used by
the Commodore Business Machines PET series of personal computers
and the later Commodore C64, C16, and C128 machines. The PETSCII
set used left-arrow and up-arrow (as in old-style ASCII) instead of
underscore and caret, placed the unshifted alphabet at positions
65-90, and put the shifted alphabet at positions 193-218, as well
as adding graphics characters.
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 {wrap around}
to the day schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours
out of phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'. (The
term `day mode' is also (but less frequently) used, meaning
you're working 9 to 5 (or more likely 10 to 6)). The act of
altering one's cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase
shifting' has also been recently reported from Caltech. 2.
`change phase the hard way': to stay awake for a very long time
in order to get into a different phase. 3. `change phase the
easy way': To stay asleep etc. However, some claim that either
staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it's
*shortening* your day or night that's hard (see {wrap
around}). 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
{hack value}. (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
date and time when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug
literally depended on the phase of the moon!
The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included
an example of this bug, but the typesetter `corrected' it. This
has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
phreaking: [from "phone phreak"] n. 1. The art and science of
cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free
long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any
other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications
networks).
At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among
hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an
intellectual game and a form of exploration was O.K., but serious
theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover
between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who
ran semi-underground networks of their own like the legendary `TAP
Newsletter'. This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as
wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less
responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone
network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way
of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal
acts like stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments
of gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few
old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in,
but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any
of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
pico-: [in measurement, a quantifier meaning * 10 ^ -12] pref.
Smaller than {nano-}; used in the same rather loose and
connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}. This usage is not yet
common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but is instantly
recognizable to any hacker. The remaining standard quantifiers are
`femto' (10 ^ -15) and `atto' (10 ^ -18); these,
interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish. They have
not yet acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what
those will be once computing technology enters the required realms
of magnitude (however, see {attoparsec}). See also {micro-}.
pig, run like a: adv. To run very slowly on given hardware, said of
software. Distinct from {hog}.
ping: /ping/ [from TCP/IP terminology, prob. originally contrived
to match the submariners' term for a sonar pulse.] n.,vt. 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.
4. To send a message to all members of a {mailing list}
requesting an {ACK} (in order to verify that everybody's
addresses are reachable). "We haven't heard much of anything from
Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK both times I pinged
jargon-friends."
The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by
Steve Hayman on the USENET group comp.sys.next. He was trying to
isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to a
NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console
after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting
through. So he used the sound-recording feature on the NeXT, then
wrote a script that repeatedly invoked ping, listened to the output,
and played back the recording on each returned packet. Result? A
program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over,
"Ping ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was
up. He turned the volume to maximum, scurried through the building
with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector in no time.
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. See also {{book titles}}.
PIP: /pip/ [Peripheral Interchange Program] vt.,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. It is said
that when the program was originated during the development of the
PDP-6 in 1963 it was called ATLATL (`Anything, Lord, to Anything,
Lord').
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 called
{plumbing}); this is much less effort than writing C every time,
and the capability is considered one of UNIX's major winning
features.
pistol: [IBM] n. A tool that makes it all too easy for you to
shoot yourself in the foot. "UNIX `rm *' makes such a nice
pistol!"
pizza box: [SUN] n. The largish thin box housing the electronics
in (especially SUN) desktop workstations, so named because of its
size and shape, and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.
pizza, ANSI standard: /an'see stan'd@rd peet'z@/ [CMU] Pepperoni
and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most pizzas ordered
by CMU hackers during some period leading up to mid-1990 were of
that flavor. See also {rotary debugger}; compare {tea, ISO
standard cup of}.
plain-ASCII: Syn. {flat-ASCII}.
plan file: [UNIX] n. On systems that support {finger}, the
`.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when he or she
is fingered. This feature was originally intended to be used to
keep potential fingerers apprised of one's near-future plans, but
has been turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive
purposes (like a {sig block}). See {Hacking X for Y}.
platinum-iridium: adj. Standard, against which all others of the
same category are measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one
of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy
and placed in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. (From
1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance between two
scratches in a platinum or platinum-iridium bar kept in the same
place. Since 1960 it has been defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths
of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. The
kilogram is now the only unit of measure officially defined in
terms of a unique artefact.) "This garbage-collection algorithm
has been tested against the platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris."
Compare {golden}.
playpen: [IBM] n. A room where programmers work. Compare {salt
mines}.
playte: /playt/ 16 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage:
rare and extremely silly. See also {dynner} and {crumb}.
plingnet: /pling'net/ n. Syn. {UUCPNET}. Also see {{Commonwealth
Hackish}}.
plonk: [USENET; possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for
cheap booze] 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}.
plumbing: [UNIX] n. Term used for {shell} code, so called
because of the prevalence of `pipeline's that feed the output
of one program to the input of another. Esp. used in the
construction `hairy plumbing' (see {hairy}). "You can kluge
together a basic spell-checker out of `sort(1)',
`comm(1)', and `tr(1)' with a little plumbing."
PM: /pee em/ 1. [from `preventive maintenance'] 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. See also {provocative maintenance}.
pod: [allegedly from acronym POD for `Prince Of Darkness'] n. A
Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any impact letter-quality printer). From
the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to same.
See also {P.O.D.}
poke: n.,vt. See {peek}.
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. Common acronym for {phase of the moon}.
Usage: usually used in the phrase `POM-dependent' which means
{flaky}.
pop: /pop/ [based on the stack operation that removes the top of a
stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on
the stack] (also POP, POPJ /pop-jay/) 1. vt. To remove something
from a {stack} or {pdl}. If a person says he has popped
something from his stack, 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}.
posing: n. On a {MUD}, the use of `:' or an equivalent
command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain
physical action, which however has no effect on the game. For
example, if one's character name is Firechild, one might type `:
begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that
says `Firechild begins hacking on the nearest terminal'.
post: v. To send a message to a {mailing list} or {newsgroup}.
Distinguished in context from `mail'; one might ask, for
example, "Are you going to post the patch or mail it to known
users?"
posting: n. Noun corresp. to v. {post} (but note that the
shorter word can be nouned). Distinguished from a `letter' or
ordinary {email} message by the fact that it's broadcast rather
than point-to-point. It is unclear whether messages sent to a
small mailing list are postings or email; perhaps the best dividing
line is that if you don't know the names of all the potential
recipients, it's a posting.
postmaster: n. The email contact and maintenance person on a site
connected to the Internet or UUCPNET. Often, but not always, the
same as the {admin}. It is conventional for each machine to have
a `postmaster' alias that goes to this person.
power cycle: vt. (also, `cycle power' or just `cycle') To
power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the
intention of clearing some kind of {hung} or {gronk}ed state.
Syn. {120 reset}; see also {Big Red Switch}. Compare {vulcan
nerve pinch}, {bounce}, {boot}, and see the AI Koan in Appendix
A about Tom Knight and the novice.
PPN: /pip'n/ [from `Project-Programmer Number'] n. A user-ID under
{TOPS-10} and its various mutant progeny at SAIL, BBN,
CompuServe, and elsewhere. Old-time hackers from the PDP-10 era
sometimes use this to refer to user IDs on other systems as well.
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. {LISP} fans
enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favorite
language, which requires one to use explicit parentheses
everywhere. See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the
stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}.
prepend: /pree`pend'/ [by analogy with `append'] vt. To prefix.
Like `append', but unlike `prefix' or `suffix' as a verb, the
direct object is always the thing being added and not the original
word (character string, etc). No, this is *not* standard
English, yet!
pretty pictures: n. [scientific computation] The next step up from
{numbers}. Interesting graphical output from a program which may
not have any real relationship to the reality the program is
intended to model. Good for showing to {management}.
prettyprint: /prit'ee-print/ v. 1. To generate `pretty'
human-readable output from a {hairy} internal representation;
esp. used for the process of {grind}ing (sense #2) LISP code. 2.
To format in some particularly slick and nontrivial way.
prime time: [from TV programming] n. Normal high-usage hours on a
timesharing system; the day shift. Avoidance of prime time is a
major reason for {night mode} hacking.
priority interrupt: [from the hardware term] n. Describes any
stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}.
Classically used to describe being dragged away by an {SO} for
immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions
such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. Also called
an {NMI} (non-maskable interrupt), especially in PC-land.
profile: [UNIX] n. 1. A control file for a program, esp. a text
file automatically read from each user's home directory and
intended to be easily modified by the user in order to customize
the program's behavior. Used to avoid {hardcoded} choices. 2.
A report on the amounts of time spent in each routine of a program,
used to find and {tune} away the {hot spot}s in it. This sense
is often verbed. Some profiling modes report units other than time
(such as call counts) at granularities other than per-routine, but
the idea is similar.
program: 1. n. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to
turn one's input into error messages. 2. n. An exercise in
experimental epistemology. 3. vt. To engage in a pastime similar
to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities
for reward.
Programmer's Cheer: "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop
up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on
it....
programming: n. In folklore, this was classically defined as "the
art of debugging a blank sheet of paper". Following the rise of
on-line editing this should probably be recast as "The art of
debugging an empty source file".
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 (originally invented by
old-time fan Ray Faraday Nelson) of propeller beanies as fannish
insignia (though nobody actually wears them except as a joke).
proprietary: adj. 1. In {marketroid}-speak, superior; implies a
product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of
their employer's hardware or software designers. 2. In the
language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product not
conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one which puts the
customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service
and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer
in (that's assuming it wasn't too expensive in the first place).
protocol: n. As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties
about the proper form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or
the order in which one should use the forks in a Russian-style
place setting; hackers don't care about such things. It is used
instead to describe any set of rules that allow different machines
or pieces of software to coordinate with each other without
ambiguity; for example, it does include niceties about the proper
form for addressing packets on a network or the order in which one
should use the forks in the Dining Philosophers Problem. It
implies that there's some common message format and accepted set of
primitives or commands that all parties involved understand, and
that transactions among them follow predictable logical sequences.
See also {handshaking}, {do protocol}.
provocative maintenance: [common ironic mutation of `preventive
maintenance'] n. Actions performed upon a machine at regularly
scheduled intervals to insure that the system remains in a usable
state. So called because its all too frequently performed by a
{field servoid} who doesn't know what he is doing; this results
in the machine remaining in an *un*usable state for an
indeterminate amount of time.
prowler: [UNIX] n. A {demon} that is run periodically (typically once
a week) to seek out and erase core files (see {core}), 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}, {skulker}.
pseudo: /soo'doh/ [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}. 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 (compare {Dissociated Press}). 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 a 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. His
funeral....
psychedelicware: /sie`k@-del'-ik-weir/ [Great Britain] n. Syn.
{display hack}. See also {smoking clover}.
pubic directory: [NYU] n. The `pub' (public) directory on a
machine that allows {FTP} access; the top-level directory owned
by ftp. So called because it is the default location for {SEX}
(sense #1).
puff: vt. To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman
coding. At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program
was actually *named* `PUFF', but these days it isn't usually
separate from the encoder. Oppose {huff}.
punched card:: alt. `punch card' [techspeak] n.obs. The
signature medium of computing's {Stone Age}, now obsolescent
outside of some IBM shops. The punched card actually predated
computers considerably, originating as a control device for
mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith and used with
mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece
of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm, designed to fit exactly in the
currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills.
IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married
the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as
patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80
columns per card. Later, other coding schemes, sizes of card, and
hole shape were tried.
The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the
punched card; so is the size of the quick reference cards
distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See
{chad}, {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card},
{dusty deck}, {lace card}, {card walloper}.
punt: [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American
football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt"] vt. 1. To give up, typically
without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the movie
tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this feature in,
but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not to stay up
all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in
the feature. 2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what
the {Right Thing} is and resort to an inefficient hack.
Purple Book: n. The `System V Interface Definition'. The covers
of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of
off-lavender. See also {{book titles}}.
push: [based on the stack operation that puts the current
information on a stack, and the fact that procedure return
addresses are saved on the stack] Also PUSH or 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 stack, he means yet another thing has been
added to the list of things hanging over his head for him to do.
This may also imply that he will deal with it *before* other
pending items; otherwise he might have said the thing was "added
to his queue". 2. vi. To enter upon a digression, to save the
current discussion for later. Antonym of {pop}; see also
{stack}, {pdl}.
= Q =
=====
quad: n. 1. Two bits; syn. for {quarter}, {crumb},
{tayste}. 2. A four-pack of anything (compare {hex}, sense
#2). 3. The rectangle or box glyph used in the APL language for
various arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Ex-Ivy-Leaguers and
Oxbridge types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of
dear old University.
quadruple bucky: n., obs. 1. On an MIT {space-cadet keyboard},
use of all four of the shifting keys control, meta, hyper, and
super while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT
keyboard in {raw mode}, use of four shift keys while typing a
fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta
keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult
to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and
left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and
right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your
nose.
Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice,
because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to
some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that
a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say
something like "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while
whistling Beethoven's 5th Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle".
See {double bucky}, {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}.
quantum bogodynamics: /kwon'tm boh`goh-die-nam'iks/ n. A theory
that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as
politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and {suit}s in
general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and
bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption, of course, causes
human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may
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}.
quarter: n. Two bits; syn. {tayste}, {crumb}, {quad}. The
term comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in pirate movies ---
Spanish gold pieces that could be broken into eight
pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in the U.S.'s
history the coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each of these
`bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Usage: rare. See also
{nickle}, {nybble}, {{byte}}, {dynner}.
ques: /kwess/ 1. n. The question mark character (`?', ASCII
#b0111111). 2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as
"Ques ques?" See {wall}.
quick and dirty: adj. Describes a {crock} put together under time
or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think
the fast way might lead to trouble further down the road. "I can
have a quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but I'll have to
rewrite the whole module to solve the underlying design problem."
See also {kluge}.
quux: /kwuhks/ Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo,
quuxare, quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural
`quuces', anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is
`quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven total, using up all the
`u' letters in Scrabble in one swell foop).] 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 the 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 Steele in
his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat infamous for
light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons. 4. In some circles,
quux is used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah, that's the quux
of the matter!" implies that the point is *not* crucial
(compare {tip of the ice-cube}). 5. quuxy: adj. Of or
pertaining to a quux.
qux: /kwuhks/ The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variables,
after {baz} and before the quuu*x series. See {foo}, {bar},
{baz}, {quux}. Note that this appears to be a recent mutation
from {quux}, and that many versions of the standard series just
run {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, ....
QWERTY: /kwer'tee/ [from the keycaps at the upper left] adj.
Pertaining to a standard English-language typewriter keyboard
(sometimes called the Sholes keyboard after its inventor), as
opposed to Dvorak or foreign-language layouts or a {space-cadet
keyboard} or APL keyboard.
= R =
=====
rain dance: n. 1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware
problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished.
This especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards,
reconnecting cables, etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll
have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance." 2. Any arcane
sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order
to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals
that include both an {incantation} or two and physical activity
or motion. Compare {magic}, {voodoo programming}, {black
art}.
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." 7. n. A random hacker; used
particularly of high school students who soak up computer time and
generally get in the way. 8. n. (pejorative) Anyone who is not
a hacker; the noun form of sense #2 "I went to the talk, but the
audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions". 9:. n.
(occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also
{J. Random}, {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}, 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 and 5).
42
The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and
Everything. (Note that this answer is completely fortuitous).
69
From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture.
105
69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal.
666
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' (chapter 13, verse
18). See also {Discordianism} or consult your pineal gland.
One common rhetorical maneuver uses any the canonical random
numbers as placeholders for variables. One might hear "The max
function takes 23 arguments, for arbitrary values of 23." or
"There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50." This is
especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and
realizes that it was not recognized as such, but even `non-random'
numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is
that "Pi equals 3 --- for small values of pi and large values of
3."
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: vt. 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 mode} and
`cooked mode'; the phrase "half-cooked (rare?)" is used in
the V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode. Usage: rare.
raster blaster: n. [Cambridge] Specialized hardware for {bitblt}
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}.
rat belt: n. A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic
kind that you can only remove by cutting (as opposed to a random
twist of wire or a baggie tie or one of those humongous metal clip
frobs). Small cable ties are `mouse belts'.
rave: [WPI] vi. 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, pot stickers
(the literal translation of kuo-teh), 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}}.
raw mode: n. A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly
to or from an I/O device without any processing, abstraction, or
interpretation by the operating system. Compare {rare}.
RE: /ar-ee/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for {regexp}.
read-only user: n. Describes a {luser} who uses computers almost
exclusively for reading USENET, bulletin boards, and/or email, as
opposed to writing code or purveying useful information. See
{twink}, {terminal junkie}, {lurker}.
README file: n. By convention, the top-level directory of a UNIX
source distribution always contains a file named `README' (or
READ.ME, or (rarely) ReadMe or some other variant) which is a
hacker's-eye introduction containing a pointer to more detailed
documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history notes, etc.
When asked, hackers invariably relate this to the famous scene in
Lewis Carroll's `Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' in which
Alice confronts magic food labelled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".
real estate: n. May be used for any critical resource measured in
units of area. Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the
area available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit
(see also {nanoacre}). May also be used of floor space in a
{dinosaur pen} or even space on a crowded desktop (whether
physical or electronic).
real hack: n. A {crock}. This is sometimes used affectionately;
see {hack}.
real operating system: n. Whichever one a given user is accustomed
to, and subject to wild variation. People from the academic
community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't
you use a *real* operating system?", people from the
commercial/industrial UNIX sector are known to complain, "BSD? Why
don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from
IBM probably think, "UNIX? Why don't you use a *real*
operating system?" See {holy wars}, {religious issues},
{proprietary}.
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; thinks that HLLs are sissy; and he uses a debugger to
edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real
Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been {bum}med
into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture. Real
Programmers never use comments or write documentation; "If it was
hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to
understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that
were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they'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. For a famous (and somewhat more
positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see `The Story of
Mel' in Appendix A.
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: 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 (see {code
grinder}). 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}.
reality check: n. 1. The simplest kind of test of software or
hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what `2 + 2' is
and seeing if you get `4'. The equivalent of a {smoke test} for
software. 2. The act of letting a {real user} try out prototype
software. Compare {sanity check}.
reaper: n. A {prowler} that {GFR}s files. A file removed in
this way is said to have been `reaped'.
rectangle slinger: n. See {polygon pusher}.
recursion: n. See {recursion}. See also {tail recursion}.
recursive acronyms:: pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is
to choose acronyms that 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!" See also {mung}, {EMACS}.
Red Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
references on PostScript (`PostScript Language Reference
Manual', Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985 QA76.73.P67P67, ISBN
0-201-10174-2); the others are known as the {Green Book} and {Blue
Book}. 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references
on Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming
Environment', Adele Goldberg, Addison-Wesley 1984, QA76.8.S635G638,
ISBN 0-201-11372-4 (this is also associated with blue and green
books). 3. Any of the 1984 standards issued by the CCITT 8th
plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review
cycle (1988 was {Blue Book}, 1992 will be {Green Book}); however,
it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before
1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and
the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. 4. The new version of the
{Green Book} (sense #4), IEEE 1003.1-1990, aka ISO 9945-1,
is (because of the color and the fact that it is printed on A4
paper), known in the USA as "The Ugly Red Book That Won't Fit On
The Shelf", and in Europe as "The Ugly Red Book That's A Sensible
Size". See also {{book titles}}.
regexp: /reg'eksp/ [UNIX] n. (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex') 1.
Common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular
expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by UNIX
utilities such as `grep(1)', `sed(1)', and `awk(1)'.
These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those
described under {glob}. For purposes of this lexicon, it is
sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character
sets using `^' and ranges in character sets using `-';
thus, one can specify any non-alphabetic character with
`[^A-Za-z]'. 2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling
package in portable C, written by revered USENETter Henry Spencer
(henry@zoo.toronto.edu).
reincarnation, cycle of: n. See {cycle of reincarnation}.
reinvent the wheel: v. To design or implement a tool equivalent to
an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so
is silly or a waste of time. This is frequently a valid criticism;
but automobiles don't use wooden rollers, either, and some kinds of
wheel have to be re-invented many times before you get it right. On
the other hand, it has often been pointed out that people
reinventing the wheel tend to come up with the moral equivalent of
a trapezoid with an offset axle....
religious issues: n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised
without touching off {holy wars}, such as "What is the best
operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail
reader, news reader)?" and "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?".
See {holy wars}; see also {theology}, {bigot}.
This entry is an example of {ha ha only serious}. People
actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense
attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible.
The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the
crossfire is mumble {Get a life!} and leave --- unless of course
one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct
choices are being slammed....
replicator: n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
this could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program
(see {worm}, {wabbit}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular
automaton (see {life}, sense #1), or (speculatively) a robot or
{nanobot}. It is even claimed by some that {UNIX} and {C}
are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see
{UNIX conspiracy}.
reply: n. See {followup}.
restriction: n. A {bug} or design error that limits a program's
capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can
quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a {feature}. Often
used (esp. by {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though some
crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all along, or
was forced upon them by arcane considerations no mere user could
possibly comprehend (these claims are almost invariably false).
Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer (jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu) passes
along this wisdom: "Whenever choosing a restriction which is
quantifiable by a number, make it either a power of 2 or a power of
2 minus 1. If you impose a limit of 17 items in a list, everyone
knows it is a random number. If the limit is 15 or 16, there is
clearly some deep reason and you will get less {flamage}."
retcon: /ret'kon/ [`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
in 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. vt. 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".
"Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic
dreams", "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed person
into a sentient vegetable."
[This is included because it's a good example of hackish linguistic
innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers. The word
`retcon' will probably spread through comics fandom and lose its
association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the
record, it started here. --- ESR]
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)' or `bcd(6)'
program on V7 and other early UNIX versions, which would accept up
to 80 characters of text argument and display the corresponding
pattern in {{punched card}} code. Other well-known retrocomputing
hacks have included the programming language {INTERCAL}, a
{JCL}-emulating shell for UNIX, the card-punch-emulating editor named
029, and various elaborate PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11 OS
emulators written just to keep an old, sourceless {Zork} binary
running.
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.
RFE: n. 1. Request For Enhancement. 2. [from `Radio Free Europe'
Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet, a system (originated by
Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among Sun SPARCstations over
the ethernet.
rib site: [by analogy with {backbone site}] n. A machine which
has an on-demand high-speed link to a {backbone site} and serves
as a regional distribution point for lots of third-party traffic in
email and USENET news. Compare {leaf site}, {backbone site}.
rice box: [from ham radio slang] n. Any Asian-made commodity
computer, esp. an 80*86-based machine built to IBM PC-compatible
ISA or EISA-bus standards.
Right Thing: n. That which is *obviously* the correct or
appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always
emphasized in speech as though capitalized. Use of this term often
implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree. "Never let
your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!" "What's
the right thing for LISP to do when it reads `(mod a 0)'?
Should it return `a', or give a divide-by-zero error?"
Antonym: {Wrong Thing}.
RL: [MUD community] n. Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means
Firiss's player is laughing.
roach: [Bell Labs] vt. To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware
gets {toast}ed or {fried}, software gets roached.
robust: adj. Said of a system that 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}.
rococo: adj. {Baroque} in the extreme. Used to imply that a
program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of
gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the
underlying design. Called after the later and more extreme forms
of Baroque architecture and decoration prevalent during the
mid-1700s in Europe.
rogue: [UNIX] n. Dungeons-And-Dragons-like game using character
graphics, written under BSD UNIX and subsequently ported to other
UNIX systems. The original BSD `curses(3)' screen-handling
package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support
`rogue(6)' and has since become one of UNIX's most important
and heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, and
an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the
inspiration provided by `rogue(6)'. See {nethack}.
room-temperature IQ: [IBM] quant. 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}. This is a much more insulting
phrase in countries that use Celsius thermometers.
root: [UNIX] n. 1. The `superuser' account that ignores
permission bits, user number zero on a UNIX system. This account
has the user name `root'. 2. The top node of the system directory
structure (home directory of the root user). 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".
rot13: /rot ther'teen/ [USENET, from `rotate alphabet 13 places']
n.,v. The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces each
English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along the
alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq
vg!" Most USENET news reading and posting programs include a
rot13 feature. It is used 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. A major advantage of rot13 over rot(N)
for other N is that it is self-inverse --- thus the same code can
be used for encoding and decoding.
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 {pizza, ANSI standard}.
RSN: adj. See {Real Soon Now}.
RTFAQ: /ahr-tee-eff-ay-kyoo/ [USENET, by analogy with {RTFM}]
imp. Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person
being addressed ought to read the newsgroup's {FAQ list} before
posting questions.
RTFM: /ahr-tee-ef-em/ [UNIX] imp. 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. See also {RTFAQ}, {RTM}.
RTI: /ahr-tee-ie/ interj. The mnemonic for the `return from
interrupt' instruction on many computers including the 6502 and
Z80. Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end a
conversational digression. See {pop}.
RTM: /ahr-tee-em/ [USENET, acronym for `Read The Manual'] Politer
variant of {RTFM}.
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}, {Great Runes}. 2. Special
display characters (for example, the high-half graphics on an IBM
PC).
runic: adj. Syn. {obscure}. VMS fans sometimes refer to UNIX as
`Runix'; UNIX fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Very
Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais Systeme' (French, lit.
"Cowlike Bad System").
rusty iron: n. Syn. {tired iron}. It has been claimed that this
is the inevitable fate of {water MIPS}.
rusty memory: n. Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic
media (esp. tape and the pre-Winchester removable disk packs used
in {washing machine}s). Compare {donuts}.
= S =
=====
s/n ratio: n. (also `s:n ratio'). See {signal-to-noise
ratio}. Often abbreviated `SNR'.
sacred: adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a
metaphorical extension of the standard meaning). "Register 7 is
sacred to the interrupt 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.
saga: [WPI] n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N random
broken people.
sagan: /say'gn/ [from Carl Sagan's TV series `Cosmos'; think
`Billions and Billions'] n. A large quantity of anything.
"There's a sagan different ways to tweak EMACS." "The US
Government spends sagans on military hardware."
SAIL: /sayl/, not /ess ay ie el/ n. 1. Stanford University
Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in the early
development of LISP; with the MIT AI LAB, BBN, CMU, and the UNIX
community, one of the major founts of technical innivation and
hacker culture traditions (see the {WAITS} entry for details).
The SAIL machines were shut down in late May 1990, scant weeks
after the MIT AI lab's ITS cluster went down for the last time. 2.
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used at SAIL (sense
#1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with some new data types
intended for building search trees and association lists and a
coroutining facility.
salescritter: /sayls'kri`tr/ n. Pejorative hackerism for a computer
salesperson. Hackers tell the following joke:
Q. What's the difference between a used car dealer and a computer
salesman?
A. The used car dealer knows he's lying.
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are
self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the
inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms
`salesthing' and `salesdroid' are also common. Compare
{marketroid}, {suit}.
salt mines: n. Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers
working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the
end of the tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine.
Compare {playpen}, {sandbox}.
salt substrate: [MIT] n. Collective noun used to refer to potato
chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food
essentially designed as a carrier for sodium chloride. From the
technical term `chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon on the
top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are deposited.
same-day-service: n. Ironic term is used to describe slow response
time, particularly with respect to {MS-DOS} system calls. Such
response time is a major incentive for programmers to write
programs that are not {well-behaved}. See also {PC-ism}.
sandbender: [IBM] n. A person involved with silicon lithography and
the physical design of chips. Compare {ironmonger}, {polygon
pusher}.
sandbox: n. (or `sandbox, the') Common term for the R&D
department at many software and computer companies (where hackers
in commercial environments are likely to be found). Half-derisive,
but reflects the truth that research is a form of creative play.
Compare {playpen}.
sanity check: n. 1. The act of checking a piece of code for
completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the check is to make sure
the author was sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of
scientific software relied on a particular formula and was giving
unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of
parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a {sanity check},
before looking at the more complex I/O or data structure
manipulation routines. Compare {reality check}. 2. A run-time
test, either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't
screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or state).
say: vt. In some contexts, to type to a terminal. "To list a
directory verbosely, you have to say `ls -l'". Tends to imply
a carriage-return-terminated command (a `sentence'). A computer
may also be said to `say' things to you even if it doesn't have a
speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a terminal in response to
your commands. Hackers find it odd that this usage confuses other
people.
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 jargon originated in SF fandom;
see {defenestration}, {great-wall}, {cyberpunk}, {h}, {ha ha
only serious}, {IMHO}, {mundane}, {neep-neep}, {Real Soon Now}.
Additionally, the jargon terms {cowboy}, {cyberspace}, {de-rezz},
{go flatline}, {ice}, {virus}, {wetware}, {wirehead}, and {worm}
originated in SF itself.
scram switch: [from the nuclear power industry] n. An
emergency-power-off switch (see {Big Red Switch}), esp. one
positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. In general,
this is *not* something you frob lightly; these are installed
in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in case
some luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts across himself
while {Easter egging}.
scratch: 1. [from `scratchpad'] adj. Describes a device or
recording medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use
purposes; one that can be {scribble}d on without loss. Usually
in the combining forms `scratch memory', `scratch
register', `scratch disk', `scratch tape', `scratch
volume'. See {scratch monkey}. 2. [primarily IBM] vt. 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 irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any
non-expendable device or scratch volume hooked to a computer, 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: /skroo'@j/ n. Like {lossage} but connotes that the
failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple
inadequacy or mere bug.
scribble: n. To modify a data structure in a random and
unintentionally destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's
disk-compactor program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node
table." "It was working fine until one of the allocation routines
scribbled on low core." Synonymous with {trash}; compare {mung},
which conveys a bit more intention, and {mangle}, which is more
violent and final.
scrog: /skrog/ [Bell Labs] vt. 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}
scrozzle: /skroz'l/ vt. Used when a self-modifying code segment runs
incorrectly and corrupts the running program or vital data. "The
damn compiler scrozzled itself again!"
SCSI: n. Small Computer System Interface is a system-level
interface between a computer and intelligent devices. Typically
annotated in literature with `sexy' (/sek'see/), `sissy' /sis'ee/
and `scuzzy' (/skuhz'zee/) as pronunciation guides --- the last
being the overwhelmingly predominant form, much to the dismay of
the designers and their marketing people. One can usually assume
that a person who pronounces it /ess see ess eye/ is clueless.
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. (sometimes, more euphoniously,
`second-system syndrome'.) When designing the successor to a
relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a
tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an
{elephantine} feature-laden monstrosity. The term was first used
by Fred Brooks in his classic 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. A
similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see
{creeping elegance}, {creeping featurism}. See also
{Multics}.
This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
altogether too much truth for comfort) as the result of
second-system effect applied to jargon-1...
secondary damage: n. When a fatal error occurs (esp. a
{segfault}) the immediate cause may be that a pointer is damaged
due to a {fandango on core}. However, this fandango may have
been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no amount of analysis
will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred. "The data
structure was clobbered, but it was secondary damage."
This generalizes. The corruption resulting from N cascaded
fandangoes on core is "Nth-level damage". There is at least one
case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling with `adb'
actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of 7th-level
damage! The hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was
presented with an award by his fellows.
security through obscurity: n. A name applied by hackers to most OS
vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes --- namely,
ignoring them and not documenting them and trusting that nobody
will find out about them and that people who do find out about them
won't exploit them. This never works for long and occasionally
sets the world up for disasters like the RTM worm of 1988, but once
the brief moments of panic created by such events subside most
vendors are all too willing to turn over and go back to sleep.
After all, actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources
needed to implement the next user-interface frill on Marketing's
wish list --- besides, if they started fixing security bugs
customers might begin to *expect* it and imagine that their
warranties of merchantability gave them some sort of *right*
to a system with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese,
and then where would we be?
Historical note: this term was first used in the USENET newsgroup
in `comp.sys.apollo' during a campaign to get HP/Apollo to fix
rampant security problems in its UNIX-lookalike Aegis/DomainOS.
They didn't change a thing.
segfault: n.,vi. Syn. {segment}, {seggie}.
seggie: /seg'ee/ [UNIX] n. Shorthand for {segmentation fault}
reported from Britain.
segment: /seg'ment/ vi. To experience a {segmentation fault}.
Confusingly, this is often accented on the first syllable rather
than on the second as for mainstream v. segment; this is because
it's actually a noun shorthand that has been verbed.
segmentation fault: n. [UNIX] 1. Error in which a running program
attempts to access memory not allocated to it and {core dump}s
with a segment violation error. 2. To lose a train of thought or a
line of reasoning. Also uttered as an exclamation at the point of
befuddlement.
segv: /seg'vee/ n.,vi. Yet another synonym for {segmentation fault}.
self-reference: n. See {self-reference}.
selvage: /sel'v@j/ [from sewing] n. See {chad} (sense #1).
semi: /se'mee/ or /se'mie/ 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." See
also {infinite}.
senior bit: [IBM] n. Syn. {meta bit}.
server: n. A kind of {daemon} that 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 hundreds of millions of
years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been terribly slow
up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular among hackers and
others. 2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend,
a machine instruction found in the PDP-11 and many architectures.
DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11 assembler using the SEX
mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't
asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this
happened, either. The author of `The Intel 8086 Primer', who
was one of the original designers of the 8086, noted that there was
originally a SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that
Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and
thus the instruction was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was
being extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller
used in IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has
logical-or and logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.
sex changer: n. Syn. {gender mender}.
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. [techspeak] The command
interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system; so called
because it's the part of the operating system that interfaces to
the outside world. 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. vi. To move oneself to the left (right). To
move out of the way. 2. imper. "Get out of that (my) seat! You
can shift 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 /l@sh/, from the PDP-10
instruction set. See {Programmer's Cheer}.
shitogram: /shit'oh-gram/ n. A *really* nasty piece of email.
Compare {nastygram}, {flame}.
short card: n. A half-length IBM PC expansion card or adapter that
will fit in one of the two short slots located towards the right
rear of a standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk drives).
See also {tall card}.
shotgun debugging: n. The software equivalent of {Easter egging};
the making of relatively undirected changes to software in the hope
that a bug will be perturbed out of existence. This almost never
works, and usually introduces more bugs.
showstopper: n. A hardware or (especially) software bug that makes
an implementation effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to
be fixed before development can go on. Opposite in connotation
from its original theatrical use, which refers to something
stunningly *good*.
shriek: n. See {excl}. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use
among APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists.
sidecar: n. 1. Syn. {slap on the side}. Esp. used of add-ons for
the late and unlamented IBM PCjr. 2. The IBM PC compatibility box
that could be bolted on to the side of an Amiga. Designed and
produced by Commodore and broke all of their design rules. If it
worked with any other peripherals, it was by {magic}.
sig block: /sig blok/ [UNIX; often written ".sig" there] n. Short
for `signature', used specifically to refer to the electronic
signature block that 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 net.
sig quote: /sig kwoht/ [USENET] n. A maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or
slogan embedded in one's {sig block} and intended to convey
something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or sense of
humor. "He *must* be a Democrat --- he posted a sig quote
from Dan Quayle."
signal-to-noise ratio: [from analog electronics] n. Used by hackers
in a generalization of its technical meaning. `Signal' refers to
useful information conveyed by some communications medium and
`noise' to anything else on that medium. Hence a low ratio implies
that it is not worth paying attention to the medium in question.
Figures for such metaphorical ratios are never given. The term is
most often applied to {USENET} newsgroups during {flame war}s.
Compare {bandwidth}. See also {coefficient of x}, {lost in
the noise}.
silicon: n. Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer
systems (compare {iron}). Contrasted with software. See also
{sandbender}.
silicon foundry: n. A company that {fab}s chips to the designs of
others. As of the late 1980s, the existence of silicon foundries
made it much easier for hardware-designing startup companies to come
into being. The downside of using a silicon foundry is that the
distance from the actual chip fabrication processes leads to weaker
designers. This is somewhat analogous to the use of a {HLL} versus
coding in assembler.
silly walk: [from Monty Python] vi. 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, presumably because it was this storage space for
fungible stuff that you put in the top and took out the bottom.
Silver Book: 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 (ISBN
0-387-90144-2). See {{book titles}}.
since time T equals minus infinity: adj. 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'.
See also {time T}.
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). The obligatory
comment when discussing these is Harris's Lament: "All the good
ones are taken!" See also {network address}.
skulker: n. Syn. {prowler}.
slap on the side: n. (also called a {sidecar}, or abbreviated
`SOTS'.) A type of external expansion marketed by computer
manufacturers (e.g. Commodore for their Amiga 500/1000 series and
IBM for the hideous failure they called `PCjr'). Various SOTS boxes
provided necessities such as memory, hard drive controllers, and
conventional expansion slots.
sleep: vi. On a timesharing system, a process that relinquishes its
claim on the scheduler until some given event occurs or a specified
time delay elapses is said to `go to sleep'.
slim: n. A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).
slop: n. 1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for
error but 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}. 2. The ratio of
the size of code generated by a compiler to the size of equivalent
assembler code produced by {hand-hacking}, 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}.
slurp: vt. To read a large data file entirely into core before working
on it. This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small
piece at a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece.
"This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT."
smart: adj. Said of a program that does the {Right Thing} in a wide
variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference
between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in
particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs (yet).
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. Compare {glass tty}.
There's a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the {blit}
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.
Compare {hook}.
smash case: vi. To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase
distinction in text input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case
in the names of all the files you create." Compare {fold case}.
smash the stack: [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} the stack, {mangle} the stack;
{mung} the stack is not used as this is never done intentionally.
See {spam}; see also {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
power is applied and 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}, and compare {reality check}.
Note: There is an interesting parallel to this term among
typographers and printers. When punchcutting new typefaces by
hand, a `smoke test' (hold the letter in candle smoke, then press
onto paper) is used to check out new dies.
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 lines all have one endpoint in the middle of the
screen; the other endpoints are spaced one pixel apart around the
perimeter of a large square. The color map is then repeatedly
rotated. This results in a striking, rainbow-hued, shimmering
four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about keeping it hidden from the
FDA (the U.S.'s Food and Drug Administration) lest 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 enhance a FORTRAN
compiler to compile COBOL as well; it's just a SMOP." 2. Often
used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion for a
program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is obviously
a lot of work to the programmer.
SNAFU principle: [from WWII army acronym for "Situation Normal,
all Fucked Up"] n. "True communication is only possible between
equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for
telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth"
--- a central tenet of {Discordianism} often invoked by hackers
to explain the reason authoritarian hierarchies screw up so
reliably and systematically. This lightly adapted version of a
fable dating back to the early 1960s illustrates the phenomenon
perfectly:
In the beginning was the plan,
and then the specification;
And the plan was without form,
and the specification was void.
And darkness
was on the faces of the implementors thereof;
And they spake unto their leader,
saying:
"It is a crock of shit,
and smells as of a sewer."
And the leader took pity on them,
and spoke to the project leader:
"It is a crock of excrement,
and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the project leader
spake unto his section head, saying:
"It is a container of excrement,
and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."
The section head then hurried to his department manager,
and informed him thus:
"It is a vessel of fertilizer,
and none may abide its strength."
The department manager carried these words
to his general manager,
and spoke unto him
saying:
"It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants,
and it is very strong."
And so it was that the General manager rejoiced
and delivered the good news unto the Vice President.
"It promoteth growth,
and it is very powerful."
The Vice President rushed to the President's side,
and joyously exclaimed:
"This powerful new software product
will promote the growth of the company!"
And the President looked upon the product,
and it was very good.
After the subsequent disaster, the {suit}s protect themselves by
saying "I was misinformed", and the implementors are demoted or
fired.
snail-mail: n. Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes
written as the single word `SnailMail'. One's postal address is,
correspondingly, a `snail address'. Derives from earlier
coinage `USnail' for which there have been parody posters and
stamps made. Oppose {email}.
snarf: /snarf/ vt. 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 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}. This term was
mainstream in the late 1960s, meaning `to eat piggishly'.
snarf & barf: /snarf'n-barf/ n. The act of grabbing a region of text
using a {WIMP environment} and then stuffing the contents of that
region into another region or into the same region, to avoid
re-typing a command line. In the late 1960s this was a
mainstream expression for an `Eat now, regret it later'
cheap-restaurant expedition.
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 an event or log file entry that might indicate an
attempted security violation. 3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com,
home site of the Jargon File 2.x.x versions (this lexicon).
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', `Floppy-Net'.
sniff: v.,n. Synonym for {poll}.
snivitz: /sniv'itz/ n. A hiccup in hardware or software; a small,
transient problem of unknown origin (less serious than a
{snark}).
SO: /ess-oh/ n. (also `S.O.') Acronym for Significant Other,
almost invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /ess-oh/ by
hackers. Used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a
live-in to whom one is not married. See {MOTAS}, {MOTOS},
{MOTSS}.
social science number: [IBM] n. A statistic which is
{content-free}, or nearly so. A measure derived via methods of
questionable validity from data of a dubious and vague nature.
Predictively, having a social science number in hand is seldom much
better than nothing and can be considerably worse. {Management}
loves them. See also {numbers}, {math-out}, {pretty
pictures}.
softcopy: n. [by analogy with `hardcopy'] A machine-readable form of
corresponding hardcopy. See {bits}.
software bloat: n. The results of {second-system effect} or
{creeping featuritis}. Commonly cited examples include
`ls(1)', {X}, {BSD}, {Missed'em-five}, and {OS/2}.
software rot: n. Term used to describe the tendency of software
which has not been used in a while; such failure may be
semi-humorously ascribed to {bit rot}. More commonly,
`software rot' strikes when a program's assumptions become out
of date. If the design was insufficiently {robust}, this may
cause it to fail in mysterious ways.
For example, due to endemic shortsightedness in the design of COBOL
programs, most will succumb to software rot when their two-digit
year counters {wrap around} at the beginning of the year 2000.
Actually, at least one instance of century wraparound recently
became public in 1990, when a gentleman born in 1899 applied for a
driver's license renewal in Raleigh, NC. The new system refused to
issue the card, probably because it did some dimwitted thing like
if `(birthyear > (thisyear - 100)) fail()'.
Historical note: software rot in an even funnier sense than the
mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g.,
the R1, see {grind crank}). If a program that depended on a
peculiar instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user
might discover that the opcodes no longer did the things as they
used to. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do
such-and-such. We can snarf this opcode, right? No one uses
it.")
Another classic example of this sprung from the time an MIT hacker
found a simple way to double the speed of the unconditional jump
instruction on a PDP-6, so he patched the hardware. Unfortunately,
this broke a delicate timing routine in a music-playing program,
throwing its output out of tune. This was fixed by adding a
defensive initialization routine to compare the speed of a timing
loop with the real-time clock; in other words, it figured out how
fast the PDP-6 was that day, and corrected appropriately.
Compare {bit rot}.
softwarily: /soft-weir'i-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to software.
"The system is softwarily unreliable." The adjective
`softwary' is *not* used. See {hardwarily}.
softy: [IBM] n. Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who
is largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
some random X: adj. Used to indicate a member of class X, with the
implication that 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." See
also {J. Random}.
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},
{network meltdown}.
SOS: n.,obs. /ess-oh-ess/ 1. An infamously {losing} text editor.
Once, back in the 1960s, 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 acquaintance. Since then other
programs similar in style to SOS have been written, notably BILOS
/bye'lohs/ the Brother-In-Law Of Stopgap. See also {TECO}. 2.
/sos/ n. Inverse of {AOS}, from the PDP-10 instruction set.
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.
space-cadet keyboard: n. The Knight keyboard, a now-legendary device
used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired several still-current
jargon terms and influenced the design of {EMACS}. It was inspired
by the Stanford keyboard and equipped with no fewer than
*seven* shift keys: four keys for {bucky bits} (`control',
`meta', `hyper', and `super') and three like a regular shift key,
called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many keys had three symbols
on them: a letter and a symbol on the top, and a Greek letter on
the front. For example, the `L' key had an `L' and a two-way
arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front. 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 might also be typed with any combination
of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyboard, you
could type over 8000 different characters! This allowed the user to
type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands
of single-character commands at his disposal. Many hackers were
actually willing to memorize the command meanings of that many
characters if it reduced typing time (this view rather obviously
shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however, thought
having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that such a
keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. See {bucky
bits}, {cokebottle}, {double bucky}, {meta bit}, {quadruple
bucky}.
SPACEWAR: n. A space-combat simulation game (inspired by E. E.
"Doc" Smith's `Lensman' books) in which two spaceships duel
around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping
through hyperspace. This game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at
MIT in 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}. Ten years after
that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of the first video games;
descendants are still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere.
spaghetti code: n. 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}.
spam: [from the {MUD} community] vt. To crash a program by overrunning
a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data. See also
{buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the stack}.
special-case: vt. To write unique code to handle input or command
to a program that is somehow distinguished from normal processing.
This would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt
characters in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text
entry or normal commands); or for processing of {hidden flag}s in
the input of a batch program or {filter}.
spell: n. Syn. {incantation}.
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 that 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. This word was common
mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to #1.
spin: vi. Equivalent to {buzz}. More common among C and UNIX
programmers.
spin-lock: [Cambridge] n. A {busy-wait}. Preferred in Britain.
spl: /ess-pee-ell/ [abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way
traditional UNIX kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code
at high interrupt levels. Used in jargon to describe the act of
tuning in or tuning out ordinary communication. Classically, spl
levels run from 1 to 7; "Fred's at spl 6 today" would mean he's
very hard to interrupt. "Wait till I finish this, I'll spl down
then." See also {interrupts locked out}.
splat: n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for
the asterisk (`*') character (ASCII #b0101010). This may derive
from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early
line printers. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the
number-sign (`#') character (ASCII #b0100011). 3. [Rochester
Institute of Technology] The command key on a Mac (same as {ALT},
sense #2). 4. [Stanford] Name used by some people for the
Stanford/ITS extended ASCII
circle-x
character.
This character is also called `blobby', and
`frob', among other names; it is used by mathematicians as a
notation for `cross-product'. 5. [Stanford] Name for the
semi-mythical extended ASCII
circle-plus
character. 6. Canonical name for an output routine that outputs
whatever the local interpretation of `splat' is.
With ITS and WAITS gone senses 4-6 are now historical. See also
{{ASCII}}.
spooge: /spooj/ 1. n. Inexplicable or arcane code, or random and
probably incorrect output from a computer program. 2. vi. To
generate code or output as in definition 1.
spool: [from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off-Line',
but this acronym is widely thought to have been contrived for
effect] vt. 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. A person's stack 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 stack. "I'm afraid I've got real work to
do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my stack." "I
haven't done it yet because every time I pop my stack something new
gets pushed." If you are interrupted several times in the middle
of a conversation, "my stack overflowed" means "I forget what we
were talking about" (the implication is that too many items were
pushed onto the stack than could be remembered, and so the least
recent items were lost). The usual physical example of a stack is
to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates 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. See also {push} and {pop}.
At MIT, all the {stack} usages used to be more commonly found
with {pdl}, and this may still be true. Everywhere else
{stack} seems to be the preferred term. {Knuth} writes (in
`The Art of Computer Programming' 2nd edition, vol 1, page 236
in section 2.2.1):
Many people who realized the important of stacks and queues
independently have given other names to these structures:
stacks have been called push-down lists, reversion storages,
cellars, nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out ("LIFO")
lists, and even yo-yo lists!
stack puke: n. Some computers 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. 1. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest
hack?" "It's winning away.". Or "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 "About to gronk out", or "Hungry".
Another standard question is "What's the state of the world?"
meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse and
humorous way of asking these conventions would be "State-p?". 2.
Information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic or
human).
stiffy: [Lowell University] n. 3.5" {microfloppies}, so called
because their jackets are more firm than the 5.25" and 8" floppy.
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}, {ravs}, {{Oriental Food}}; see also
{mumble}.
stomp on: vt. 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}.
Stone Age: n.,adj. 1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period
from ENIAC (c.1943) to the mid-1950s; the great age of
electromechanical {dinosaur}s. Sometimes used for the entire
period up to 1960-61 (see {Iron Age}); however, it is funnier and
more descriptive to characterize the latter half in terms of a
`Bronze Age' era of all-transistor, pre-ferrite-core machines
with drum or CRT mass storage (as opposed to just mercury delay
lines and/or relays). See also {Iron Age}. 2. More generally, a
pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of hardware or software
technology. Note that this is used even by people who were there
for the {Stone Age} (sense #1).
stoppage: /sto'p@j/ n. Extreme {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.
studlycaps: /stuhd'lee-kaps/ n. A hackish form of silliness similar
to {BiCapitalization}, but applied randomly and to random text
rather than to trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs
pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.
stunning: adj. Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm.
"You want to code *what* in ADA? That's...a stunning idea!"
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}.
sucking mud: [Applied Digital Research] adj. (also `pumping
mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides
some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas
regionalism derives from the East Texas oil field lament, "Shut
'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud." Often used as a query. "We
are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?"
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.
suitable win: n. See {win}.
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}).
sunspots: n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the
program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess".
2. Also the cause of {bit rot}, from the myth that sunspots
will increase {cosmic rays} that can flip single bits in memory.
See {cosmic rays}, {phase of the moon}.
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,
one programmer 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, matched in very few other areas
of human endeavor.) The term superprogrammer is more commonly used
within such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends
to stress naive measures of productivity and underweight creativity
or ingenuity. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and
{wizard}.
support: n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors
promise, but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are
useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he/she will
usually know the relevant manuals better than the support people
(sadly, this is *not* a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's
idea of `support' is a one-on-one with the software's designer.
Suzie COBOL: /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM, prob. from Frank Zappa's
`Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who
knows everything except the 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: /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `byte swap'
instruction, as immortalized in the dd(1) option `conv=swab'
(see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping
bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perform this
action, or anything functionally equivalent to it. See also
{big-endian}, {little-endian}, {middle-endian},
{bytesexual}.
swap: [from mainstream verb meaning to exchange] vt. To move
information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory
(`swap out'), or vice versa (`swap in'). This is a
technical term in computer science, and often specifically refers
to the use of disks as `virtual memory'. As pieces of data or
program are needed, they are swapped into main memory for
processing; when they are no longer needed for the nonce they are
swapped out again. The jargon use of these terms is as a fairly
exact analogy referring to people's memories. Cramming for an exam
might be spoken of as swapping in. If you temporarily forget
someone's name, but then remember it, your excuse is that it was
swapped out. To `keep something swapped in' means to keep it
fresh in your memory: "I reread the TECO manual every few months
to keep it swapped in." If someone interrupts you just got a good
idea, you might say, "Wait a moment while I write this down so I
can swap it out", implying that the piece of paper is your
secondary memory and if you don't swap the info out by writing it
down, it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. Compare {page
in}, {page out}.
swap space: n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space
used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner
of the machine room for swap space".
swapped: 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] (var. `synch') n.,vi. 1. [techspeak] 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}, sense #2.
syntactic sugar: [coined by Peter Landin] 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 is syntactic sugar for
`*(a + i)'. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the
semicolon." --- Alan Perlis.
sys-frog: /sis'frog/ [the PLATO system] n. Playful hackish variant
of `sysprog', which is in turn short for `systems programmer'.
sysop: /sis'op/ n. [BBS] The operator (and usually owner) of a
bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on {FidoNet} is
to address a message to `sysop' in an international {echo}, thus
sending it to hundreds of sysops world-wide.
system: n. 1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer. 2. The
entire computer system, including input/output devices, the
supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any
large-scale program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5. The way
things are usually done. Usage: a fairly ambiguous word. "You
can't beat the system." 6. `System hacker': one who hacks the
system (in sense #1 only; for sense #3 one mentions the particular
program: e.g., `LISP hacker')
system mangler: n. Humorous synonym for `system programmer';
compare {sys-frog}. Refers specifically to a systems programmer
in charge of administration, software maintainance, and updates at
some site. Unlike {admin}, this term emphasizes the technical
end of the skills involved.
= T =
=====
T: /tee/ 1. [from LISP terminology for `true'] Yes. Usage: used
in reply to a question (particularly one asked using the `-P'
convention). 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}.
tail recursion: n. If you haven't already, 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. Some of these are
identical to (and probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by
ham-radio amateurs going back to the 1920s.
BCNU Be seeing you.
BTW By the way... Lower-case also works.
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).
GRMBL grumble --- expresses disquiet or disagreement.
HELLOP A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? (An instance of the
"-P" convention.)
JAM Just a minute... Equivalent to SEC...
NIL No (see {NIL}).
O Over to you (lower-case works too).
OO Over and out (lower-case works too).
/ Another form of "Over to you" (from x/y as "x over y")
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).
WRT With Regard To or With Respect To.
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). On a MUD, this usually means
`earthquake fault'.
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
BBL be back later
BRB be right back
HHOJ ha ha only joking
HHOS {ha ha only serious}
IMHO in my humble opinion (see {IMHO})
LOL laughing out loud
ROTF rolling on the floor
ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing
AFK away from keyboard
b4 before
CU l8tr see you later
MORF Male or Female?
TTFN ta-ta for now
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}.
The {MUD} community uses a mixture of USENET/Internet emoticons, a
few of the more natural of the old-style talk mode abbrevs, and
some of the `social' list above; specifically, MUD respondents
report use of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4, BTW, WTF, and WTH. The use of
rehi is also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and
will frequently `rehug' or `rebonk' (see {bonk/oif}) people. The
word `re' by itself is verbed as `re-greet' In general, though,
MUDders express a preference for typing things out in full rather
than using abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of
the MUD cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and
assume high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are
reported:
UOK? Are you OK?
THX Thanks (mutant of TNX)
CU l8er See you later (mutant of CU l8tr)
OTT over the top (excessive, uncalled for)
Some {BIFF}isms (notably the variant spelling `d00d') appear to be
passing into wider use among some subgroups of mudders. See also
{hakspek}, {emoticon}, {bonk/oif}.
talker system: n. British hackerism for software that enables
real-time chat or {talk mode}.
tall card: n. A PC/AT-sized expansion card (these can be larger
than IBM-PC or XT cards because the AT case is bigger). See also
{short card}.
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)'] vt. 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, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller
files, after all, slip through comm links more easily.
taste: [primarily MIT-DMS] n. 1. 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. 2. Alt. sp. of {tayste}.
tayste: n. Also as {taste}; two bits. Syn. {crumb}, {quarter}.
Compare {{byte}}, {dynner}, {playte}, {nybble}, {quad}.
TCB: /tee see bee/ [IBM] n. 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}.
tea, ISO standard cup of: [South Africa] n. A cup of tea with milk
and one teaspoon of sugar, where the milk was poured into the cup
before the tea. Variations are ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with
two spoons of sugar; and so on.
Note: like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in
North America, wherein hackers generally shun the decadent British
practice of adulterating perfectly good tea with *dairy
products* and prefer instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything.
If one were feeling extremely silly, one might hypothesize an
analogous `ANSI standard cup of tea' and wind up with a
political situation distressingly similar to several that arise in
much more serious technical contexts. Milk and lemon don't mix
very well.
TechRef: [MS-DOS] n. The original `IBM PC Technical Reference
Manual', including the BIOS listing and complete schematics for the
PC. The only PC documentation in the issue package that's
considered serious by real hackers.
TECO: /tee'koh/ obs. 1. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor
in one of its infinite variations (see below); sometimes still used
to mean `to edit' even when not using TECO! Usage: rare and now
primarily historical. 2. [originally an acronym for `(paper)
Tape Editor and COrrector'; later, `Text Editor and
Corrector'] n. A text editor developed at MIT and modified by
just about everybody. If all the dialects are included, TECO might
have been the single most prolific editor in use before {EMACS},
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$$
J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$
(where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII #b0000010) and $ is actually an
{ALT} or escape (ASCII #b0011011) character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted
list from the first list! The first hack at it had a {bug}: GLS
(the author) had accidentally omitted the `@' in front of
`F^B', which as anyone can see is clearly the {Wrong Thing}. It
worked fine the second time. There is no space to describe all the
features of TECO, but it may be of interest that `^P' means
`sort' and `J<.-Z; ... L>' is an idiomatic series of commands
for `do once for every line'.
In mid-1991, TECO is now pretty much one with the dust of history,
having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by {EMACS}. It
can still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty PDP-11
operating systems, however, and remains the focus of some antiquarian
interest. See also {write-only language}.
tee: n.,vt. [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission.
"Oh, you're sending him the {bits} to that? Slap on a tee for
me." From the UNIX command `tee(1)', itself named after a
pipe fitting (see {plumbing}, {pipeline}). 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: /tel'net/ vt. To communicate with another Internet host
using the {TELNET} program. TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM
since that was 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 {bum}med, 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.
tera-: /te'r@/ pref. Multiplier, 10 ^ 12 or 2 ^ 40. See {kilo-}.
teraflop club: /ter'a-flop kluhb/ [FLOP = Floating Point Operation]
n. Mythical group of people who consume outrageous amounts of
computer time in order to produce a few simple pictures of glass
balls with intricate ray tracing techniques. Caltech professor
James Kajiya is said to have been the founding member. See also
{kilo-}.
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. {raster burn}. 2. The `burn-in'
condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a screen saver.
terminal junkie: [Great Britain] n. A {wannabee} or early
{larval stage} hacker who spends most of his/her time wandering
the directory tree and writing {noddy} programs just to get
his/her fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal
jockey', `console junkie', or {console jockey}. The term
`console jockey' seems to imply more expertise than the other
three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {{console}}
relative to an ordinary terminal). See also {twink},
{read-only user}.
terpri: /ter'pree/ [from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] vi. To
output a {crlf}. Now rare as jargon, though still used as
techspeak in Common Lisp. It is a contraction of `TERminate PRInt
line'.
test: n. 1. Real users bashing on a prototype for long enough to
get thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and
followup of the results. 2. Some bored random user trying a
couple of the simpler features with a developer looking over
his/her shoulder, ready to pounce on mistakes. Judging by the
quality of most software, the second definition is far more
prevalent. See also {demo}.
TeX: /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful {macro}-based text-formatter
written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science
community (it is good enough to have displaced UNIX
`troff(1)', the other favored formatter, even at many UNIX
installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural)
pronunciation and spelling (all caps, with the E depressed below
the baseline) of the name (the mixed-case `TeX' is considered an
acceptable kluge on ASCII-only devices). They like to proliferate
names from the word `TeX' --- such as TeXnician (TeX user),
TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX programmer),
TeXhax, TeXnique, TeXpert.
text: n. 1. Executable code, esp. a `pure code' portion shared
between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking
OS (compare {English}). 2. Textual material in the mainstream
sense; data in ordinary {{ASCII}} or {{EBCDIC}} representation
(syn. {flat-ASCII}). "Those are text files; you can review them
using the editor." These two contradictory senses confuse
hackers, too.
thanks in advance: [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a
posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written
`advTHANKSance' or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. See
{net.-}, {netiquette}.
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: /thing'koh/ [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!: excl. 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, "But that trick *never* works!".
See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
thrash: vi. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing
anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded
waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather
than performing useful computation) and are therefore said to
thrash. Someone who keeps changing his mind (esp. about what to
work on next) is said to be thrashing. A person frantically trying
to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on
any of them) may also be described as thrashing. Compare
{multitask}.
thread: /thred/ n. [USENET, GEnie] Common abbreviation of `topic
thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single
topic.
three-finger salute: n. Syn. {vulcan nerve pinch}.
thunk: /thuhnk/ [mythically, the sound made by a result as it hits
the stack] n. 1. " ... a piece of coding which provides an
address." --- P. Z. Ingerman, who invented {thunk}s in 1961 as a
way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in
Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called with an
expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler
generates a {thunk} to compute the expression and leave the
address of the result in some standard location such as a
designated register. 2. Later generalized into: an expression,
frozen together with its environment for later evaluation if and
when needed. The process of unfreezing these {thunk}s is called
`forcing'. 3. A {stubroutine}, in an overlay programming
environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. 4.
People 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. A {jiffy} (sense #1). 2. In simulations, the
discrete unit of time that passes `between' iterations of the
simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is
often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is
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
{handwave}d.
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). The American equivalent
would be `check-list features', but this jargon sense of the
phrase has not been reported.
tickle a bug: vt. To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest
through some known series of inputs or operations. "You can
tickle the bug in the Paradise's highlight handling by trying to
set bright yellow reverse video".
time sink: [poss. by analogy with `heat sink'] n. A project which
consumes unbounded amounts of time.
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 the number 1, 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. See also {since time T equals
minus infinity}.
tinycrud: /tie'nee-kruhd/ n. Pejorative used by habitues of older
game-oriented {MUD} versions for TinyMuds and other
user-extensible {MUD} variants; esp. common among users of the
rather violent and competitive AberMUD and MIST systems. These
people justify the slur on the basis of how (allegedly)
inconsistent and lacking in genuine feel or atmosphere the
scenarios generated in user extensible muds can be. Other common
knocks on them are that they feature little overall plot, bad game
topology, little competitive interaction, etc. --- not to mention
the alleged horrors of the TinyMud code itself. This dispute is
one of the MUD world's hardiest perennial {holy wars}.
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 the `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. The term `SFLA' (Stupid
Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also {YABA}.
toast: 1. n. Any completely inoperable system, esp. one that has
just crashed; "Uh, oh...I think the serial board is toast."
2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a
manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the
{firewall machine} again."
toaster: n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an
embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments which
imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see
{elevator controller}). "{DWIM} for an assembler? That'd be
as silly as running UNIX on your toaster!" 2. A very, very dumb
computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster." See
{bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}.
3. A peripheral device. "I bought my box without toasters, but
since then I've added two boards and a second disk drive."
toeprint: n. A {footprint} of especially small size.
toggle: vt. To change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the
other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This probably
comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light switches,
though the word `toggle' actually refers to the mechanism that
keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped, rather
than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four
things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or
zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would
say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one
boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking
about toggling bits.)
tool: 1. n. A program 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] vi. To work; to study. See
{hack}. 4. [MIT] n. A student who studies too much and hacks too
little.
toolsmith: n. The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist;
one who specializes in making the tools with which other
programmers create applications.
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 A. See also {ITS},
{TOPS-20}, {TWENEX}, {VMS}, {operating system}. TOPS-10 was
sometimes called BOTS-10 (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the
inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.
TOPS-20: /tops-twen'tee/ n. See {TWENEX}.
toto: n. This is reported to be the default scratch file name among
French-speaking programmers; in other words, a Francophone {foo}.
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}. Note:
hackers often spell this `turist', perhaps by some sort of tenuous
analogy with `luser'. Compare {twink}, {read-only user}
tourist information: n. Information in an on-line report that is
not really relevant to its primary purpose, but contributes to a
viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the software or hardware
behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls in this category or
not partly depends on what the user is looking for at any given
time. The `bytes free' information at the bottom of an MS-DOS
`dir' display is tourist information; so is the TIME
information in a UNIX `ps(1)' display, most of the time.
touristic: adj. Having the quality of a {tourist}. Often used as
a pejorative, as in the phrase `losing touristic scum'. Often
spelled `turistic'.
toy: n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers. 1. `nice
toy': One that supports the speaker's hacking style adequately.
2. `just a toy': A machine that yields insufficient {computron}s
for the speaker's preferred uses. This is not condemnatory as is
{bitty box}; toys can at least be fun. See also {Get a real
computer!}.
toy language: n. A language useful for instructional purposes or as
a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer science theory, but
which is inadequate for general-purpose programming. Bad Things
can result when a toy language is promoted as a general-purpose
solution for programming (see {bondage-and-discipline language});
the classic example is {{Pascal}}. Several moderately well-known
formalisms for conceptual tasks like programming Turing machines
also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense.
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}.
toy program: n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a
trivial program. 2. One for which the effort of initial coding
dominates the costs through its life cycle.
trampoline: n. An incredibly hairy technique found in some HLL and
program-overlay implementations (for example, on the Macintosh)
involves consing up small pieces of executable object code on the
fly to do indirection between program segments. These pieces of
live data are called `trampolines'. It is said by those who use
this term that the trampoline which can be understood is not the
true trampoline.
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. 2. vi. To cause a trap. "These
instructions trap to the monitor." Also used transitively to
indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all
input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt'
is more common among {HLL} programmers) and appears to be fading
into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues
to shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects,
who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions
from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).
trap door: alt. `trapdoor' n. Syn. {back door}.
trash: vt. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure).
The most common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung},
{mangle}, and {scribble}.
tree-killer: [Sun] n. 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper.
This should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper'
includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free} documents.
Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers.
trit: [by analogy with `bit'] n. One base-3 digit; the amount of
information conveyed by a choice of one of three equally likely
outcomes (see also {bit}). These arise, for example, in the
context of a {flag} that should actually be able to assume
*three* values --- yes, no, or unknown. Trits are sometimes
jokingly called "three-state bits". A trit may be semi-seriously
referred to as "a bit and a half" though it is properly
equivalent to 1.58 bits (that is, log to the base 2 of 3 bits).
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. 1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle.
The term `Gnoll' (from D&D) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon
attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combination
`ITS troglodyte' got flung around some during the USENET and
email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon
File; at least one of the people it was intended to describe
adopted it with pride.
troglodyte mode: [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 (see {raster burn}). Loud music blaring from
a stereo stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. See
{larval stage}, {hack mode}.
Trojan horse: [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-spook Dan Edwards] n. A
program designed to break security or damage a system that is
disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister,
archiver, or game. See {back door}, {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 compliment. "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; this pronunciation is not considered to have
sexual undertones] 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). See also {bit-paired keyboard}. 2.
[especially UNIX] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to
the particular terminal controlling a given job.
tube: 1. 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 Star Trek and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckle
movie (see Appendix B). 2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to
someone else's terminal. "Tube me that note?"
tube time: n. Time spent at a terminal or console; more inclusive
than hacking time. Commonly used in discussions of what parts of
one's environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too
much of my tube time reading mail since I started this revision."
tunafish: n. In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an
age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the man pages of
`tunefs(8)' in the original {BSD} 4.2 distribution. The joke
was removed in later releases once commercial sites started
developing 4.2. Tunefs relates to the `tuning' of file-system
parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few
pages of {black art} writings was a BUGS section consisting of the
line "You can tune a filing system, but you can't tunafish."
tune: [from automotive or musical usage] vt. To optimize a program
or system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical
parameters designed as {hook}s for tuning, e.g. by changing
#define lines in C. One may `tune for time' (fastest
execution), `tune for space' (least memory utilization), or
`tune for configuration' (most efficient use of hardware). See
{bum}, {hot spot}, {hand-hacking}.
turbo nerd: n. See {computer geek}.
turist: n. Var. sp. of {tourist}, q.v. Also in adjectival form,
`turistic'. Poss. influenced by {luser} and `Turing'?
tweak: vt. 1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value.
Also used synonymously with {twiddle}. If a program is almost
correct, rather than 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 Great Britain.
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 DECSYSTEM-20 OS. Bolt,
Beranek, and Newman (BBN) had developed its 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 its 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 #b1111110, `~'). Also called
`squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic---pronounced /skig'l/), and
`twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and
insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones. 3. vt. 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
aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify what you're doing to the
bit; by contrast, toggling a bit has a more specific meaning (see
{toggle}).
twink: /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to {read-only user}.
two pi: quant. 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...".
two-to-the-n: quant. An amount much larger than {N}, but smaller
than {infinity}. "I have two-to-the-N things to do before I can
go out for lunch" means you probably won't show up.
twonkie: n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie; a useless
`feature' added to look sexy and placate a {marketroid}. This
may be related to the `Twonky' in a classic SF short story by Henry
Kuttner.
= U =
=====
UBD: /yoo-bee-dee/ [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}.
UN*X: n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of
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., YHWH
or G-d is used. See also {glob}.
undefined external reference: excl. [UNIX] A message from UNIX's
linker. Used in speech to indicate loose ends in an argument or
discussion.
under the hood: prep. [hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the
underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or
idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious
from the appearance, but the speaker is about enable the listener
to {zen} it. "Let's now look under the hood to see how
...." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is much
simpler than the appearance would indicate, as in "Under the hood,
we are just fork/execling the shell." 3. Inside a chassis, as in
"Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!"
undocumented feature: n. See {feature}.
uninteresting: adj. 1. Said of a problem that, 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.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as an intolerable waste of
time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. *True*
hackers (see {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems
enough to make them interesting and solve them --- thus solving
the original problem as a special case and, incidentally, creating
massive (but usually temporary) technological unemployment among
lesser mortals. See {WOMBAT}, {SMOP}; compare {toy problem},
oppose {interesting}.
UNIX: /yoo'niks/ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"]
n. (also `Unix') 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 PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a
co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history came
when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C 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. Many people
consider this the single most important victory yet of hackerdom
over industry opposition (but see {UNIX weenie} for an opposing
point of view). See {Version 7}, {BSD}, {USG UNIX}.
UNIX conspiracy: [ITS] n. According to a conspiracy theory long
popular among {ITS} and {TOPS-20} fans, UNIX's growth is the
result of a plot hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose
intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent
upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T control.
This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system
that is seemingly inexpensive and easily portable, but relatively
unreliable and insecure. This theory was lent a substantial
impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the {back door} entry.
In this view, UNIX was designed to be one of the first computer
viruses (see {virus}), but a virus spread to computers indirectly
by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and
networks. Adherents of this `UNIX virus' theory like to cite the
fact that the well-known quotation "UNIX is snake oil" was
uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began
actively promoting its own family of UNIX workstations (Olsen now
claims to have been misquoted).
UNIX weenie: [ITS] n. 1. A derogatory pun on `UNIX wizard', common
among hackers who use UNIX by necessity but would prefer
alternatives. The implication is that while the person in
question may consider mastery of UNIX arcana to be a wizardly
skill, the only real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and
the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity
that are alleged to infest many UNIX programs. "This shell script
tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. It must have
been written by a real UNIX weenie." 2. A derogatory term for
anyone who engages in uncritical praise of UNIX. Often appearing
in the context "stupid UNIX weenie". See {Weenix}, {UNIX
conspiracy}. See also {weenie}.
unixism: n. A piece of code or coding technique that depends on
the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low
process-spawn overhead that exists on UNIX systems. Common
{unixism}s 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 system 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 zeroed; the assumption that it's safe to never free()
memory; etc. Compare {vaxocentrism}; see {New Jersey}.
unwind the stack: vi. 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
heck, 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."
up: adj. 1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up."
Oppose {down}. 2. `bring up': vt. To create a working
version and start it. "They brought up a down system."
upload: /uhp'lohd/ v. 1. To transfer code or data over a digital
comm line from a smaller or peripheral `client' system to a larger
or central `host' one. A transfer in the other direction is, of
course, called a `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.
upthread: adv. Earlier in the discussion (see {thread}). "As Joe
pointed out upthread...." See also {followup}.
urchin: n. See {munchkin}.
USENET: /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `Users' Network'] n. A
distributed {bboard} (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 {newsgroup}s and distributes up to 15 megabytes
(the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of new technical
articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day.
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.
The general theory behind this term is that 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 winner's.) 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". See {WIMP environment},
{Macintrash}.
USG UNIX: /yoo-ess-jee yoo'niks/ n. Refers to AT&T UNIX commercial
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) 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}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'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' (compare {phreaking}).
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: [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] 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 (suan la chow show). Applied to hardware
and software. As in "Vanilla Version 7 UNIX can't run on a
vanilla 11/34." Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for
instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a
74LS00, etc. This word differs from {canonical} in that the
latter means `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}, 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, videotex, and a paper from the late 1970s
that computed a purported ultimate limit on areal density for ICs
which was in fact less than the routine densities of 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 micro}s 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}). Esp. noted for its
large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set, an asset
that 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.
VAXectomy: n. A VAX removal. DEC's microvaxen, especially, are
much slower than newer RISC-based workstations like the SPARC.
Thus, if one knows one has a repacement coming, VAX removal can be
cause for celebration.
VAXen: /vak'sn/ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] n.
(alt. `vaxen') The plural standardly used among hackers for the DEC
VAX computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty
vaxen." See {boxen}.
vaxism: n. A piece of code that exhibits {vaxocentrism} in critical
areas. Compare {PC-ism}, {unixism}.
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
it is all bits zero, and 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,
segmentation 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 or others 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
or others with multiple pointer formats).
11. The assumption that an `int' is 32 bits (fails on 286-based
systems and even on 386 and 68000 systems under some compilers), or
(nearly equivalently) the assumption that `sizeof(int) ==
sizeof(long)'.
12. The assumption that argv[] is writable (fails in some
embedded-systems C environments).
13. The assumption that characters are signed.
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 or others 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.
vdiff: /vee'dif/ v.,n. Visual diff. The operation of finding
differences between two files by {eyeball search}. See {diff}.
veeblefester: /vee'b@l-fes`tr/ [from the `Born Loser' comix via
Commodore; prob. originally from Mad Magazine's `Veeblefetzer' 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 insect-eating plant] n. See {firewall
machine}.
verbage: /ver'b@j/ n. Deliberate misspelling/mispronunciation of
{verbiage} that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare
{content-free}. More pejorative than `verbiage'.
verbiage: n. When the context involves a software or hardware
system, this refers to {{documentation}}. This term borrows the
connotations of mainstream `verbiage' to suggest that the
documentation is of marginal utility, and that the motives from
which it is produced have little to do with the ostensible subject.
Version 7: alt. V7 /vee se'vn/ n. The 1978 unsupported release of
{UNIX} 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 that V7 was the Last True UNIX.
vgrep: /vee'grep/ v.,n. Visual grep. The operation of finding
patterns in a file {by hand}. See {grep}; compare {vdiff}.
vi: /vee ie/, *not* /vie/ and *never* /siks/ [from
`Visual Interface'] n. A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy
for an early {BSD} version. Became the de-facto standard UNIX
editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite until the rise of
{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 the default setup provides no indication of which
mode one is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has
often heard the editor's name pronounced /viel/). Nevertheless it
is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 USENET
poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans often resort to it as a
mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up
faster than bulky EMACS). See {holy wars}.
videotex: n.obs. An electronic service offering people the
privilege of paying to read the weather on their television screens
instead of having somebody read it to them for free while they brush
their teeth. The idea bombed, because by the time videotex was
practical the installed base of personal computers could hook up to
timesharing services and do the things videotex might have been
worthwhile for better and cheaper. Videotex planners badly
overestimated both the appeal of getting information from a
computer and the cost of local intelligence at the user's end.
Like the {gorilla arm} effect, this has been a cautionary tale to
hackers ever since.
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} through {SEX}. Also, by
extension, unused buffers and the like within a program.
virtual: [via the technical term `virtual memory', prob. fr.
the term `virtual image' in optics] adj. 1. Common alternative
to {logical}. 2. Simulated; performing the functions of
something that isn't really there. An imaginative child's doll may
be a virtual playmate. Usage: never used with compass directions.
virtual Friday: n. The last day before an extended weekend, if that
day is not a `real' Friday. For example, the U.S. holiday
Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The next day is often also
taken as a holiday or extra day off, in which case Wednesday of
that week is a virtual Friday (and Friday is a virtual Saturday).
There are also `virtual Mondays' that are actually Tuesdays,
after the three-day weekends associated with many U.S. national
holidays.
virtual reality: n. 1. Computer simulations that involve OB3D graphics
and use devices such as the Dataglove to allow the user to interact
with the simulation. See {cyberspace}. 2. A form of network
interaction incorporating aspects of role-playing games,
interactive theater, improvisational comedy, and `true
confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as
USENET's alt.callahans newsgroup or the {MUD} experiments on
Internet), interaction between the participants is written like a
shared novel complete with scenery, `foreground characters' 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}.
virus: [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF]
n. A cracker program that searches out other programs and
`infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that when
these programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed, too,
thus propagating the `infection'. This normally happens
transparently to the user. The virus may do nothing but propagate
itself. Usually, however, after propagating silently for a while
it starts doing things like writing cute messages on the terminal
or playing strange tricks with your display (some viruses include
nice {display hack}s). Many nasty viruses, written by
particularly perversely minded {cracker}s, do irreversible
damage, like nuking all the user's files.
In mid-1991, viruses have become a serious problem, especially
among IBM PC and Macintosh users (the lack of security on these
machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the
operating system). The production of special anti-virus software
has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports
have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users, to the point
where many {luser}s tend to blame *everything* that doesn't
work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this
sense of `virus' has passed not only into techspeak but into
popular usage as well (where it is often incorrectly used to denote
a worm). Compare {Trojan horse}, {back door}, {worm}; see
also {UNIX conspiracy}.
visionary: n. 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an
Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of
getting computers to `see' things using TV cameras. (There isn't
any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a computer.
The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of
the camera information? See {SMOP}.) 2. [IBM] One who reads
the outside literature.
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}, {runic}.
voice-net: n. Hackish way of referring to the telephone system,
analogizing it to a digital network. USENET {sig block}s not
uncommonly include the sender's phone next to a "Voice:" or
"Voice-Net:" header; common variants of this are "Voicenet" and
"V-Net". Compare {paper-net}, {snail-mail}.
voodoo programming: [from George Bush's "voodoo economics"] n.
The use by guess or cookbook of an {obscure}, {hairy} system
feature or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The
implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn't,
one will never know why. Compare {magic}, {deep magic},
{heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo-cult programming},
{wave a dead chicken}.
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 Suns, L1-A; on
Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power switch>! Also called {three-finger
salute}. Compare {quadruple bucky}.
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 wascawwy 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}.
WAITS: n. The mutant cousin of {TOPS-10} used on a handful of
systems at {SAIL} up to 1990. There was never an `official'
expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a
rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as
`West-Coast Alternative to ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible
than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between
the two communities and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted
enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of {EMACS},
for example, were directly inspired by WAITS's `E' editor --- one
of a family of editors which were the first to do `real-time
editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where
one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern
style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there,
and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewehere played major roles in
the developments that led to the XEROX Star, Macintosh and Sun
workstations. {Bucky bits} were also invented there --- thus,
the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One notable WAITS
feature never duplicated elsewhere was a news-wire interface that
allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter AP and UPI
dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a
still-unique level of support for what is now called `multimedia'
computing, allowing analog and video signals to be switched to
programming terminals.
waldo: /wol'doh/ [probably taken from the story `Waldo', by
Robert A. Heinlein, which is where the term was first used to mean
a remote mechanical agent controlled by 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}.
walk: n.,vt. Traversal of an actual or {logical} data structure,
especially a linked-list data structure in {core}. See also
{codewalker}, {silly walk}, {clobber}.
walking drives: n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk
drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing
machine}s. Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular
momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings
and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to
`walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple
of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a drive that
walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it
shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at
it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive
access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk, followed by
a slow seek in the other direction). 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 follower: n. A person or algorithm which compensates for
native stupidity by efficiently following procedures shown to have
been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not
necessarily pejorative; it recalls `Harvey Wallbanger', the winning
robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the
cocktail). Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger'
on one wall and running till it came out the other end. This was
inelegant, but mathematically guaranteed to work on
simply-connected mazes --- and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more
sophisticated robots that tried to `learn' each maze by building an
internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term *is*
pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book
mentality. See also {code grinder}.
wall time: n. (also `wall clock time') 1. `Real world' time
(what the clock on the wall shows) as opposed to the system clock's
idea of time. 2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to
the number of {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'.)
wango: n. Random bit-chugging going on in a system during some
unspecified operation. Often used in combination with mumble. For
example: "You start with the .o file and mumble-wango, and it comes out a
snazzy object-oriented executable."
wank: /wangk/ [Columbia University; prob. by mutation from
Commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. Used much as
{hack} (senses #4, #6, #7) is elsewhere. May describe
(negatively) the act of hacking for hacking's sake ("Quit wanking,
let's go get supper!") or (more positively) a {wizard}. Adj.
`wanky' describes something particularly clever (a person,
program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get wanky when
there are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness is
signalled by an overload of the `wankometer' (compare
{bogometer}). When the wankometer overloads, the conversation's
subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will leave. Compare
`neep-neeping' (under {neep-neep}).
wannabee: [from a term recently used to describe Madonna fans who
dress, talk, and act like their idol; prob. originally from biker
slang] n. A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of this term
differ sharply depending on the age and exposure of the subject.
Used of a person who is in or might be entering {larval stage},
it's semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most
hackers remember that they, too, were once such creatures. When
used of any professional programmer, CS academic, writer, or
{suit}, it's derogatory, implying that said person is trying to
cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a
prayer of understanding what it's all about. Overuse of terms from
this File is often an indication of the {wannabee} nature.
Compare {newbie}.
[Historical note: the wannabee phenomenon has a bit different
flavor now (1991) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the
people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval
stage}, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious
and unaffected by models known in popular culture --- communities
formed spontaneously around people who, *as individuals*, felt
irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees
experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become
similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever;
society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980
included the elevation of hackers as a new kind of folk hero, and
the result is that some people semi-consciously set out to *be
hackers* and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the public hacker
image. Fortunately, to do this really well one has to actually
become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a
poorly articulated disquiet about the change; among other things,
it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia
of lore like this one.]
wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an
otherwise {clean} design. Something conspicuous for localized
ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule.
For example, in some versions of `csh(1)', single-quotes
literalize every character inside them except `!'. In ANSI C,
the `??' syntax used for escapes to foreign-language alphabets is a
wart. See also {miswart}.
washing machine: n. Old-style 14" hard disks in floor-standing
cabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the
`top-loading' access to the media packs --- and, of course, they
were always set on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom
transcends language barriers; it's even used in Russian hacker
jargon. See {walking drives}. The thick channel cables
connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see {hose}).
water MIPS: n. Large, water-cooled machines of either today's
ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe}
type.
wave a dead chicken: v. To perform a ritual in the direction of
crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but
is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an
appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead
chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an
OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}.
weasel: n. [Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or
accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly
synonymous with {luser}.
wedged: [from a common description of recto-cranial inversion] 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 to
describe a {deadlock} condition. 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.
wedgitude: /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n. The quality or state of being
{wedged}.
weeble: /weeb'l/ [Cambridge] 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...."
At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds'
was equivalent to IBM's {branch to Fishkill} and mainstream
hackerdom's {jump off into never-never land}.
weenie: n. 1. The semicolon character, `;' (ASCII #b0111011).
2. When used with a qualifier (for example, as in {UNIX weenie},
VMS weenie, IBM weenie) can become either an insult or a term of
praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it
is applied by a person who considered him/herself to be the same
sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major investment
of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether
this is positive or negative depends on the hearer's judgement of
how the speaker feels about that area. See also {bigot}.
Weenix: [ITS] n. A derogatory term for {UNIX}, derived from
{UNIX weenie}. According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "The
operating system preferred by Unix Weenies. Typified by poor
modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion, no file version
numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that
these are all advantages." Some ITS fans behave as though UNIX
stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. See {ITS}.
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. `Well-known' can
be almost synonymous, but also implies that the site's name is
familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive service or active
USENET users).
wetware: [prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] n. 1. The human
brain, as opposed to computer hardware or software (as in "Wetware
has at most 7 plus or minus 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 (`?', ASCII #b0111111).
Syn. {ques}. Usage: rare, used particularly in conjunction with
`wow'.
wheel: n. 1. A privilege bit that canonically allows the
possessor to perform any operation on a timesharing system, such as
read or write any file on the system regardless of protections,
change or or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or
reload the system, and kill/create jobs and user accounts. The
term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over
to TOPS-20, Xerox-IFS and others. 2. A person who posses a wheel
bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives."
This term entered the UNIX culture from TWENEX in the mid-80s 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: n. Syn. {K&R}.
whizzy: [Sun] adj. (alt. `wizzy') Describes a {cuspy} program;
one that is feature-rich and well presented.
WIBNI: [Bell Labs, Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements
documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare {IWBNI}.
widget: n. 1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in
didactic examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it
that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. 2. [poss.
from `window gadget'] A user interface object in X Window System
graphical user interfaces.
wiggles: n. [scientific computation] In solving partial differential
equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are
sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength
representable on the grid. If an algorithm is unstable, this is
often the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the
solution. Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be
generated near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.
WIMP environment: n. [acronymic from Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing
device] A graphical-user-interface-based environment, as described
by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior
flexibility and extensibility. See {menuitis},
{user-obsequious}.
win: [from MIT jargon] 1. vi. To succeed. A program wins if no
unexpected conditions arise. 2. Success, or a specific instance
thereof. A pleasing outcome. A {feature}. Emphatic forms:
`moby win', `super win', `hyper-win' (often used
interjectively as a reply). For some reason `suitable win' is
also common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution
to a problem. Oppose {lose}; see also {big win}, which isn't
quite just an intensification of `win'.
win big: vi. See {big win}.
win win: interj. Expresses pleasure at a {win}.
Winchester:: n. Informal term for the now-standard `floating-head'
magnetic-disk technology in which the read-write head planes over
the disk surface on an air cushion. The name arose because the
original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM
3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30-30 became `Winchester'
when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a
famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to
caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge).
winged comments: n. Comments set on the same line as code, as
opposed to {boxed comments}. In C, for example:
d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* d = distance of (x,y) from origin */
Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line.
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 (see also the note following the {user} entry).
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!"
wired: n. See {hardwired}.
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. Compare {tick-list features}.
wizard: n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software
or hardware works (that is, who {grok}s it); esp. someone who
can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. 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 consumes too many
{cycle}s. 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}, {lord high fixer}. See also {deep magic},
{heavy wizardry}, {incantation}, {magic}, {mutter}, {rain
dance}, {voodoo programming}, {wave a dead chicken}.
Wizard Book: n. Abelson and Sussman's `Structure and Interpretation
of Computer Programs', an excellent CS text used in introductory
courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the cover of
the MIT Press edition.
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}. Also note the rather different
usage as a meta-syntactic variable under {{Commonwealth Hackish}}.
wonky: /wong'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}, {demented}.
workaround: n. A temporary {kluge} inserted in a system under
development or test in order to avoid the effects of a {bug} or
{misfeature} so that work can continue. Theoretically,
workarounds are always replaced by {fix}es; in practice, customers
often find themselves living with workarounds in the first couple
of releases. "The code died on nul characters in the input, so I
fixed it to abort with an error message when it sees one."
"That's not a fix, that's a workaround!"
working as designed: [IBM] adj. 1. In conformance to a wrong or
inappropriate specification; useful, but mis-designed. 2.
Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility. 3.
Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a criticism
or suggestion. At {IBM}, this sense is used in official
documents! See {BAD}.
worm: [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's `The Shockwave
Rider', via XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates itself over a
network, reproducing itself as it goes. Compare {virus}.
Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is assumed that
only crackers write worms. Perhaps the best known example was
Robert T. Morris's `Internet Worm' in 1988, a `benign' one that
got out of control and hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen
nationwide. See also {cracker}, {Trojan horse}, {ice}.
wound around the axle: adj. In an infinite loop. Often used by older
computer types.
wrap around: vi. (also n. `wraparound' and v. shorthand `wrap')
1. 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
(28-hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the rate of
10 microhertz).
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,
and possibly not even by him/her. A {Bad Thing}.
write-only language: n. A language with syntax (or semantics)
sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size
is {write-only code}. A sobriquet often applied to APL,
though {INTERCAL} and {TECO} certainly deserve it more.
write-only memory: n. The obvious antonym to `read-only memory'.
In frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of
approvals required of component specifications, during which no
actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics created a
specification for a write-only memory, and included it with a bunch
of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion only came
to the attention of Signetics when regular customers started
calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a
corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the
`erroneous' ones. Later, about 1974, Signetics bought a double
page spread in Electronics magazine's April issue and used the
spec as an April Fools' day joke. Instead of the more conventional
characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random
Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit
capacity vs. Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining
vs. number of socket insertions" and "AQL vs. selling price".
The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V,
+/- 2%.
Wrong Thing: n. A design, action, or decision 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 where
`the good is the enemy of the best', the merely good, while good,
is nevertheless the Wrong Thing.
wugga wugga: /wuh'g@ wuh'g@/ n. Imaginary sound that a computer
program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task.
Compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, {grind} (sense #4).
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
{user-friendly} 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}.
[Oddly enough, this term has already made it into the OED --- ESR]
= 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. [after the name of an earlier window system called
`W'] 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: /eks'ref/ vt.,n. Hackish standard abbreviation for
`cross-reference'.
XXX: /eks-eks-eks/ n. A marker that attention is needed. Commonly
used in program comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or
need to be. Some hackers liken XXX code to pornographic movies
that contain the symbol.
xyzzy: /eks-wie-zee-zee-wie/, /ik-zi'zee/, /eks-wie-ziz'ee/,
/zi'zee/; in Commonwealth hackish, /eks-wie-zed-zed-wie/. [from the
ADVENT game] adj. The {canonical} `magic word'. This comes from
{ADVENT}, 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 if the magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before
a player had performed the action that enabled the word. See also
{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] 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}.
YAUN: /yawn/ [Acronym for `Yet Another UNIX Nerd'] n. Reported
from the San Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer
users' group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at UNIX
zealots.
Yellow Book: n. The print version of this Jargon File; `The
New Hacker's Dictionary', forthcoming from MIT Press, 1991.
Includes all the material in the File, plus a Foreword by Guy
Steele and a Preface by Eric S. Raymond. Most importantly, the
book version is nicely typeset and includes almost all of the
infamous Crunchly cartoons by the Great Quux, each attached to an
appropriate entry.
Yet Another: adj. [From UNIX's `yacc(1)', `Yet Another Compiler-
Compiler', a LALR parser generator] 1. Of your own work: humorous
allusion often used in titles to acknowledge that the topic is not
original, though the content is. As in `Yet Another AI Group'
or `Yet Another Simulated Annealing Algorithm'. 2. Of other's
work: describes something of which there are far too many. See
also {YA-}, {YABA}, {YAUN}.
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 either the
context-switching code of the V6 UNIX kernel or the V6 tty driver
(accounts differ).
You know you've been hacking too long when...: The set-up line
for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about themselves. These
include the following:
* not only do you check your email more often than your paper
mail, but you remember your {network address} faster than your
postal one.
* your {SO} kisses you on the neck and the first thing you
think is "Uh, oh, {priority interrupt}."
* you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're
doing it in octal.
* your computers have a higher street value than your car.
* `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10.
* you've woken up more than once to recall of a dream in
some programming language.
* 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}.
yoyo mode: n. State in which the system is said to be when it
rapidly alternates several times between being up and being down.
Interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware
vendors give out free yoyos at Usenix exhibits.
Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists
staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were
subsequently treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top
computer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish: /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs. The character
gamma (extended SAIL ASCII #b1001011), which with a loop in its tail
looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is
actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole
(not {parse}d) and covered with Yu Shiang 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. vt. To make food spicy. 3. vt. To make
someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love
spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes
you blow your nose for the rest of the meal.) See {zapped}. 4. vt.
To modify, usually to correct. Also implies surgical precision. In
some communities, this used to describe modifying a program's
binary executable. In the IBM mainframe world, binary patches are
applied to programs or to the OS with a program called `superzap',
whose file name is `IMASPZAP' (I Am a SuPerZAP) 5. vt. To erase or
reset. 6. To {fry} a chip with static electricity.
zapped: adj. Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food
that is hot (in temperature) and food that is *spicy*-hot.
For example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of
chicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, {vanilla}
wonton soup is hot but not zapped. See also {{Oriental Food}},
{laser chicken}. See {zap}, senses #1 and #2.
zen: vt. To figure out something by meditation, or by a sudden flash
of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally
applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the
buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it". Contrast {grok},
which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system.
Compare {hack mode}. See also {guru}.
zero: vt. 1. To set to 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}.
zero-content: adj. Syn. {content-free}.
zeroth: /zee'rohth/ adj. First. Among software designers, comes
from C's and LISP's 0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people
also tend to start counting at zero instead of one; this is natural
since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits correspond to the binary
numbers 0,1,...,255 and the digital devices known as `counters'
count in this way.
Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first
chapter of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an
introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First
Edition of {K&R}). In recent years this trait has also been
observed among many pure mathematicians (who have an independent
tradition of numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to
reduce {fencepost error}s, though it cannot eliminate them
entirely.
zigamorph: /zig'@-morf/ n. Hex FF (binary #b11111111) when used
as a delimiter or {fence} character.
zip: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a
group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its
use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm
have been written. Commonly used as "I'll zip it up and send it
to you." See {arc}, {tar and feather}.
zipperhead: [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.
zombie: [UNIX] n. A process that has died but has not yet
relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process
hasn't executed a `wait(2)' for it yet). These 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.
Hacker Folklore
***************
This appendix contains several fables and legends which illuminate the
meaning of various entries in the main text. Some of this material
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 some 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:
Some MIT students once illicitly used a quantity of thermite to weld a
trolley car to its tracks. The hack was actually not dangerous, as
they did this at night to a parked trolley. It took the transit
people quite a while to figure out what was wrong with the trolley,
and even longer to figure out how to fix it. They ended up putting
jacks under the trolley and cutting the section of track on either
side of the wheel with oxyacetylene torches. Then they unbolted the
wheel, welded in a new piece of track, bolted on a new wheel, and
removed the jacks. The hackers sneaked in the next night and stole the
piece of track and wheel!
The piece of trolley track with the wheel still welded to it was later
used as the trophy at the First Annual All-Tech Sing. They carted it
in on a very heavy duty dolly up the freight elevator of the Student
Center. Six feet of rail and a trolley wheel is a *lot* of
steel.
A rather similar hack, perpetrated by a fraternity at CMU, cost their
campus its trolley service.
Though these displayed some cleverness, the side-effect of expensive
property damage was definitely an esthetic minus. The best hacks are
harmless ones.
And another:
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.
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."
Finally, here is a great story about one of the classic computer hacks.
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola
discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the
Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy,
it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a
portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which
memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large
value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and
could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the
file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous
other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to XEROX via an official
`level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with a perceived urgency of `needs to be
fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a
database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola
followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as
`Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation,
ways-to-reproduce, etc. separately.
Xerox sat on their thumbs...they either didn't realize the severity of
the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff
resources to develop and distribute an official patch.
Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support
rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take Direct Action, to
demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be
cracked and just how thoroughly the system security systems could be
subverted.
They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a
thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then
incorporated into a pair of programs called Robin Hood and Friar Tuck.
Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs'
(daemons, in UNIX terminology); they would use the existing loophole
to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then
keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system
operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.
So... one day, the system operator on the main CP-V software
development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual
phenomena. These included the following:
* Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a
job.
* Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they'd attempt
to walk across the floor (see {walking drives}).
* The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself
and punch a {lace card} (every hole punched). These would usually
jam in the punch.
* The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood
to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
* The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be
instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A unless a
card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into
stacker B. One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some
code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip
over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide
themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to
recollate them manually.
There were some other effects produced, as well.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They
found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X'ed them... and were once
again surprised. When Robin Hood was X'ed, the following sequence of
events took place:
!X id1
id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me!
id1: Off (aborted)
id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff of
Nottingham's men!
id1: Thank you, my good fellow!
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed,
and would start a new copy of the recently-slain program within a few
milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them
simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.
Finally, the system programmers did the latter... only to find that
the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned
out that these two programs had patched the boot-time image (the
/vmunix file, in UNIX terms) and had added themselves to the list of
programs that were to be started at boot time...
The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the
system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and
reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch
for this problem.
It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management about
the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It is
not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against
either of them.
The Untimely Demise of Mabel the Monkey
=======================================
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} 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' (by Guy Steele)
=========================================
When Barbara Steele was in her fifth month of pregnancy in 1981, 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* (or {automagically})
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 knows who).
You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what
it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled
in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil
on the metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'.
The switch was in the `more magic' position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the
switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch
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.
The original koans were composed by Danny Hillis.
* * *
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."
OS and JEDGAR
=============
This story says a lot about the style of the ITS culture.
On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what is
being printed on someone else's terminal. It worked by `spying' on
the other guy's output, by examining the insides of the monitor
system. The output spy program was called OS. Throughout the rest of
the computer science (and also at IBM) OS means `operating system',
but among old-time ITS hackers it almost always meant `output spy'.
OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way of
`protection' that prevented one user from interfering with another.
Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would
automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. It
worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the
operating system to see if anyone else was looking at the insides that
had to do with your output. This `counterspy' program was called
JEDGAR (pronounced as two syllables: /jed'gr/), in honor of the former
head of the FBI.
But there's more. The rest of the story is that JEDGAR would ask the
user for `license to kill'. If the user said yes, then JEDGAR would
actually gun the job of the luser who was spying. However, people
found this made life too violent, especially when tourists learned
about it. One of the systems hackers solved the problem by replacing
JEDGAR with another program that only pretended to do its job. It
took a long time to do this, because every copy of JEDGAR had to be
patched, and to this day no one knows how many people never figured
out that JEDGAR had been defanged.
The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer
===================================
This was posted to USENET by Ed Nather (utastro!nather), May 21, 1983.
A recent article devoted to the *macho* side of programming
made the bald and unvarnished statement:
Real Programmers write in Fortran.
Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators and "user-friendly" software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term "software" sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not Fortran. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.
Lest a whole new generation of programmers
grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
I feel duty-bound to describe,
as best I can through the generation gap,
how a Real Programmer wrote code.
I'll call him Mel,
because that was his name.
I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
drum-memory computer,
and had just started to manufacture
the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
bigger, better, faster --- drum-memory computer.
Cores cost too much,
and weren't here to stay, anyway.
(That's why you haven't heard of the company, or the computer.)
I had been hired to write a Fortran compiler
for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
Mel didn't approve of compilers.
"If a program can't rewrite its own code",
he asked, "what good is it?"
Mel had written,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular computer program the company owned.
It ran on the LGP-30
and played blackjack with potential customers
at computer shows.
Its effect was always dramatic.
The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
and the IBM salesmen stood around
talking to each other.
Whether or not this actually sold computers
was a question we never discussed.
Mel's job was to re-write
the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
(Port? What does that mean?)
The new computer had a one-plus-one
addressing scheme,
in which each machine instruction,
in addition to the operation code
and the address of the needed operand,
had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
the next instruction was located.
In modern parlance,
every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
Put *that* in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.
Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he could optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions on the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next would be just arriving at the "read head"
and available for immediate execution.
There was a program to do that job,
an "optimizing assembler",
but Mel refused to use it.
"You never know where its going to put things",
he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants".
It was a long time before I understood that remark.
Since Mel knew the numerical value
of every operation code,
and assigned his own drum addresses,
every instruction he wrote could also be considered
a numerical constant.
He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say,
and multiply by it,
if it had the right numeric value.
His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
and Mel's always ran faster.
That was because the "top-down" method of program design
hadn't been invented yet,
and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
so they would get first choice
of the optimum address locations on the drum.
The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.
Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
even when the balky Flexowriter
required a delay between output characters to work right.
He just located instructions on the drum
so each successive one was just *past* the read head
when it was needed;
the drum had to execute another complete revolution
to find the next instruction.
He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
Although "optimum" is an absolute term,
like "unique", it became common verbal practice
to make it relative:
"not quite optimum" or "less optimum"
or "not very optimum".
Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
the "most pessimum".
After he finished the blackjack program
and got it to run,
("Even the initializer is optimized",
he said proudly)
he got a Change Request from the sales department.
The program used an elegant (optimized)
random number generator
to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck",
and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
since sometimes the customers lost.
They wanted Mel to modify the program
so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
they could change the odds and let the customer win.
Mel balked.
He felt this was patently dishonest,
which it was,
and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
which it did,
so he refused to do it.
The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
a few Fellow Programmers.
Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
but he got the test backwards,
and, when the sense switch was turned on,
the program would cheat, winning every time.
Mel was delighted with this,
claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
and adamantly refused to fix it.
After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.
I have often felt that programming is an art form,
whose real value can only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
You can learn a lot about an individual
just by reading through his code,
even in hexadecimal.
Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.
Perhaps my greatest shock came
when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
No test. *None*.
Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
Program control passed right through it, however,
and safely out the other side.
It took me two weeks to figure it out.
The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
called an index register.
It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
that used an indexed instruction inside;
each time through,
the number in the index register
was added to the address of that instruction,
so it would refer
to the next datum in a series.
He had only to increment the index register
each time through.
Mel never used it.
Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
add one to its address,
and store it back.
He would then execute the modified instruction
right from the register.
The loop was written so this additional execution time
was taken into account ---
just as this instruction finished,
the next one was right under the drum's read head,
ready to go.
But the loop had no test in it.
The vital clue came when I noticed
the index register bit,
the bit that lay between the address
and the operation code in the instruction word,
was turned on---
yet Mel never used the index register,
leaving it zero all the time.
When the light went on it nearly blinded me.
He had located the data he was working on
near the top of memory ---
the largest locations the instructions could address ---
so, after the last datum was handled,
incrementing the instruction address
would make it overflow.
The carry would add one to the
operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
a jump instruction.
Sure enough, the next program instruction was
in address location zero,
and the program went happily on its way.
I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
change that has washed over programming techniques
since those long-gone days.
I like to think he didn't.
In any event,
I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
offending test,
telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
He didn't seem surprised.
When I left the company,
the blackjack program would still cheat
if you turned on the right sense switch,
and I think that's how it should be.
I didn't feel comfortable
hacking up the code of a Real Programmer.
This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. In a
few spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology
of hacking than every scholarly volume on the subject put together.
For an opposing point of view, see the entry for {real programmer}.
A Portrait of J. Random Hacker
******************************
This profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier `trial balloon'
version from about a hundred USENET respondents. Where comparatives
are used, the implicit `other' is a randomly selected group from the
non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom.
General appearance:
===================
Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Interestingly for a
sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both
extremes are more common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.
Dress:
======
Casual, vaguely post-hippy; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes,
Birkenstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards and moustaches are
common. High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous
`slogan' T-shirts (only rarely computer related, that's too obvious).
A substantial minority runs to `outdoorsy' clothing --- hiking boots
("in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room",
as one famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or chamois shirts and
the like.
Very few actually fit the National-Lampoon-Nerd stereotype, though it
lingers on at MIT and may have been more common before 1975. These
days, backpacks are more common than briefcases, and the hacker `look'
is more whole-earth than whole-polyester.
Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles
rather than for appearance (some, unfortunately, take this to extremes
and neglect personal hygiene). They have a very low tolerance of
suits or other `business' attire, in fact it is not uncommon for
hackers to quit a job rather than conform to dress codes.
Female hackers never wear visible makeup and many use none at all.
Reading habits:
===============
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction.
The typical hacker household might subscribe to `Analog',
`Scientific American', `Co-Evolution Quarterly', and
`Smithsonian'. Hackers often have a reading range that astonishes
`liberal arts' people but tend not to talk about it as much. Many
hackers spend as much of their spare time reading as the average
American burns up watching TV, and often keep shelves and shelves of
well-thumbed books in their homes.
Other interests:
================
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the
culture. Science fiction. Music. Medievalism. Chess, go,
backgammon, wargames and intellectual games of all kinds.
Role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons used to be extremely
popular among hackers but have lost a bit of their former luster as
they moved into the mainstream and became heavily commercialized.
Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other interests that seem to correlate
less strongly but positively with hackerdom include: linguistics and
theater teching.
Physical Activity and Sports:
=============================
Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't do sports at all and are
determinedly anti-physical.
Among those that do, they are almost always self-competitive ones
involving concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts,
bicycling, kite-flying, hiking, rock-climbing, sailing, caving,
juggling.
Hackers avoid most team sports like the plague (volleyball is a
notable and unexplained exception).
Education:
==========
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or
self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often
considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated and more
respected than his B.Sc. counterpart. Academic areas from which
people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious
computer science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics,
linguistics, and philosophy.
Things hackers detest and avoid:
================================
IBM mainframes. Smurfs and other forms of offensive cuteness.
Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening music. Television
(except for cartoons, movies, the old `Star Trek', and the new
`Simpsons'). Business suits. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom.
BASIC. Character-based menu interfaces.
Food:
=====
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most especially Szechuan,
Hunan and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely declasse).
Thai food has experienced flurries of popularity. Where available,
high-quality Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. A visible
minority of Midwestern and Southwestern hackers prefers Mexican.
For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big.
Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of
hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly
health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they
eat. This may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the
stereotype was more on the mark ten to fifteen years ago.
Politics:
=========
Vaguely left of center, except for the strong libertarian contingent
which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only
safe generalization is that almost all hackers are anti-authoritarian,
thus both conventional conservatism and `hard' leftism are rare.
Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either a) be
aggressively apolitical, or b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic
political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day.
Gender & Ethnicity:
===================
Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of
women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for
technical professions.
Hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with a strong minority of Jews
(east coast) and Asians (west coast). The Jewish contingent has
exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food, and
note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish).
Hackers as a group are about as color-blind as anyone could ask for,
and ethnic prejudice of any kind tends to be met with extreme
hostility; the ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to
be a function of who tends to seek and get higher education.
It has been speculated that hackish gender- and color-blindness is
partly a positive effect of ASCII-only network channels.
Religion:
=========
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly,
three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional
faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown (at least on the
east coast, more hackers wear yarmulkes than crucifixes).
Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be
relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all
forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody'
religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.
Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism
or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native'
religions.
There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility
that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with
neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage
to `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much
psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.
Ceremonial chemicals:
=====================
Most hackers don't smoke tobacco and use alcohol in moderation if at
all (though there is a visible contingent of exotic-beer fanciers, and
a few hackers are serious oenophiles). Limited use of `soft' drugs (esp.
psychedelics such as marijuana, LSD, psilocybin etc.) used to be
relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than in
the mainstream culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the other
hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to
dislike drugs that `dumb them down'. On the other hand, many hackers
regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.
Communication style:
====================
See the dictionary notes on `Hacker speech style'. Though hackers
often have poor person-to-person communication skills, they are as a
rule extremely sensitive to nuances of language and very precise in
their use of it. They are often better at written communication than
spoken.
Geographical Distribution:
==========================
In the U.S., hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area/Boston axis; about half
of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of Cambridge
(Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California). Hackers tend to cluster
around large cities, especially `university towns' such as the
Raleigh/Durham area in North Carolina or Princeton, New Jersey (this
may simply reflect the fact that many are students or ex-students
living near their alma maters).
Sexual habits:
==============
Hackerdom tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle
variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a relatively large
gay contingent. Hackers are somewhat more likely to live in
polygynous or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage, or
live in communes or group houses. In this, as in some other respects,
(see `General Appearance') hackerdom semi-consciously maintains
`counterculture' values.
Personality Characteristics:
============================
The most obvious common `personality' characteristics of hackers are
high intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with intellectual
abstractions. Also, most hackers are `neophiles', stimulated by and
appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). Most are
also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.
Contrary to stereotype, hackers are *not* usually intellectually
narrow; they tend to be interested in any subject that can provide
mental stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even
interestingly on any number of obscure subjects --- assuming you can
get them to talk at all as opposed to, say, going back to hacking.
Hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do with the
usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. In the same
way that children delight in making model trains go forward and back
by moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like
computers do nifty stuff for them. But it has to be *their*
nifty stuff; they don't like tedium or nondeterminism. Accordingly,
they tend to be careful and orderly in their intellectual lives and
chaotic elsewhere. Their code will be beautiful, even if their desks
are buried in three feet of crap.
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional
rewards such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted
by challenges and excited by interesting toys, and to judge the
interest of work or other activities in terms of the challenges
offered and the toys they get to play with.
In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems,
hackerdom appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP
types; that is, introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed
to the extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the
mainstream culture). ENT[JP] types are also concentrated among
hackers but are in a minority.
Weaknesses of the hacker personality:
=====================================
Relatively little ability to identify emotionally with other people.
This may be because hackers generally aren't much like `other people'.
Unsurprisingly, there is also a tendency to self-absorption,
intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks perceived
to be wasting one's time. As a result, many hackers have difficulty
maintaining stable relationships.
As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
world, they tend at bottom to assume that everyone is as rational,
`cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often
contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be
especially poor at confrontations and negotiation.
Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing
with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles
up to incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance
tasks get deferred indefinitely.
The sort of person who uses phrases like `incompletely socialized'
usually thinks hackers are. Hackers regard such people with contempt
when they notice them at all.
Miscellaneous:
==============
Hackers are more likely to keep cats than dogs. Many drive incredibly
decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy
Porsches and RX-7s and then forget to wash them.
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, 1979, New York
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, 1975, New York
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 Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out
(thankfully) to have been quite misleading. Numerous minor factual
errors also mar the text; for example, Levy's claim that the original
Jargon File derived from a 1959 dictionary of Model Railroad Club
slang is incorrect (the File originated at Stanford and was brought to
MIT in 1976; the First Edition co-authors had never seen the dictionary
in question). Nevertheless this remains a useful and stimulating book
that captures the feel of several important hackish subcultures.
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
Martha and his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a
marvelously vivid picture of how hackers and the people around them
like to live and 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
Hacker demigod Richard Stallman believes the title story of this book
"expresses the spirit of hacking best". This may well be true; it's
certainly difficult to recall anyone doing a better job. 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.