                                The Jargon File

(version 4.4.7)

   -------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Table of Contents

   Welcome to the Jargon File

   I. Introduction

                1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture

                2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak

                3. Revision History

                4. Jargon Construction

                             Verb Doubling

                             Soundalike Slang

                             The -P Convention

                             Overgeneralization

                             Spoken inarticulations

                             Anthropomorphization

                             Comparatives

                5. Hacker Writing Style

                6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions

                7. Hacker Speech Style

                8. International Style

                9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers

                10. Pronunciation Guide

                11. Other Lexicon Conventions

                12. Format for New Entries

   II. The Jargon Lexicon

                Glossary

   III. Appendices

                A. Hacker Folklore

                             The Meaning of `Hack'

                             TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity

                             A Story About `Magic'

                             Some AI Koans

                                          Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

                                          Moon instructs a student

                                          Sussman attains enlightenment

                                          Drescher and the toaster

                             OS and JEDGAR

                             The Story of Mel

                B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker

                             General Appearance

                             Dress

                             Reading Habits

                             Other Interests

                             Physical Activity and Sports

                             Education

                             Things Hackers Detest and Avoid

                             Food

                             Politics

                             Gender and Ethnicity

                             Religion

                             Ceremonial Chemicals

                             Communication Style

                             Geographical Distribution

                             Sexual Habits

                             Personality Characteristics

                             Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality

                             Miscellaneous

                C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow

                Bibliography

Welcome to the Jargon File

   This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
   illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.

   This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely
   used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints
   on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use
   to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the
   courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a
   version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of
   appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.4.7" or "The on-line hacker
   Jargon File, version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003".)

   The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the
   years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to
   maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors
   of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and
   suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to
   cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format;
   and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically. Current
   volunteer editors include:

   Eric Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>

   Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good
   form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work
   or commercial product. We may have additional information that would be
   helpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not
   only the letter of the File but its spirit as well.

   All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer
   editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise
   labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this
   public-domain file.

   From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and
   formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the
   volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have
   a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase
   one of these. They often contain additional material not found in on-line
   versions. The three `authorized' editions so far are described in the
   Revision History section; there may be more in the future.

   The Jargon File's online rendition uses an unusually large number of
   special characters. This test page lists them so you can check what your
   browser does with each one.

   +---------------------------------------+
   | glyph | description                   |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | a     | greek character alpha         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | k     | greek character kappa         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | l     | greek character lambda        |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | L     | greek character Lambda        |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | n     | greek character nu            |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | o     | greek character omicron       |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | p     | greek character pi            |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | pound sterling                |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | *     | left angle bracket            |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | *     | right angle bracket           |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | ae ligature                   |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | German sharp-s sign           |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | ?1    | similarity sign               |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | (+)   | circle-plus                   |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | (x)   | circle-times                  |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | times                         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | {}    | empty set (used for APL null) |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | micro quantifier sign         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | ->    | right arrow                   |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | <=>   | horizontal double arrow       |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | (TM)  | trademark symbol              |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | registered-trademark symbol   |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | -     | minus                         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | plus-or-minus                 |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | slashed-O                     |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | @     | schwa                         |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   | '     | acute accent                  |
   |-------+-------------------------------|
   |      | medial dot                    |
   +---------------------------------------+

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

                                 Introduction

   Table of Contents

   1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture

   2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak

   3. Revision History

   4. Jargon Construction

                Verb Doubling

                Soundalike Slang

                The -P Convention

                Overgeneralization

                Spoken inarticulations

                Anthropomorphization

                Comparatives

   5. Hacker Writing Style

   6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions

   7. Hacker Speech Style

   8. International Style

   9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers

   10. Pronunciation Guide

   11. Other Lexicon Conventions

   12. Format for New Entries

Chapter 1. Hacker Slang and Hacker Culture

   This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures
   of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for
   background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe
   here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social
   communication, and technical debate.

   The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
   subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
   experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths,
   heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because
   hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves
   partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has
   unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less
   than 50 years old.

   As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold places
   in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as
   usual, not knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as
   an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly
   even a {suit}. All human cultures use slang in this threefold way -- as a
   tool of communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion.

   Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in
   the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to
   detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for
   shared states of consciousness. There is a whole range of altered states
   and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which
   don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane
   solo or one of Maurits Escher's surreal trompe l'oeil compositions
   (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang encodes these
   subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple example, take the
   distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and the
   differing connotations attached to each. The distinction is not only of
   engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature of the
   generative processes in program design and asserts something important
   about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker and the
   hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of
   overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.

   Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in
   their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young children,
   but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an
   educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence.
   Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a
   halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard
   slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure.
   Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the
   neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated
   and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them
   together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the
   dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and
   superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a
   uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.

   Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological
   assumptions. For example, in the early 1990s it became fashionable to
   speak of `low-context' versus `high-context' communication, and to
   classify cultures by the preferred context level of their languages and
   art forms. It is usually claimed that low-context communication
   (characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained
   utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity,
   individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication
   (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is
   associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus,
   cooperation, and tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which
   is themed around extremely low-context interaction with computers and
   exhibits primarily "low-context" values, but cultivates an almost
   absurdly high-context slang style?

   The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation
   of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding
   culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving
   compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers themselves
   since the early 1970s. This one (like its ancestors) is primarily a
   lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collect background or
   sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to
   subsume under individual slang definitions.

   Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the
   material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at
   least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly
   thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay
   to make strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some
   of these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that
   have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to
   moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure
   that everyone's sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not
   particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent
   viewpoints is.

   The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
   incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it
   either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
   contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences --
   fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefit from
   them.

   A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in
   Appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to
   the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in Appendix B. The Bibliography, lists
   some non-technical works which have either influenced or described the
   hacker culture.

   Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
   choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
   between description and influence can become more than a little blurred.
   Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central role in
   spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to
   successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one
   will do likewise.

Chapter 2. Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak

   Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the
   term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations.
   However, the ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File',
   and hacker slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the
   jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish it from what a
   linguist would call hackers' jargon -- the formal vocabulary they learn
   from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals.

   To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and the
   vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and
   shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider
   technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not
   speak or recognize hackish slang.

   Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of usage
   permit about the distinctions among three categories:

   slang

           informal language from mainstream English or non-technical
           subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).

   jargon

           without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language peculiar to
           or predominantly found among hackers -- the subject of this
           lexicon.

   techspeak

           the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer science,
           electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.

   This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of
   this lexicon.

   The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of techspeak
   originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of jargon
   into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from
   overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the
   Jargon Construction section below).

   In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicate
   primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
   dictionaries, or standards documents.

   A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages,
   or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't
   covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical
   background necessary to understand other entries to which they are
   cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed
   in order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not specify
   that a straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked
   with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some entries have a primary sense
   marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of
   it.

   We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of
   terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the
   lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many
   hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even
   among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems that the
   generative processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal
   logic so powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate
   cultures and even in different languages! For another, the networks tend
   to propagate innovations so quickly that `first use' is often impossible
   to pin down. And, finally, compendia like this one alter what they
   observe by implicitly stamping cultural approval on terms and widening
   their use.

   Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related oral
   history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest quite a
   number of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due, and
   illuminate the early history of many important hackerisms such as
   {kluge}, {cruft}, and {foo}. We believe specialist lexicographers will
   find many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.

Chapter 3. Revision History

   The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from technical
   cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), and others
   of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt, Beranek and
   Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic
   Institute (WPI).

   The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was
   begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until the
   plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named
   AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably earlier
   ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the Tech
   Model Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to the
   early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be
   collectively considered `Version 1'.

   In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the
   SAIL computer, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that it was
   hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his directory
   as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.

   The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning under
   ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and Guy L.
   Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought of
   correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium had already
   become widely known as the Jargon File.

   Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and
   Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently
   kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations).

   The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman
   was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related
   coinages.

   In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the
   File published in Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly (issue 29, pages
   26--35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a
   couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the File's
   first paper publication.

   A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass market,
   was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as The Hacker's
   Dictionary (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1
   editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this
   revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now
   out of print) is hereafter referred to as `Steele-1983' and those six as
   the Steele-1983 coauthors.

   Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively
   stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to
   freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production of Steele-1983,
   but external conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to become
   permanent.

   The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts
   and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported
   hardware and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT, most
   AI work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time, the
   commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and
   brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and
   out West in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the
   central MIT-AI computer became a {TWENEX} system rather than a host for
   the AI hackers' beloved {ITS}.

   The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although the
   SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource until
   1991. Stanford became a major {TWENEX} site, at one point operating more
   than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most of the
   interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD Unix
   standard.

   In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File
   were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at
   Digital Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already dispersed,
   moved on to other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its
   authors thought was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the
   time just how wide its influence was to be.

   By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had
   grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies
   obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from
   MIT and Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence
   on hacker language and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and
   other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and
   related materials such as the Some AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be
   seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain
   chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of
   change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously -- but the Jargon
   File, having passed from living document to icon, remained essentially
   untouched for seven years.

   This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of
   jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after
   careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about
   80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very
   few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.

   This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim is
   to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical
   computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More
   than half of the entries now derive from {Usenet} and represent jargon
   now current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have been
   made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC programmers,
   Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world.

   Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> maintains the new File with assistance
   from Guy L. Steele Jr. <gls@think.com>; these are the persons primarily
   reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in
   acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of
   Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections, and correspondence
   relating to the Jargon File to Eric.

   (Warning: other email addresses and URLs appear in this file but are not
   guaranteed to be correct after date of publication. Don't email us if an
   attempt to reach someone bounces -- we have no magic way of checking
   addresses or looking up people. If a web reference goes stale, try a
   Google or Alta Vista search for relevant phrases.

   Please try to review a recent copy of the on-line document before
   submitting entries; it is available on the Web. It will often contain new
   material not recorded in the latest paper snapshot that could save you
   some typing. It also includes some submission guidelines not reproduced
   here.

   The 2.9.6 version became the main text of The New Hacker's Dictionary, by
   Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6.

   The 3.0.0 version was published in August 1993 as the second edition of
   The New Hacker's Dictionary, again from MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-18154-1).

   The 4.0.0 version was published in September 1996 as the third edition of
   The New Hacker's Dictionary from MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-68092-0).

   The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the
   Jargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to
   make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the
   hacker community.

   Here is a chronology of major revisions:

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

   Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as
   major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS)
   Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric
   S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.) leading up to
   and including the second paper edition. From now on, major version number
   N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper edition. Usually later
   versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier
   versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions around.

   Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance,
   and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here) who contributed
   entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several of the old-timers on
   the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers, who contributed much useful
   commentary and many corrections and valuable historical perspective:
   Joseph M. Newcomer <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Bernie Cosell
   <cosell@bbn.com>, Earl Boebert <boebert@SCTC.com>, and Joe Morris
   <jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>.

   We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists.
   David Stampe <stampe@hawaii.edu> and Charles Hoequist <hoequist@bnr.ca>
   contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane <jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us
   improve the pronunciation guides.

   A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian A.
   LaMacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for us to use
   material from the TMRC Dictionary; also, Don Libes <libes@cme.nist.gov>
   contributed some appropriate material from his excellent book Life With
   UNIX. We thank Per Lindberg <per@front.se>, author of the remarkable
   Swedish-language 'zine Hackerbladet, for bringing FOO! comics to our
   attention and smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby
   jargon files out to us. Thanks also to Maarten Litmaath for generously
   allowing the inclusion of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly
   maintained. And our gratitude to Marc Weiser of XEROX PARC
   <Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com> for securing us permission to quote from
   PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy.

   It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of
   Mark Brader and Steve Summit <scs@eskimo.com> to the File and Dictionary;
   they have read and reread many drafts, checked facts, caught typos,
   submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, and done yeoman
   service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. Their rare combination
   of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and
   precisionism in matters of language has been of invaluable help. Indeed,
   the sustained volume and quality of Mr. Brader's input over a decade and
   several different editions has only allowed him to escape co-editor
   credit by the slimmest of margins.

   Finally, George V. Reilly <georgere@microsoft.com> helped with TeX arcana
   and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and Eric Tiedemann
   <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric,
   amphigory, and philosophunculism.

Chapter 4. Jargon Construction

   Table of Contents

   Verb Doubling

   Soundalike Slang

   The -P Convention

   Overgeneralization

   Spoken inarticulations

   Anthropomorphization

   Comparatives

   There are some standard methods of jargonification that became
   established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such sources
   as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John
   McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include verb doubling,
   soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization, spoken
   inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussed below. We
   also cover the standard comparatives for design quality.

   Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization,
   and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but
   soundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large
   universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers
   flourish.

Verb Doubling

   A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an
   exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!". Most of these are
   names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise, sometimes
   sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled verb
   is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on
   the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next.
   Typical examples involve {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {chomp}:

     "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose."

     "Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame."

     "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!

   Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately
   obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.

   The {Usenet} culture has one tripling convention unrelated to this; the
   names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first
   and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a Muppet
   Show reference); other infamous examples have included:

     o alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg

     o alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die

     o comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk

     o sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom

     o alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill

   These two traditions fuse in the newsgroup
   alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, devoted to humor based on deliberately
   confounding parts of speech. Several observers have noted that the
   contents of this group is excellently representative of the peculiarities
   of hacker humor.

Soundalike Slang

   Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary
   word or phrase into something more interesting. It is considered
   particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to include some
   other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine Dr. Dobb's Journal
   is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or
   simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have been in fairly wide use
   include names for newspapers:

     o Boston Herald -> Horrid (or Harried)

     o Boston Globe -> Boston Glob

     o Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle -> the Crocknicle (or the
       Comical)

     o New York Times -> New York Slime

     o Wall Street Journal -> Wall Street Urinal

   However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment.
   Standard examples include:

     o Data General -> Dirty Genitals

     o IBM 360 -> IBM Three-Sickly

     o Government Property -- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) -> Government
       Duplicity -- Do Not Propagate

     o for historical reasons -> for hysterical raisins

     o Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) -> Marginal Hacks
       Hall

     o Microsoft -> Microsloth

     o Internet Explorer -> Internet Exploiter

     o FrontPage -> AffrontPage

     o VB.NET -> VB Nyet

     o Lotus Notes -> Lotus Bloats

     o Microsoft Outlook -> Microsoft Outhouse

     o Linux -> Linsux

     o FreeBSD -> FreeLSD

     o C# -> C Flat

   This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
   compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas
   hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.

The -P Convention

   Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P'; from the
   LISP convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate (a
   boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer,
   though it needn't. (See {T} and {NIL}.)

       At dinnertime:
             Q: "Foodp?"
             A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!"

       At any time:
             Q: "State-of-the-world-P?"
             A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home."
             A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state."

       On the phone to Florida:
             Q: "State-p Florida?"
             A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?"

   [Once, when we were at a Chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know
   whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of
   soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" -- GLS]

Overgeneralization

   A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which
   techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language
   primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of
   computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite
   one of the best-known examples) Unix hackers often {grep} for things
   rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
   generalizations of exactly this kind.

   Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many
   hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to
   make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform
   cases (or vice versa). For example, because porous -> porosity and
   generous -> generosity, hackers happily generalize:

     o mysterious -> mysteriosity

     o ferrous -> ferrosity

     o obvious -> obviosity

     o dubious -> dubiosity

   Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' to abstract
   a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage arises
   especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the same
   abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'. Thus:

     o win -> winnitude (a common exclamation)

     o loss -> lossitude

     o cruft -> cruftitude

     o lame -> lameitude

   Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for
   example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called
   `lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!

   Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be verbed",
   "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm grepping
   the files". English as a whole is already heading in this direction
   (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit
   ahead of the curve.

   The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fanciful ways,
   as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the system
   starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than one headfull of ideas,
   I start writing it all down." A common use is "screenfull", meaning the
   amount of text that will fit on one screen, usually in text mode where
   you have no choice as to character size. Another common form is
   "bufferfull".

   However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
   characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker
   would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or `securitize'
   things. Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and
   regard those who use it with contempt.

   Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
   overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good
   form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:

     o win -> winnitude, winnage

     o disgust -> disgustitude

     o hack -> hackification

   Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural
   forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary includes
   an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces}, and notes
   that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This latter has
   apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans
   (railroad enthusiasts) for many years

   On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form
   plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text). Even words
   ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g.,
   `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are the Hebrew-style
   `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and `Unices'
   and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {Unix}, {TWENEX}
   in main text). But note that `Twenexen' was never used, and `Unixen' was
   seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after it
   might logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this is
   because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a
   Latinate plural. Among Perl hackers it is reported that `comma' and
   `semicolon' pluralize as `commata' and `semicola' respectively. Finally,
   it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose'
   ought to be `polygoose'.

   The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
   generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an
   import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the
   Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally
   considered to apply.

   This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of
   what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical
   creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but to
   amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.

Spoken inarticulations

   Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where
   their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that
   this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on
   a comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs, and IRC channels (interestingly,
   the same sorts of constructions have been showing up with increasing
   frequency in comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is
   "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!"

Anthropomorphization

   Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish
   tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and
   academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for
   anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of
   behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers
   anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms
   of wants and desires.

   Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as though it
   has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and
   desires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got confused", or that
   programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that "its
   goal in life is to X". Or: "You can't run those two cards on the same
   bus; they fight over interrupt 9."

   One even hears explanations like "... and its poor little brain couldn't
   understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things this way actually
   seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because it's
   instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex
   behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'.

   At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actually
   work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the people who
   know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they would use
   language that seems to ascribe consciousness to them. The mind-set behind
   this tendency thus demands examination.

   The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a
   naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling
   empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they work
   on every day are `alive'. To the contrary: hackers who anthropomorphize
   are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but a
   mechanistic view of human behavior.

   Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology
   of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with
   contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological
   machines -- consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon,
   but mind is implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different
   in information-processing capacity from computers.

   Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference
   between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon
   and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a
   thing `alive', is information and richness of pattern. This is animism
   from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and
   rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of `consciousness'
   according to their information-processing capacity.

   Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it is
   therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to other
   complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is
   mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that "The program
   wants to go into an infinite loop" than it is to say that "I want to go
   eat some chocolate" -- and even defensible to say that "The stone, once
   dropped, wants to move towards the center of the earth".

   This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel
   Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the
   "physical stance" (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the
   "design stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the
   "intentional stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desires and
   intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of abstract
   truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs from the
   design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled using the
   intentional stance.

   It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software and
   hardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmer and
   his artifacts -- the human qualities belong to the programmer and the
   code merely expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this view, a
   hacker saying a piece of code `got confused' is really saying that he (or
   she) was confused about exactly what he wanted the computer to do, the
   code naturally incorporated this confusion, and the code expressed the
   programmer's confusion when executed by crashing or otherwise
   misbehaving.

   Note that by displacing from "I got confused" to "It got confused", the
   programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but rather getting some
   analytical distance in order to be able to consider the bug
   dispassionately.

   It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems is
   actually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simple
   rules we do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergent
   behavioral complexities that we don't completely understand.

   All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should be
   considered complementary rather than competing.

Comparatives

   Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as
   members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the
   adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality
   of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum:

   monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack win
   feature elegance perfection

   The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
   actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the
   reliability of software:

   broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof armor-plated

   Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is rare
   in the U.S., where `squirrelly' may be more common) and may change places
   with `flaky' for some speakers.

   Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest in
   hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers
   have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for
   obnoxious people.

Chapter 5. Hacker Writing Style

   We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
   grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for
   form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish
   writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently misspells `wrong'
   as `worng'. Others have been known to criticize glitches in Jargon File
   drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas Hofstadter) "This sentence no
   verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad speling", or "Incorrectspa cing."
   Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often made of phrases relating to
   confusion or things that are confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage'
   is perhaps the most common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write
   "Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This
   sort of thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned.

   Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much
   to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase,
   and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer
   to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is
   incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the
   continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes);
   however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings
   with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples
   that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting
   can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small
   pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.

   Consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like
   this:

     Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".

   Standard usage would make this

     Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."

   but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to type
   the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in vi(1), dot repeats the last
   command accepted. The net result would be to delete two lines!

   The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.

   Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great
   Britain, though the older style (which became established for
   typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and
   quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. Hart's Rules and the
   Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the hacker-like style
   `new' or `logical' quoting. This returns British English to the style
   many other languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, and
   German) have been using all along.

   Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes
   and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes for
   marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports of
   speech or text included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities
   describe this as correct general usage, but mainstream American English
   has gone to using double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage
   appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine
   until I checked with Usenet --ESR] One further permutation that is
   definitely not standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by
   using apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is
   modelled on string and character literal syntax in some programming
   languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals
   display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical single quote).

   One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of Unix hackers
   in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally
   all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C
   routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning
   of sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such
   identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the
   `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an
   appropriate reflex because Unix and C both distinguish cases and
   confusing them can lead to {lossage}). A way of escaping this dilemma is
   simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences.

   There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the
   effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance to
   traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information
   they can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this
   respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also
   tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to
   appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between
   `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a substantial part of its
   humor!

   Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis
   conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and
   these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when
   normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.

   One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and this
   becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to
   caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting, please,
   you're hurting my ears!".

   Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify
   emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the *hell*?" even
   though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a
   footnote mark. The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining
   (this is particularly common with book titles; for example, "It is often
   alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert
   Heinlein's earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_.").
   Other forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are
   occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last example the first slash
   pushes the letters over to the right to make them italic, and the second
   keeps them from falling over). On FidoNet, you might see #bright# and
   ^dark^ text, which was actually interpreted by some reader software.
   Finally, words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of
   carets (^) under them on the next line of the text.

   There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which
   emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which
   suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very
   young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word with the
   `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to
   consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made.
   Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.

   One might also see the above sound effects as <bang>, <hic>, <ring>,
   <grin>, <kick>, <stomp>, <mumble>. This use of angle brackets to mark
   their contents originally derives from conventions used in {BNF}, but
   since about 1993 it has been reinforced by the HTML markup used on the
   World Wide Web.

   Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands for
   some {random} member of a larger class (this is straight from {BNF}).
   Examples like the following are common:

     So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day...

   There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
   text>

     Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's visiting from corporate HQ.

   reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", with irony
   emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for a
   backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing terminals.
   As the text was being composed the characters would be echoed and printed
   immediately, and when a correction was made the backspace keystrokes
   would be echoed with the string `^H'. Of course, the final composed text
   would have no trace of the backspace characters (or the original
   erroneous text).

   Accidental writing under erasure occurs when using the Unix talk program
   to chat interactively to another user. On a PC-style keyboard most users
   instinctively press the backspace key to delete mistakes, but this may
   not achieve the desired effect, and merely displays a ^H symbol. The user
   typically presses backspace a few times before their brain realises the
   problem -- especially likely if the user is a touch-typist -- and since
   each character is transmitted as soon as it is typed, Freudian slips and
   other inadvertent admissions are (barring network delays) clearly visible
   for the other user to see.

   Deliberate use of ^H for writing under erasure parallels (and may have
   been influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction
   fanzines.

   A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to previous
   text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got good editing
   capabilities, only to take on new life on IRCs and other line-based chat
   systems.

   charlie: I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.
   lisa: Send it to Erik for the File.
   lisa: Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.

   The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding". This syntax
   is borrowed from the Unix editing tools ed and sed, but is widely
   recognized by non-Unix hackers as well.

   In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row are a
   shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN, and is also used
   in Ada). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.

   Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
   caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead 2^8 = 256. This goes
   all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow'
   that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's
   original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the bc(1) and
   dc(1) Unix tools, which have probably done most to reinforce the
   convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^ for exponention.) The
   notation is mildly confusing to C programmers, because ^ means bitwise
   exclusive-or in C. Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a
   late-1990 snapshot of Usenet. It is used consistently in this lexicon.

   In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper
   fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed fractions
   (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is probably that the former are more
   readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid the risk
   that the latter might be read as `three minus one-half'. The decimal form
   is definitely preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal
   representation; there may be some cultural influence here from the high
   status of scientific notation.

   Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small
   numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a form
   of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example, one
   year is about 3e7 (that is, 3  10 ^7) seconds long.

   The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately';
   that is, ~50 means `about fifty'.

   On Usenet and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
   relational operators such as |, &, ||, &&, !, ==, !=, >, <, >=, and <=
   are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, <>, is also
   recognized, and occasionally one sees /= for not-equals (from Ada, Common
   Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for
   `not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue'
   or `clueless'.

   A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages to
   express ideas in a natural-language text. For example, one might see the
   following:

   In <jrh578689@thudpucker.com> J. R. Hacker wrote:
   <I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
   <Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator.  The price was
   <right, and the racing stripe on the case looked
   <kind of neat, but its performance left something
   <to be desired.

   Yeah, I tried one out too.

   #ifdef FLAME
   Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
   decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
   net volumes?
   #endif /* FLAME */

   I guess they figured the price premium for true
   frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
   Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
   I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
   you're on a *very* tight budget.

   #include <disclaimer.h>
   --
                    == Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)

   In the above, the #ifdef/#endif pair is a conditional compilation syntax
   from C; here, it implies that the text between (which is a {flame})
   should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch
   FLAME. The #include at the end is C for "include standard disclaimer
   here"; the `standard disclaimer' is understood to read, roughly, "These
   are my personal opinions and not to be construed as the official position
   of my employer."

   The top section in the example, with < at the left margin, is an example
   of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.

   More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide Web,
   pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes:

   <flame>
   Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
   </flame>

   You'll even see this with an HTML-style attribute modifier:

   <flame intensity="100%">
   You seem well-suited for a career in government.
   </flame>

   Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on Usenet seems to be
   borrowed from Unix shell syntax or Perl. It consists of using a dollar
   sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest any
   {random} member of the class indicated by the word. Thus: `$PHB' means
   "any random member of the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'".

   Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
   usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence
   where you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that
   number in English. So, hackers prefer to write `1970s' rather than
   `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter looks like a possessive).

   It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use
   multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is
   almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested
   parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been
   suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with
   complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation.

   Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
   communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting
   effect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which
   emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about
   other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has
   both good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honesty and
   tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad one is
   that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps
   in response to this, experienced netters often display a sort of
   conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed out of
   fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase "Well
   said, sir!" is not uncommon).

   Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
   communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
   because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
   with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face
   to face.

   Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
   spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity
   of expression. It may well be that future historians of literature will
   see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal letters as art.

Chapter 6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions

   One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux is
   the marking of included material from earlier messages -- what would be
   called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual typographic
   convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), there
   derived a practice of included text being indented by one ASCII TAB
   (0001001) character, which under Unix and many other environments gives
   the appearance of an 8-space indent.

   Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
   this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD Mail(1) was the
   first message agent to support inclusion, and early Usenetters emulated
   its style. But the TAB character tended to push included text too far to
   the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly
   wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which an inclusion
   leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in EMACS and
   a few mailers), the use of leading > or > became standard, perhaps owing
   to its use in ed(1) to display tabs (alternatively, it may derive from
   the > that some early Unix mailers used to quote lines starting with
   "From" in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message
   headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their > leaders, so the
   `nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent.

   The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a
   followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: the fact
   that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order.
   Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even
   consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was
   hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around 1984, new
   news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include the
   text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster
   chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The
   result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the
   entire text of a preceding article, followed only by "No, that's wrong"
   or "I agree".

   Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and
   there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip
   over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects
   articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' --
   but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate
   inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull
   the message below the rejection threshold.

   Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct'
   inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}.

   Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will
   immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this,

        > relevant excerpt 1
        response to excerpt
        > relevant excerpt 2
        response to excerpt
        > relevant excerpt 3
        response to excerpt

   or for short messages like this:

        > entire message
        response to message

   Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents (notably Microsoft
   Outlook and Outlook Express), one will occasionally see the entire quoted
   message after the response, like this

        response to message
        > entire message

   but this practice is strongly deprecated.

   Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, | is occasionally used
   for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are
   being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses |>). One also
   sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message:
   one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of > for
   everyone, another (the most common) is > > > > , > > > , etc. (or >>>> ,
   >>>, etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the
   original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different
   citation leader for each author, say > , : , | , @ (preserving nesting so
   that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the
   inclusions with authors' names). Yet another style is to use each
   poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster.

   Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations from authoritative
   sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root
   prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued when one is running as the
   privileged super-user).

Chapter 7. Hacker Speech Style

   Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word
   choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use
   of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly
   flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlying seriousness and
   intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to
   communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture;
   overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is
   considered tacky and the mark of a loser.

   This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally
   spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical
   fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly
   constant throughout hackerdom.

   It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions
   -- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often
   confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have
   done so much programming that distinguishes between

   if (going) ...

   and

   if (!going) ...

   that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may seem to be
   asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so to merit an
   answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers
   because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't
   there. In some other languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese)
   the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise.
   Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French `si', German
   `doch', or Dutch `jawel' -- a word with which one could unambiguously
   answer `yes' to a negative question. (See also {mu})

   For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
   negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows
   them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an
   affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb
   them.

   In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering questions
   containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather than
   colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a
   question like "So, are you working on finding that bug now or leaving it
   until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that
   is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!").

Chapter 8. International Style

   Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in
   American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad.
   Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of
   jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File
   versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them
   may be of some use to travelling hackers.

   There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These are
   intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the
   English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia,
   India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage).
   There is also an entry on {Commonwealth Hackish} reporting some general
   phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish.

   Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that they
   often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical
   conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage
   that are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are
   reported here.

   On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and vocabulary
   mutations in the native language. For example, Italian hackers often use
   the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and `deletare' (to delete)
   rather than native Italian scorrere and cancellare. Similarly, the
   English verb `to hack' has been seen conjugated in Swedish. In German,
   many Unix terms in English are casually declined as if they were German
   verbs -- thus: mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept;
   fork/forken/geforkt; core dump/core-dumpen, gecoredumpt. And
   Spanish-speaking hackers use `linkear' (to link), `debugear' (to debug),
   and `lockear' (to lock).

   European hackers report that this happens partly because the English
   terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native
   vocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes for
   amusing wordplay.

   A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are
   parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers.

Chapter 9. Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers

   From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local, MS-DOS-based
   bulletin boards developed separately from Internet hackerdom. The BBS
   culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of `pirate boards'
   inhabited by {cracker}s, phone phreaks, and {warez d00dz}. These people
   (mostly teenagers running IBM-PC clones from their bedrooms) have
   developed their own characteristic jargon, heavily influenced by
   skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang. While BBS technology
   essentially died out after the {Great Internet Explosion}, the cracker
   culture moved to IRC and other Internet-based network channels and
   maintained a semi-underground existence.

   Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they
   typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet
   expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems).
   Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's, and hackers regard
   them with varying degrees of contempt. But ten years on the brightest
   crackers tend to become hackers, and sometimes to recall their origins by
   using cracker slang in a marked and heavily ironic way.

   This lexicon covers much of cracker slang (which is often called
   "leet-speak") so the reader will be able to understand both what leaks
   out of the cracker underground and the occasional ironic use by hackers.

   Here is a brief guide to cracker and {warez d00dz} usage:

     o Misspell frequently. The substitutions phone -> fone and freak ->
       phreak are obligatory.

     o Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" -> "codez"). The
       substitution of `z' for `s' has evolved so that a `z' is now
       systematically put at the end of words to denote an illegal or
       cracking connection. Examples : Appz, passwordz, passez, utilz, MP3z,
       distroz, pornz, sitez, gamez, crackz, serialz, downloadz, FTPz, etc.

     o Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
       Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").

     o Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
       frequently.

     o Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").

     o TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE TIME.

   The following letter substitutions are common:

       a -> 4
       e -> 3
       f -> ph
       i -> 1 or |
       l -> | or 1
       m -> |\/|
       n -> |\|
       o -> 0
       s -> 5
       t -> 7 or +

   Thus, "elite" comes out "31337" and "all your base are belong to us"
   becomes "4ll y0ur b4s3 4r3 b3l0ng t0 us", Other less common substitutions
   include:

       b -> 8
       c -> ( or k or |< or /<
       d -> <|
       g -> 6 or 9
       h -> |-|
       k -> |< or /<
       p -> |2
       u -> |_|
       v -> / or \/
       w -> // or \/\/
       x -> ><
       y -> '/

   The word "cool" is spelled "kewl" and normally used ironically; when
   crackers really want to praise something they use the prefix "uber" (from
   German) which comes out "ub3r" or even "|_|83r"

   These traits are similar to those of {B1FF}, who originated as a parody
   of naive {BBS} users; also of his latter-day equivalent {Jeff K.}.
   Occasionally, this sort of distortion may be used as heavy sarcasm or
   ironically by a real hacker, as in:

       > I got X Windows running under Linux!

       d00d!  u R an 31337 hax0r

   The words "hax0r" for "hacker" and "sux0r" for "sucks" are the most
   common references; more generally, to mark a term as cracker-speak one
   may add "0r" or "xor". Examples:

       "The nightly build is sux0r today."
       "Gotta go reboot those b0x0rz."
       "Man, I really ought to fix0r my .fetchmailrc."
       "Yeah, well he's a 'leet VMS operat0r now, so he's too good for us."

   The only practice resembling this in native hacker usage is the
   substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or service felt
   to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft.

   For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see {lamer},
   {elite}, {leech}, {poser}, {cracker}, and especially {warez d00dz},
   {banner site}, {ratio site}, {leech mode}.

Chapter 10. Pronunciation Guide

   Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries
   that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor
   obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which
   are to be interpreted using the following conventions:

   Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent
   follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent
   in some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is given, the word
   is pronounced with equal accentuation on all syllables (this is common
   for abbreviations).

   Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is
   always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church"
   rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in
   "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. The
   digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph `gh' is
   the aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English).

   Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for
   example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ may be pronounced
   /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.

   Vowels are represented as follows:

   Table 10.1. Vowels

   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | a     | back, that                                                   |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | ah    | father, palm (see note)                                      |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | ar    | far, mark                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | aw    | flaw, caught                                                 |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | ay    | bake, rain                                                   |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | e     | less, men                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | ee    | easy, ski                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | eir   | their, software                                              |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | i     | trip, hit                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | i:    | life, sky                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | o     | block, stock (see note)                                      |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | oh    | flow, sew                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | oo    | loot, through                                                |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | or    | more, door                                                   |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | ow    | out, how                                                     |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | oy    | boy, coin                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | uh    | but, some                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | u     | put, foot                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | y     | yet, young                                                   |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | yoo   | few, chew                                                    |
   |-------+--------------------------------------------------------------|
   | [y]oo | /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) |
   +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

   The glyph /@/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded
   vowels.

   The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n;
   that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not
   /kit'@n/ and /kuhl'@r/.

   Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard
   American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network
   announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago,
   Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from
   /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help readers
   accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation.

   The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to map
   the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset of
   the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can smash
   terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers of many varieties of
   southern American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and so forth.
   (Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this purpose
   because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions than other
   major dialects, and tends to retain distinctions between unstressed
   vowels. It also happens to be what your editor speaks.)

   Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, Unix
   weenies, this does not mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!)

Chapter 11. Other Lexicon Conventions

   Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the
   letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream
   dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic
   characters are sorted before A, except that leading dash is ignored. The
   case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.

   Prefix ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage.

   We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style
   section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts
   of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word
   being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an
   utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both
   rendered with single quotes.

   References such as malloc(3) and patch(1) are to Unix facilities (some of
   which, such as patch(1), are actually open source distributed over
   Usenet). The Unix manuals use foo(n) to refer to item foo in section (n)
   of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C
   library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system
   administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have
   changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of
   the entries.

   Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here:

   Table 11.1. Abbreviations

   +----------------------------------------------------+
   | abbrev. |               abbreviation               |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | adj.    | adjective                                |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | adv.    | adverb                                   |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | alt.    | alternate                                |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | cav.    | caveat                                   |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | conj.   | conjunction                              |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | esp.    | especially                               |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | excl.   | exclamation                              |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | imp.    | imperative                               |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | interj. | interjection                             |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | n.      | noun                                     |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | obs.    | obsolete                                 |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | pl.     | plural                                   |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | poss.   | possibly                                 |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | pref.   | prefix                                   |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | prob.   | probably                                 |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | prov.   | proverbial                               |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | quant.  | quantifier                               |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | suff.   | suffix                                   |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | syn.    | synonym (or synonymous with)             |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | v.      | verb (may be transitive or intransitive) |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | var.    | variant                                  |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | vi.     | intransitive verb                        |
   |---------+------------------------------------------|
   | vt.     | transitive verb                          |
   +----------------------------------------------------+

   Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two
   possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one
   that is markedly less common than the primary.

   Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to
   have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of
   abbreviations used in etymologies:

   Table 11.2. Origins

   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |                      | A technical culture of ham-radio sites using   |
   | Amateur Packet Radio | AX.25 and TCP/IP for wide-area networking and  |
   |                      | BBS systems.                                   |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Berkeley             | University of California at Berkeley           |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | BBN                  | Bolt, Beranek & Newman                         |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | the university in England (not the city in     |
   | Cambridge            | Massachusetts where MIT happens to be          |
   |                      | located!)                                      |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | CMU                  | Carnegie-Mellon University                     |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Commodore            | Commodore Business Machines                    |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | DEC                  | The Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP).    |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Fairchild            | The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto            |
   |                      | development group                              |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | FidoNet              | See the FidoNet entry                          |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | IBM                  | International Business Machines                |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp.    |
   | MIT                  | the legendary MIT AI Lab culture of roughly    |
   |                      | 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups, including  |
   |                      | the Tech Model Railroad Club                   |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | NRL                  | Naval Research Laboratories                    |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | NYU                  | New York University                            |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | OED                  | The Oxford English Dictionary                  |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Purdue               | Purdue University                              |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | SAIL                 | Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory    |
   |                      | (at Stanford University)                       |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | From Systme International, the name for the   |
   | SI                   | standard abbreviations of metric nomenclature  |
   |                      | used in the sciences                           |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Stanford             | Stanford University                            |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Sun                  | Sun Microsystems                               |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model  |
   |                      | Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT c. 1960. Material  |
   | TMRC                 | marked TMRC is from An Abridged Dictionary of  |
   |                      | the TMRC Language, originally compiled by Pete |
   |                      | Samson in 1959                                 |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | UCLA                 | University of California, Los Angeles          |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | UK                   | the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland,  |
   |                      | Northern Ireland)                              |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Usenet               | See the Usenet entry                           |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a     |
   | WPI                  | very active community of PDP-10 hackers during |
   |                      | the 1970s                                      |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | WWW                  | The World-Wide-Web.                            |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   |                      | XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of     |
   | XEROX PARC           | much pioneering research in user interface     |
   |                      | design and networking                          |
   |----------------------+------------------------------------------------|
   | Yale                 | Yale University                                |
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

   Other etymology abbreviations such as {Unix} and {PDP-10} refer to
   technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or
   other environments. The fact that a term is labelled with any one of
   these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to that
   culture. In particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in
   quite general use. We have tried to give some indication of the
   distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of factors
   mentioned in the introduction conspire to make these indications less
   definite than might be desirable.

   A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These
   are usually generalizations suggested by editors or Usenet respondents in
   the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These
   are not represented as established jargon.

Chapter 12. Format for New Entries

   We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of existing
   entries. You can improve your submission's chances of being included by
   adding background information on user population and years of currency.
   References to actual usage via URLs and/or Google pointers are
   particularly welcomed.

   All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be
   considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this
   File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be
   edited for accuracy, clarity and concision.

   We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties
   covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the
   scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also
   in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language
   design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!

   We are not interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks
   or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground'
   meanings or aspects not covered by official histories. We are also not
   interested in `joke' entries -- there is a lot of humor in the file but
   it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how
   they think.

   It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have
   spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally
   acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent
   submission from two different sites.

   The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for
   browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number. Read
   it, pass it around, contribute -- this is your monument!

                              The Jargon Lexicon

   The Crunchly saga begins here.

   (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-18.)

   The infamous Crunchly cartoons by The Great Quux are woven into the
   lexicon, each next to an appropriate entry. To read them in the sequence
   in which they were written, {chase pointers} from here using the `next
   cartoon' information in the captions. A few don't have next pointers;
   these are vignettes from the 1973 Crunchland tableau spread that
   inaugurated the strip.

   Here is a framed version of the glossary.

   Table of Contents

   Glossary

Glossary

   0

                (TM)

                /dev/null

                /me

                0

                1TBS

                2

                404

                404 compliant

                @-party

   A

                abbrev

                ABEND

                accumulator

                ACK

                Acme

                ad-hockery

                address harvester

                adger

                admin

                ADVENT

                adware

                AFAIK

                AFJ

                AFK

                AI

                AI-complete

                airplane rule

                Alderson loop

                aliasing bug

                Alice and Bob

                All hardware sucks, all software sucks.

                all your base are belong to us

                alpha geek

                alpha particles

                alt

                alt bit

                Aluminum Book

                ambimouseterous

                Amiga

                Amiga Persecution Complex

                amp off

                amper

                and there was much rejoicing

                Angband

                angle brackets

                angry fruit salad

                annoybot

                annoyware

                ANSI standard

                ANSI standard pizza

                anti-idiotarianism

                AOL!

                app

                Archimedes

                arena

                arg

                ARMM

                armor-plated

                asbestos

                asbestos cork award

                asbestos longjohns

                ASCII

                ASCII art

                ASCIIbetical order

                astroturfing

                atomic

                attoparsec

                Aunt Tillie

                AUP

                autobogotiphobia

                autoconfiscate

                automagically

                avatar

                awk

   B

                B1FF

                B5

                back door

                backbone cabal

                backbone site

                backgammon

                background

                backreference

                backronym

                backward combatability

                BAD

                Bad and Wrong

                Bad Thing

                bag on the side

                bagbiter

                bagbiting

                baggy pantsing

                balloonian variable

                bamf

                banana problem

                bandwidth

                bang

                bang on

                bang path

                banner

                banner ad

                banner site

                bar

                bare metal

                barf

                barfmail

                barfulation

                barfulous

                barn

                barney

                baroque

                BASIC

                batbelt

                batch

                bathtub curve

                Batman factor

                baud

                baz

                bazaar

                bboard

                BBS

                BCPL

                BDFL

                beam

                beanie key

                beep

                Befunge

                beige toaster

                bells and whistles

                bells whistles and gongs

                benchmark

                Berkeley Quality Software

                Berzerkeley

                beta

                BFI

                BI

                bible

                BiCapitalization

                biff

                big iron

                Big Red Switch

                Big Room

                big win

                big-endian

                bignum

                bigot

                bikeshedding

                binary four

                bit

                bit bang

                bit bashing

                bit bucket

                bit decay

                bit rot

                bit twiddling

                bit-paired keyboard

                bitblt

                bits

                bitty box

                bixie

                black art

                black hat

                black hole

                black magic

                Black Screen of Death

                blammo

                blargh

                blast

                blat

                bletch

                bletcherous

                blinkenlights

                blit

                blitter

                blivet

                bloatware

                BLOB

                block

                blog

                Bloggs Family

                blogosphere

                blogrolling

                blow an EPROM

                blow away

                blow out

                blow past

                blow up

                BLT

                blue box

                Blue Glue

                blue goo

                Blue Screen of Death

                blue wire

                blurgle

                BNF

                boa

                board

                boat anchor

                bob

                bodge

                BOF

                BOFH

                bogo-sort

                bogometer

                BogoMIPS

                bogon

                bogon filter

                bogon flux

                bogosity

                bogotify

                bogue out

                bogus

                Bohr bug

                boink

                bomb

                bondage-and-discipline language

                bonk/oif

                book titles

                boot

                Borg

                borken

                bot

                bottom feeder

                bottom-post

                bottom-up implementation

                bounce

                bounce message

                boustrophedon

                box

                boxed comments

                boxen

                boxology

                bozotic

                brain dump

                brain fart

                brain-damaged

                brain-dead

                braino

                brainwidth

                bread crumbs

                break

                break-even point

                breath-of-life packet

                breedle

                Breidbart Index

                brick

                bricktext

                bring X to its knees

                brittle

                broadcast storm

                broken

                broken arrow

                broken-ring network

                BrokenWindows

                broket

                Brooks's Law

                brown-paper-bag bug

                browser

                BRS

                brute force

                brute force and ignorance

                BSD

                BSOD

                BUAF

                BUAG

                bubble sort

                bucky bits

                buffer chuck

                buffer overflow

                bug

                bug-compatible

                bug-for-bug compatible

                bug-of-the-month club

                bulletproof

                bullschildt

                bump

                burble

                buried treasure

                burn a CD

                burn-in period

                burst page

                busy-wait

                buzz

                buzzword-compliant

                BWQ

                by hand

                byte

                byte sex

                bytesexual

                Bzzzt! Wrong.

   C

                C

                C Programmer's Disease

                C&C

                C++

                calculator

                Camel Book

                camelCase

                camelCasing

                can't happen

                cancelbot

                Cancelmoose[tm]

                candygrammar

                canonical

                careware

                cargo cult programming

                cascade

                case and paste

                case mod

                casters-up mode

                casting the runes

                cat

                catatonic

                cathedral

                cd tilde

                CDA

                cdr

                chad

                chad box

                chain

                chainik

                channel

                channel hopping

                channel op

                chanop

                char

                charityware

                chase pointers

                chawmp

                check

                cheerfully

                chemist

                Chernobyl chicken

                Chernobyl packet

                chicken head

                chickenboner

                chiclet keyboard

                Chinese Army technique

                choad

                choke

                chomp

                chomper

                CHOP

                Christmas tree

                Christmas tree packet

                chrome

                chug

                Church of the SubGenius

                CI$

                Cinderella Book

                Classic C

                clean

                click of death

                CLM

                clobber

                clock

                clocks

                clone

                clone-and-hack coding

                clover key

                clue-by-four

                clustergeeking

                co-lo

                coaster

                coaster toaster

                COBOL

                COBOL fingers

                cobweb site

                code

                code grinder

                code monkey

                Code of the Geeks

                code police

                codes

                codewalker

                coefficient of X

                cokebottle

                cold boot

                COME FROM

                comm mode

                command key

                comment out

                Commonwealth Hackish

                compact

                compiler jock

                compo

                compress

                Compu$erve

                computer confetti

                computron

                con

                condition out

                condom

                confuser

                connector conspiracy

                cons

                considered harmful

                console

                console jockey

                content-free

                control-C

                control-O

                control-Q

                control-S

                Conway's Law

                cookbook

                cooked mode

                cookie

                cookie bear

                cookie file

                cookie jar

                cookie monster

                copious free time

                copper

                copy protection

                copybroke

                copycenter

                copyleft

                copyparty

                copywronged

                core

                core cancer

                core dump

                core leak

                Core Wars

                cosmic rays

                cough and die

                courier

                cow orker

                cowboy

                CP/M

                CPU Wars

                crack

                crack root

                cracker

                cracking

                crank

                crapplet

                CrApTeX

                crash

                crash and burn

                crawling horror

                CRC handbook

                creationism

                creep

                creeping elegance

                creeping featurism

                creeping featuritis

                cretin

                cretinous

                crippleware

                critical mass

                crlf

                crock

                cross-post

                crossload

                crudware

                cruft

                cruft together

                cruftsmanship

                crufty

                crumb

                crunch

                cryppie

                cthulhic

                CTSS

                cube

                cup holder

                cursor dipped in X

                cuspy

                cut a tape

                cybercrud

                cyberpunk

                cyberspace

                cycle

                cycle of reincarnation

                cycle server

                cypherpunk

                C|N>K

   D

                daemon

                daemon book

                dahmum

                dancing frog

                dangling pointer

                dark-side hacker

                Datamation

                DAU

                Dave the Resurrector

                day mode

                dd

                DDT

                de-rezz

                dead

                dead beef attack

                dead code

                dead-tree version

                DEADBEEF

                deadlock

                deadly embrace

                death code

                Death Square

                Death Star

                Death, X of

                DEC

                DEC Wars

                decay

                deckle

                DED

                deep hack mode

                deep magic

                deep space

                defenestration

                defined as

                deflicted

                dehose

                Dejagoo

                deletia

                deliminator

                delint

                delta

                demented

                demigod

                demo

                demo mode

                demoeffect

                demogroup

                demon

                demon dialer

                demoparty

                demoscene

                dentro

                depeditate

                deprecated

                derf

                deserves to lose

                despew

                dickless workstation

                dictionary flame

                diddle

                die

                die horribly

                diff

                dike

                Dilbert

                ding

                dink

                dinosaur

                dinosaur pen

                dinosaurs mating

                dirtball

                dirty power

                disclaimer

                Discordianism

                disemvowel

                disk farm

                display hack

                dispress

                Dissociated Press

                distribution

                distro

                disusered

                DMZ

                do protocol

                doc

                documentation

                dodgy

                dogcow

                dogfood

                dogpile

                dogwash

                Don't do that then!

                dongle

                dongle-disk

                Doom, X of

                doorstop

                DoS attack

                dot file

                double bucky

                doubled sig

                down

                download

                DP

                DPer

                Dr. Fred Mbogo

                dragon

                Dragon Book

                drain

                dread high-bit disease

                dread questionmark disease

                DRECNET

                driver

                droid

                drone

                drool-proof paper

                drop on the floor

                drop-ins

                drop-outs

                drugged

                drum

                drunk mouse syndrome

                DSW

                dub dub dub

                Duff's device

                dumb terminal

                dumbass attack

                dumbed down

                dump

                dumpster diving

                dusty deck

                DWIM

                dynner

   E

                Easter egg

                Easter egging

                eat flaming death

                EBCDIC

                ECP

                ed

                egg

                egosurf

                eighty-column mind

                El Camino Bignum

                elder days

                elegant

                elephantine

                elevator controller

                elite

                ELIZA effect

                elvish

                EMACS

                email

                emoticon

                EMP

                empire

                engine

                English

                enhancement

                ENQ

                EOD

                EOF

                EOL

                EOU

                epoch

                epsilon

                epsilon squared

                era

                Eric Conspiracy

                Eris

                erotics

                error 33

                eurodemo

                evil

                evil and rude

                Evil Empire

                exa-

                examining the entrails

                EXCH

                excl

                EXE

                exec

                exercise, left as an

                Exon

                Exploder

                exploit

                external memory

                eye candy

                eyeball search

   F

                face time

                factor

                fairings

                fall over

                fall through

                fan

                fandango on core

                FAQ

                FAQ list

                FAQL

                faradize

                farkled

                farm

                fascist

                fat electrons

                fat pipe

                fat-finger

                faulty

                fear and loathing

                feature

                feature creature

                feature creep

                feature key

                feature shock

                featurectomy

                feep

                feeper

                feeping creature

                feeping creaturism

                feetch feetch

                fence

                fencepost error

                fiber-seeking backhoe

                FidoNet

                field circus

                field servoid

                file signature

                filk

                film at 11

                filter

                Finagle's Law

                fine

                finger

                finger trouble

                finger-pointing syndrome

                finn

                firebottle

                firefighting

                firehose syndrome

                firewall code

                firewall machine

                fireworks mode

                firmware

                fish

                FISH queue

                fisking

                FITNR

                fix

                FIXME

                flag

                flag day

                flaky

                flamage

                flame

                flame bait

                flame on

                flame war

                flamer

                flap

                flarp

                flash crowd

                flat

                flat-ASCII

                flat-file

                flatten

                flavor

                flavorful

                flippy

                flood

                flowchart

                flower key

                flush

                flypage

                Flyspeck 3

                flytrap

                FM

                fnord

                FOAF

                FOD

                fold case

                followup

                fontology

                foo

                foobar

                fool

                fool file

                Foonly

                footprint

                for free

                for the rest of us

                for values of

                fora

                foreground

                fork

                fork bomb

                forked

                Formosa's Law

                Fortrash

                fortune cookie

                forum

                fossil

                four-color glossies

                frag

                fragile

                Frankenputer

                fred

                Fred Foobar

                frednet

                free software

                freeware

                freeze

                fried

                frink

                friode

                fritterware

                frob

                frobnicate

                frobnitz

                frog

                frogging

                front end

                frotz

                frotzed

                frowney

                FRS

                fry

                fscking

                FSF

                -fu

                FUBAR

                fuck me harder

                FUD

                FUD wars

                fudge

                fudge factor

                fuel up

                Full Monty

                fum

                functino

                funky

                funny money

                furrfu

   G

                G

                gang bang

                Gang of Four

                garbage collect

                garply

                gas

                Gates's Law

                gawble

                GC

                GCOS

                GECOS

                gedanken

                geef

                geek

                geek code

                geek out

                geekasm

                gen

                gender mender

                General Public Virus

                generate

                Genius From Mars Technique

                gensym

                Get a life!

                Get a real computer!

                GandhiCon

                gib

                GIFs at 11

                gig

                giga-

                GIGO

                gilley

                gillion

                ginger

                GIPS

                GIYF

                glark

                glass

                glass tty

                glassfet

                glitch

                glob

                glork

                glue

                gnarly

                GNU

                gnubie

                GNUMACS

                go flatline

                go gold

                go root

                go-faster stripes

                GoAT

                goat file

                gobble

                Godwin's Law

                Godzillagram

                golden

                golf-ball printer

                gonk

                gonkulator

                gonzo

                Good Thing

                google

                google juice

                gopher

                gopher hole

                gorets

                gorilla arm

                gorp

                GOSMACS

                gotcha

                GPL

                GPV

                gray goo

                gray hat

                Great Internet Explosion

                Great Renaming

                Great Runes

                Great Worm

                great-wall

                green bytes

                green card

                green lightning

                green machine

                Green's Theorem

                greenbar

                grep

                gribble

                grilf

                grind

                grind crank

                gritch

                grok

                gronk

                gronk out

                gronked

                grovel

                grue

                grunge

                gubbish

                Guido

                guiltware

                gumby

                gunch

                gunpowder chicken

                guru

                guru meditation

                gweep

                GWF

   H

                h

                ha ha only serious

                hack

                hack attack

                hack mode

                hack on

                hack together

                hack up

                hack value

                hacked off

                hacked up

                hacker

                hacker ethic

                hacker humor

                Hackers (the movie)

                hacking run

                Hacking X for Y

                Hackintosh

                hackish

                hackishness

                hackitude

                hair

                hairball

                hairy

                HAKMEM

                hakspek

                Halloween Documents

                ham

                hammer

                hamster

                HAND

                hand cruft

                hand-hacking

                hand-roll

                handle

                handshaking

                handwave

                hang

                Hanlon's Razor

                happily

                hard boot

                hardcoded

                hardwarily

                hardwired

                has the X nature

                hash bucket

                hash collision

                hat

                HCF

                heads down

                heartbeat

                heatseeker

                heavy metal

                heavy wizardry

                heavyweight

                Hed Rat

                heisenbug

                hell desk

                hello sailor!

                hello world

                hello, wall!

                hex

                hexadecimal

                hexit

                HHOK

                HHOS

                hidden flag

                high bit

                high moby

                highly

                hing

                hired gun

                hirsute

                HLL

                hoarding

                hog

                hole

                hollised

                holy penguin pee

                holy wars

                home box

                home machine

                home page

                honey pot

                hook

                hop

                horked

                hose

                hosed

                hot chat

                hot spot

                hotlink

                house wizard

                HP-SUX

                HTH

                huff

                hung

                hungry puppy

                hungus

                hyperspace

                hysterical reasons

   I

                I didn't change anything!

                I see no X here.

                I for one welcome our new X overlords

                IANAL

                IBM

                ICBM address

                ice

                ID10T error

                idempotent

                IDP

                If you want X, you know where to find it.

                ifdef out

                IIRC

                ill-behaved

                IMHO

                Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!

                in the extreme

                incantation

                include

                include war

                indent style

                Indent-o-Meter

                index of X

                infant mortality

                infinite

                infinite loop

                Infinite-Monkey Theorem

                infinity

                inflate

                Infocom

                initgame

                insanely great

                installfest

                INTERCAL

                InterCaps

                interesting

                Internet

                Internet Death Penalty

                Internet Exploder

                Internet Exploiter

                interrupt

                interrupts locked out

                intertwingled

                intro

                IRC

                iron

                Iron Age

                iron box

                ironmonger

                ISO standard cup of tea

                ISP

                Itanic

                ITS

                IWBNI

                IYFEG

   J

                J. Random

                J. Random Hacker

                jack in

                jaggies

                Java

                JCL

                JEDR

                Jeff K.

                jello

                Jeopardy-style quoting

                jibble

                jiffy

                job security

                jock

                joe code

                joe-job

                juggling eggs

                juice

                jump off into never-never land

                jupiter

   K

                K

                K&R

                k-

                kahuna

                kamikaze packet

                kangaroo code

                ken

                kernel-of-the-week club

                kgbvax

                KIBO

                kiboze

                kibozo

                kick

                kill file

                killer app

                killer micro

                killer poke

                kilo-

                kilogoogle

                KIPS

                KISS Principle

                kit

                KLB

                klone

                kludge

                kluge

                kluge around

                kluge up

                Knights of the Lambda Calculus

                knobs

                knurd

                Knuth

                koan

                kook

                Kool-Aid

                kremvax

                kyrka

   L

                lag

                lamer

                LAN party

                language lawyer

                languages of choice

                LART

                larval stage

                lase

                laser chicken

                leaf site

                leak

                leaky heap

                leapfrog attack

                leech

                leech mode

                legal

                legalese

                lenna

                LER

                LERP

                let the smoke out

                letterbomb

                lexer

                life

                Life is hard

                light pipe

                lightweight

                like kicking dead whales down the beach

                like nailing jelly to a tree

                line 666

                line eater, the

                line noise

                linearithmic

                link farm

                link rot

                link-dead

                lint

                Lintel

                Linus

                Linux

                lion food

                Lions Book

                LISP

                list-bomb

                lithium lick

                little-endian

                live

                live data

                Live Free Or Die!

                livelock

                liveware

                lobotomy

                locals, the

                locked and loaded

                locked up

                logic bomb

                logical

                loop through

                loose bytes

                lord high fixer

                lose

                lose lose

                loser

                losing

                loss

                lossage

                lossy

                lost in the noise

                lost in the underflow

                lots of MIPS but no I/O

                low-bandwidth

                Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

                Lumber Cartel

                lunatic fringe

                lurker

                luser

   M

                M

                M$

                macdink

                machoflops

                Macintoy

                Macintrash

                macro

                macro-

                macrology

                maggotbox

                magic

                magic cookie

                magic number

                magic smoke

                mail storm

                mailbomb

                mailing list

                main loop

                mainframe

                mainsleaze

                malware

                man page

                management

                mandelbug

                manged

                mangle

                mangled name

                mangler

                manularity

                marching ants

                marbles

                marginal

                marginally

                marketroid

                Mars

                martian

                massage

                math-out

                Matrix

                mav

                maximum Maytag mode

                McQuary limit

                meatspace

                meatware

                meeces

                meg

                mega-

                megapenny

                MEGO

                meltdown, network

                meme

                meme plague

                memetics

                memory farts

                memory leak

                memory smash

                menuitis

                mess-dos

                meta

                meta bit

                metasyntactic variable

                MFTL

                mickey

                mickey mouse program

                micro-

                MicroDroid

                microfortnight

                microLenat

                microReid

                microserf

                Microsloth Windows

                Microsoft

                micros~1

                middle-endian

                middle-out implementation

                milliLampson

                minor detail

                MIPS

                misbug

                misfeature

                missile address

                MiSTing

                miswart

                MMF

                mobo

                moby

                mockingbird

                mod

                mode

                mode bit

                modulo

                mojibake

                molly-guard

                Mongolian Hordes technique

                monkey up

                monkey, scratch

                monstrosity

                monty

                Moof

                Moore's Law

                moria

                MOTAS

                MOTOS

                MOTSS

                mouse ahead

                mouse belt

                mouse droppings

                mouse elbow

                mouse pusher

                mouso

                MS-DOS

                mu

                MUD

                muddie

                mudhead

                muggle

                Multics

                multitask

                mumblage

                mumble

                munch

                munching

                munching squares

                munchkin

                mundane

                mung

                munge

                Murphy's Law

                music

                mutter

   N

                N

                nadger

                nagware

                nailed to the wall

                nailing jelly

                naive

                naive user

                NAK

                NANA

                nano

                nano-

                nanoacre

                nanobot

                nanocomputer

                nanofortnight

                nanotechnology

                narg

                nasal demons

                nastygram

                Nathan Hale

                nature

                neat hack

                neats vs. scruffies

                neep-neep

                neophilia

                nerd

                nerd knob

                net.-

                net.god

                net.personality

                net.police

                netburp

                netdead

                nethack

                netiquette

                netlag

                netnews

                Netscrape

                netsplit

                netter

                network address

                network meltdown

                New Jersey

                New Testament

                newbie

                newgroup wars

                newline

                NeWS

                newsfroup

                newsgroup

                nick

                nickle

                night mode

                Nightmare File System

                NIL

                Ninety-Ninety Rule

                nipple mouse

                NMI

                no-op

                noddy

                non-optimal solution

                nonlinear

                nontrivial

                not entirely unlike X

                not ready for prime time

                notwork

                NP-

                NSA line eater

                NSP

                nude

                nugry

                nuke

                number-crunching

                numbers

                NUXI problem

                nybble

                nyetwork

   O

                Ob-

                Obfuscated C Contest

                obi-wan error

                Objectionable-C

                obscure

                octal forty

                off the trolley

                off-by-one error

                offline

                ogg

                -oid

                old fart

                Old Testament

                on the gripping hand

                one-banana problem

                one-line fix

                one-liner wars

                ooblick

                OP

                op

                open

                open source

                open switch

                operating system

                operator headspace

                optical diff

                optical grep

                optimism

                Oracle, the

                Orange Book

                oriental food

                orphan

                orphaned i-node

                orthogonal

                OS

                OS/2

                OSS

                OT

                OTOH

                out-of-band

                overclock

                overflow bit

                overrun

                overrun screw

                owned

   P

                P.O.D.

                packet over air

                padded cell

                page in

                page out

                pain in the net

                paper-net

                param

                PARC

                parent message

                parity errors

                Parkinson's Law of Data

                parm

                parse

                Pascal

                PascalCasing

                pastie

                patch

                patch pumpkin

                patch space

                path

                pathological

                payware

                PBD

                PD

                PDP-10

                PDP-11

                PDP-20

                PEBKAC

                peek

                pencil and paper

                Pentagram Pro

                Pentium

                peon

                percent-S

                perf

                perfect programmer syndrome

                Perl

                person of no account

                pessimal

                pessimizing compiler

                peta-

                pffft

                PFY

                phage

                phase

                phase of the moon

                phase-wrapping

                PHB

                phreaker

                phreaking

                pico-

                pig-tail

                pilot error

                ping

                Ping O' Death

                ping storm

                pink contract

                pink wire

                pipe

                pistol

                pixel sort

                pizza box

                plaid screen

                plain-ASCII

                Plan 9

                plan file

                platinum-iridium

                playpen

                playte

                plokta

                plonk

                plug-and-pray

                plugh

                plumbing

                PM

                point release

                point-and-drool interface

                pointy hat

                pointy-haired

                poke

                poll

                polygon pusher

                POM

                ponytail

                pop

                poser

                post

                postcardware

                Postel's Prescription

                posting

                postmaster

                PostScript

                pound on

                power cycle

                power hit

                pr0n

                precedence lossage

                pred

                prepend

                prestidigitization

                pretty pictures

                prettyprint

                pretzel key

                priesthood

                prime time

                print

                printing discussion

                priority interrupt

                profile

                progasm

                proggy

                proglet

                program

                Programmer's Cheer

                programming

                programming fluid

                propeller head

                propeller key

                proprietary

                protocol

                provocative maintenance

                prowler

                pseudo

                pseudoprime

                pseudosuit

                psychedelicware

                psyton

                pubic directory

                puff

                pumpkin holder

                pumpking

                punched card

                punt

                Purple Book

                purple wire

                push

                Python

   Q

                quad

                quadruple bucky

                quantifiers

                quantum bogodynamics

                quarter

                ques

                quick-and-dirty

                quine

                Quirk objection

                quote chapter and verse

                quotient

                quux

                qux

                QWERTY

   R

                rabbit job

                rain dance

                rainbow series

                random

                Random Number God

                random numbers

                randomness

                rape

                rare mode

                raster blaster

                raster burn

                rasterbation

                rat belt

                rat dance

                rathole

                ratio site

                rave

                rave on!

                ravs

                raw mode

                RBL

                rc file

                RE

                read-only user

                README file

                real

                real estate

                real hack

                real operating system

                Real Programmer

                Real Soon Now

                real time

                real user

                Real World

                reality check

                reality-distortion field

                reaper

                recompile the world

                rectangle slinger

                recursion

                recursive acronym

                red wire

                regexp

                register dancing

                rehi

                reincarnation, cycle of

                reinvent the wheel

                relay rape

                religion of CHI

                religious issues

                replicator

                reply

                restriction

                retcon

                RETI

                retrocomputing

                return from the dead

                RFC

                RFE

                Right Thing

                rip

                ripoff

                RL

                roach

                robocanceller

                robot

                robust

                rococo

                rogue

                room-temperature IQ

                root

                root mode

                rootkit

                rot13

                rotary debugger

                RSN

                RTBM

                RTFAQ

                RTFB

                RTFM

                RTFS

                RTI

                RTM

                RTS

                rubber-hose cryptanalysis

                rude

                runes

                runic

                rusty iron

                rusty wire

   S

                S/N ratio

                sacred

                saga

                sagan

                SAIL

                salescritter

                salt

                salt mines

                salt substrate

                same-day service

                samizdat

                samurai

                sandbender

                sandbox

                sanity check

                Saturday-night special

                say

                scag

                scanno

                scary devil monastery

                schroedinbug

                science-fiction fandom

                SCNR

                scram switch

                scratch

                scratch monkey

                scream and die

                screaming tty

                screen

                screen name

                screen scraping

                screw

                screwage

                scribble

                script kiddies

                scrog

                scrool

                scrozzle

                scruffies

                SCSI

                SCSI voodoo

                search-and-destroy mode

                second-system effect

                secondary damage

                security through obscurity

                SED

                See figure 1

                segfault

                seggie

                segment

                segmentation fault

                segv

                self-reference

                selvage

                semi

                semi-automated

                semi-infinite

                senior bit

                September that never ended

                server

                SEX

                sex changer

                shambolic link

                shar file

                sharchive

                Share and enjoy!

                shareware

                sharing violation

                shebang

                shelfware

                shell

                shell out

                shift left (or right) logical

                shim

                shitogram

                shotgun debugging

                shovelware

                showstopper

                shriek

                Shub-Internet

                SIG

                sig block

                sig quote

                sig virus

                sigmonster

                signal-to-noise ratio

                silicon

                silly walk

                silo

                since time T equals minus infinity

                sitename

                skrog

                skulker

                slab

                slack

                slash

                slashdot effect

                sleep

                slim

                slop

                slopsucker

                Slowlaris

                slurp

                slurp the robot

                smart

                smart terminal

                smash case

                smash the stack

                smiley

                smoke

                smoke and mirrors

                smoke test

                smoking clover

                smoot

                SMOP

                smurf

                SNAFU principle

                snail

                snail-mail

                snap

                snarf

                snarf & barf

                snarf down

                snark

                sneaker

                sneakernet

                sniff

                snippage

                SO

                social engineering

                social science number

                sock puppet

                sodium substrate

                soft boot

                softcopy

                software bloat

                software hoarding

                software laser

                software rot

                softwarily

                softy

                some random X

                sorcerer's apprentice mode

                source

                source of all good bits

                space-cadet keyboard

                spaceship operator

                SPACEWAR

                spaghetti code

                spaghetti inheritance

                spam

                spam bait

                spamblock

                spamhaus

                spamvertize

                spangle

                spawn

                special-case

                speed of light

                speedometer

                spell

                spelling flame

                spider

                spider food

                spiffy

                spike

                spin

                Spinning Pizza of Death

                spl

                splash screen

                splat

                splat out

                splork!

                spod

                spoiler

                spoiler space

                sponge

                spoof

                spool

                spool file

                sporgery

                sport death

                spungle

                spyware

                squirrelcide

                stack

                stack puke

                stale pointer bug

                Stanford Bunny

                star out

                state

                stealth manager

                steam-powered

                steved

                STFW

                stir-fried random

                stomp on

                Stone Age

                stone knives and bearskins

                stoppage

                store

                STR

                strided

                stroke

                strudel

                stubroutine

                studly

                studlycaps

                stunning

                stupid-sort

                Stupids

                Sturgeon's Law

                sucking mud

                sufficiently small

                suit

                suitable win

                suitably small

                Sun

                sun lounge

                sun-stools

                sunspots

                super source quench

                superloser

                superprogrammer

                superuser

                support

                surf

                Suzie COBOL

                swab

                swap

                swap space

                swapped in

                swapped out

                Swiss-Army chainsaw

                swizzle

                sync

                syntactic salt

                syntactic sugar

                sys-frog

                sysadmin

                sysape

                sysop

                system

                system mangler

                systems jock

   T

                T

                tail recursion

                talk mode

                talker system

                TAN

                tanked

                TANSTAAFL

                tape monkey

                tar and feather

                tarball

                tardegy

                taste

                tayste

                TCB

                TCP/IP

                TECO

                tee

                teergrube

                teledildonics

                ten-finger interface

                tense

                tentacle

                tenured graduate student

                tera-

                teraflop club

                terminak

                terminal brain death

                terminal illness

                terminal junkie

                test

                TeX

                text

                thanks in advance

                That's not a bug, that's a feature!

                the literature

                the network

                the X that can be Y is not the true X

                theology

                theory

                thinko

                This can't happen

                This time, for sure!

                thrash

                thread

                three-finger salute

                throwaway account

                thud

                thumb

                thundering herd problem

                thunk

                tick

                tick-list features

                tickle a bug

                tiger team

                time bomb

                time sink

                time T

                times-or-divided-by

                timesharing

                TINC

                Tinkerbell program

                TINLC

                tip of the ice-cube

                tired iron

                tits on a keyboard

                TLA

                TMRC

                TMRCie

                TMTOWTDI

                to a first approximation

                to a zeroth approximation

                toad

                toast

                toaster

                toeprint

                TOFU

                toggle

                tool

                toolchain

                toolsmith

                toor

                top-post

                topic drift

                topic group

                TOPS-10

                TOPS-20

                TOS

                tourist

                tourist information

                touristic

                toy

                toy language

                toy problem

                toy program

                trampoline

                trap

                trap door

                trash

                trawl

                tree-killer

                treeware

                trit

                trivial

                troff

                troglodyte

                troglodyte mode

                Trojan horse

                troll

                Troll-O-Meter

                tron

                troughie

                true-hacker

                tty

                tube

                tube time

                tumbler

                tunafish

                tune

                turbo nerd

                Turing tar-pit

                turist

                Tux

                tweak

                TWENEX

                twiddle

                twilight zone

                twink

                twirling baton

                two pi

                two-to-the-N

                tyop

   U

                u-

                UBD

                UBE

                ubergeek

                UCE

                UDP

                UN*X

                undefined external reference

                under the hood

                undocumented feature

                uninteresting

                Unix

                Unix brain damage

                Unix conspiracy

                Unix weenie

                unixism

                unswizzle

                unwind the stack

                unwind-protect

                up

                upload

                upstream

                upthread

                uptime

                urchin

                URL

                Usenet

                Usenet Death Penalty

                user

                user-friendly

                user-obsequious

                userland

                Utah teapot, the

                UTSL

                UUOC

   V

                V7

                vadding

                vanilla

                vanity domain

                vannevar

                vaporware

                var

                vaston

                VAX

                VAXen

                vaxocentrism

                vdiff

                veeblefester

                velveeta

                Venus flytrap

                verbage

                verbiage

                Version 7

                vgrep

                vi

                video toaster

                videotex

                virgin

                virtual

                virtual beer

                virtual Friday

                virtual reality

                virtual shredder

                virus

                visionary

                Visual Fred

                VMS

                voice

                voice-net

                voodoo programming

                VR

                Vulcan nerve pinch

                vulture capitalist

   W

                w00t

                wabbit

                WAITS

                waldo

                walk

                walk off the end of

                walking drives

                wall

                wall follower

                wall time

                wall wart

                wallhack

                wango

                wank

                wannabee

                war dialer

                war-driving

                war-chalking

                -ware

                warez

                warez d00dz

                warez kiddies

                warlording

                warm boot

                wart

                washing machine

                washing software

                water MIPS

                wave a dead chicken

                weasel

                web pointer

                web ring

                web toaster

                webify

                webmaster

                wedged

                wedgie

                wedgitude

                weeble

                weeds

                weenie

                Weenix

                well-behaved

                well-connected

                wetware

                whack

                whack-a-mole

                whacker

                whales

                What's a spline?

                wheel

                wheel bit

                wheel of reincarnation

                wheel wars

                white hat

                whitelist

                whizzy

                Whorfian mind-lock

                wibble

                WIBNI

                widget

                wiggles

                wild side

                WIMP environment

                win

                win big

                win win

                Winchester

                windoid

                window shopping

                Windowsitis

                Windoze

                winged comments

                winkey

                winnage

                winner

                winnitude

                Wintel

                Wintendo

                wired

                wirehead

                wirewater

                wish list

                within delta of

                within epsilon of

                wizard

                Wizard Book

                wizard hat

                wizard mode

                wizardly

                wok-on-the-wall

                womb box

                WOMBAT

                womble

                wonky

                workaround

                working as designed

                worm

                wormhole

                wound around the axle

                wrap around

                write-only code

                write-only language

                write-only memory

                Wrong Thing

                wugga wugga

                wumpus

                WYSIAYG

                WYSIWYG

   X

                X

                XEROX PARC

                XOFF

                XON

                xor

                xref

                XXX

                xyzzy

   Y

                YA-

                YABA

                YAFIYGI

                yak shaving

                YAUN

                yellow card

                yellow wire

                Yet Another

                YHBT

                YKYBHTLW

                YMMV

                You are not expected to understand this

                You know you've been hacking too long when

                Your mileage may vary

                Yow!

                yoyo mode

                Yu-Shiang Whole Fish

   Z

                zap

                zapped

                Zawinski's Law

                zbeba

                zen

                zero

                zero-content

                Zero-One-Infinity Rule

                zeroth

                zigamorph

                zip

                zipperhead

                zombie

                zorch

                Zork

                zorkmid

  0

   (TM)

   /dev/null

   /me

   0

   1TBS

   2

   404

   404 compliant

   @-party

:(TM): //

        [Usenet] ASCII rendition of the (TM) appended to phrases that the
        author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future
        editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of
        protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents
        and look and feel lawsuits. See also {UN*X}.

:/dev/null: /devnuhl/, n.

        [from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional `black
        hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred
        to. A controversial posting, for example, might end "Kudos to
        rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null". See {bit bucket}.

:/me: //

        [IRC; common] Under most IRC, /me is the "pose" command; if you are
        logged on as Foonly and type "/me laughs", others watching the
        channel will see "* Joe Foonly laughs". This usage has been carried
        over to mail and news, where the reader is expected to perform the
        same expansion in his or her head.

:0:

        Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter `O' (the 15th letter of the
        English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike,
        and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have
        compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O
        is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more
        like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're
        probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted
        zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers).
        If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking
        at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default
        typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom
         is a letter, curse this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed
        zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori's monumental A History
        of Mathematical Notations notes that it was used in the twelfth and
        thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the
        zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used
        at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse
        this arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters
        collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a
        reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken
        oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet
        another convention common on early line printers left zero
        unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it
        resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was
        endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters,
        but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in
        the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet?

:1TBS: //, n.

        The "One True Brace Style"; see {indent style}.

:2: infix.

        In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents
        the syllable to with the connotation `translate to': as in dvi2ps
        (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string), and texi2roff
        (Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several versions of a joke have floated
        around the internet in which some idiot programmer fixes the Y2K bug
        by changing all the Y's in something to K's, as in Januark,
        Februark, etc.

:404: //, n.

        [from the HTTP error "file not found on server"] Extended to humans
        to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue -- sapience not
        found. May be used reflexively; "Uh, I'm 404ing" means "I'm drawing
        a blank".

:404 compliant: adj.

        The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually
        by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse
        by the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to
        the standard "301 compliant" Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by
        spammers. See also: {spam}, {spamvertize}.

:@-party: /at'par`tee/, n.

        [from the @-sign in an Internet address] (alt.: `@-sign party'
        /at'si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a
        science-fiction convention (esp. the annual World Science Fiction
        Convention or "Worldcon"); one must have a {network address} to get
        in, or at least be in company with someone who does. One of the most
        reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people
        who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their
        screens. Compare {boink}.

        The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a U.S. western
        regional SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in 1980. It is not
        clear exactly when the canonical @-party venue shifted to the
        Worldcon but it had certainly become established by Constellation in
        1983. Sadly, the @-party tradition has been in decline since about
        1996, mainly because having an @-address no longer functions as an
        effective lodge pin.

        We are informed, however, that rec.skydiving members have maintained
        a tradition of formation jumps in the shape of an @.

  A

   abbrev

   ABEND

   accumulator

   ACK

   Acme

   ad-hockery

   address harvester

   adger

   admin

   ADVENT

   adware

   AFAIK

   AFJ

   AFK

   AI

   AI-complete

   airplane rule

   Alderson loop

   aliasing bug

   Alice and Bob

   All hardware sucks, all software sucks.

   all your base are belong to us

   alpha geek

   alpha particles

   alt

   alt bit

   Aluminum Book

   ambimouseterous

   Amiga

   Amiga Persecution Complex

   amp off

   amper

   and there was much rejoicing

   Angband

   angle brackets

   angry fruit salad

   annoybot

   annoyware

   ANSI standard

   ANSI standard pizza

   anti-idiotarianism

   AOL!

   app

   Archimedes

   arena

   arg

   ARMM

   armor-plated

   asbestos

   asbestos cork award

   asbestos longjohns

   ASCII

   ASCII art

   ASCIIbetical order

   astroturfing

   atomic

   attoparsec

   Aunt Tillie

   AUP

   autobogotiphobia

   autoconfiscate

   automagically

   avatar

   awk

:abbrev: /@breev'/, /@brev/, n.

        Common abbreviation for `abbreviation'.

:ABEND: /abend/, /@bend/, n.

        [ABnormal END]

        1. Abnormal termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives
        from an error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but
        seriously mainly by {code grinder}s. Usually capitalized, but may
        appear as `abend'. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is
        called abend because it is what system operators do to the machine
        late on Friday when they want to call it a day, and hence is from
        the German Abend = `Evening'.

        2. [alt.callahans] Absent By Enforced Net Deprivation -- used in the
        subject lines of postings warning friends of an imminent loss of
        Internet access. (This can be because of computer downtime, loss of
        provider, moving or illness.) Variants of this also appear: ABVND =
        `Absent By Voluntary Net Deprivation' and ABSEND = `Absent By
        Self-Enforced Net Deprivation' have been sighted.

:accumulator: n. obs.

        1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for
        register is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been
        around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under
        discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of
        microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for
        arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive from historical use of
        the term accumulator (and not, actually, from `arithmetic').
        Confusingly, though, an `A' register name prefix may also stand for
        address, as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family.

        2. A register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to
        addressing or a loop index), especially one being used to accumulate
        a sum or count of many items. This use is in context of a particular
        routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an
        accumulator."

        3. One's in-basket (esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1).
        "You want this reviewed? Sure, just put it in the accumulator." (See
        {stack}.)

:ACK: /ak/, interj.

        1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used
        to register one's presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate
        response to {ping} or {ENQ}.

        2. [from the comic strip Bloom County] An exclamation of surprised
        disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is
        not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following
        exclamation point.

        3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand
        their point (see {NAK}). Thus, for example, you might cut off an
        overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now".

        4. An affirmative. "Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for
        a Linux box?" "ACK!"

        There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
        there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
        reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has gone
        away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}, i.e., "I'm
        not here").

:Acme: n.

        [from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The
        canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional
        gadgetry -- where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists
        who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been
        humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything.
        (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in
        the early 1900s.) Describing some X as an "Acme X" either means
        "This is {insanely great}", or, more likely, "This looks {insanely
        great} on paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself
        in the foot with it." Compare {pistol}.

        This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained
        here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner
        Brothers' series of "Road-runner" cartoons. In these cartoons, the
        famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with,
        trap, and eat the Road-runner. His attempts usually involved one or
        more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices -- rocket jetpacks,
        catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were
        usually delivered in large wooden crates labeled prominently with
        the Acme name -- which, probably not by coincidence, was the trade
        name of a peg bar system for superimposing animation cels used by
        cartoonists since forever. Acme devices invariably malfunctioned in
        improbable and violent ways.

:ad-hockery: /adhok'@ree/, n.

        [Purdue]

        1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert
        systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior
        but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of
        input tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol table can
        make it look as though a program knows how to spell.

        2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input that would
        otherwise cause a program to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are
        dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way.

        Also called ad-hackery, ad-hocity (/ad-hos'@-tee/), ad-crockery. See
        also {ELIZA effect}.

        This is {ad-hockery} in action.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-08-18. The previous one
        is 73-07-29.)

:address harvester: n.

        A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic
        looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are
        benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most,
        unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to
        {spam}. Address harvesters can be foiled by a {teergrube}.

:adger: /aj'r/, vt.

        [UCLA mutant of {nadger}, poss. also from the middle name of an
        infamous {tenured graduate student}] To make a bonehead move with
        consequences that could have been foreseen with even slight mental
        effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
        whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.

:admin: /admin'/, n.

        Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or on-line
        to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common
        constructions on this include sysadmin and site admin (emphasizing
        the administrator's role as a site contact for email and news) or
        newsadmin (focusing specifically on news). Compare {postmaster},
        {sysop}, {system mangler}.

:ADVENT: /ad'vent/, n.

        The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will
        Crowther on the {PDP-10} in the mid-1970s as an attempt at
        computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
        puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had
        been one of the authors of {INTERCAL}.) Now better known as
        Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the {TOPS-10} operating
        system permitted only six-letter filenames in uppercase. See also
        {vadding}, {Zork}, and {Infocom}.

        Figure 1. Screen shot of the original ADVENT game

Orange River Chamber
You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of
orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west
sidesof the chamber.

A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.

>drop rod
Dropped.

>take bird
You catch the bird in the wicker cage.

>take rod
Taken.

>w
At Top of Small Pit
At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage ends
here except for a small crack leading on.

Rough stone steps lead down the pit.

>down

In Hall of Mists
You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west.
There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads
downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almost
as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top
of a dome behind you.

Rough stone steps lead up the dome.

        This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in
        text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
        become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars the
        way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of
        twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of
        twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' {xyzzy} and
        {plugh} also derive from this game.

        Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth
        & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a Colossal Cave and a
        Bedquilt as in the game, and the Y2 that also turns up is cavers'
        jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.

        ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
        ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z.
        You can also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of
        resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.

:adware: n.

        Software which is free to download and use but includes pop-up
        banner ads somewhere. See also {-ware}.

:AFAIK: //, n.

        [Usenet; common] Abbrev. for "As Far As I Know". There is a variant
        AFAICT "As Far As I Can Tell"; where AFAIK suggests that the writer
        knows his knowledge is limited, AFAICT suggests that he feels his
        knowledge is as complete as anybody else's but that the best
        available knowledge does not support firm conclusions.

:AFJ: //, n.

        Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate April
        Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet and
        Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is
        the only seasonal holiday consistently marked by customary
        observances on Internet and other hacker networks.

:AFK:

        [MUD] Abbrev. for "Away From Keyboard". Used to notify others that
        you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. "Let's not go kill
        that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone call". Often
        MUDs will have a command to politely inform others of your absence
        when they try to talk with you. The term is not restricted to MUDs,
        however, and has become common in many chat situations, from IRC to
        Unix talk.

:AI: /AI/, n.

        Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so common that the full
        form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.

:AI-complete: /AI k@mpleet'/, adj.

        [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with NP-complete (see {NP-})] Used to
        describe problems or subproblems in AI, to indicate that the
        solution presupposes a solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is,
        the synthesis of a human-level intelligence). A problem that is
        AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard.

        Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem' (building
        a system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural Language
        Problem' (building a system that can understand and speak a natural
        language as well as a human). These may appear to be modular, but
        all attempts so far (2003) to solve them have foundered on the
        amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to
        require. See also {gedanken}.

:airplane rule: n.

        "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine
        airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine
        airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule
        that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued
        that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs
        in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good
        basket. See also {KISS Principle}, {elegant}.

:Alderson loop: n.

        [Intel] A special version of an {infinite loop} where there is an
        exit condition available, but inaccessible in the current
        implementation of the code. Typically this is created while
        debugging user interface code. An example would be when there is a
        menu stating, "Select 1-3 or 9 to quit" and 9 is not allowed by the
        function that takes the selection from the user.

        This term received its name from a programmer who had coded a modal
        message box in MSAccess with no Ok or Cancel buttons, thereby
        disabling the entire program whenever the box came up. The message
        box had the proper code for dismissal and even was set up so that
        when the non-existent Ok button was pressed the proper code would be
        called.

:aliasing bug: n.

        A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that
        does dynamic allocation, esp. via malloc(3) or equivalent. If
        several pointers address (are aliases for) a given hunk of storage,
        it may happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus
        moved) through one alias and then referenced through another, which
        may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on
        the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}.
        Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated
        core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which
        employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer
        bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on
        core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.

        Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with C
        programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
        Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.

:Alice and Bob: n.

        The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of
        cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say something
        like: "A communicates with someone who claims to be B, So to be
        sure, A tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends to B a
        random number X. B then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and
        sends Y back to A" Because this sort of thing is quite hard to
        follow, theorists stopped using the unadorned letters A and B to
        represent the main players and started calling them Alice and Bob.
        So now we say "Alice communicates with someone claiming to be Bob,
        and to be sure, Alice tests that Bob knows a secret number K. Alice
        sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then forms Y by encrypting X
        under key K and sends Y back to Alice". A whole mythology rapidly
        grew up around the metasyntactic names; see
        http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html.

        In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text Applied
        Cryptography (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-11709-9)
        he introduced a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice and Bob.
        Others include Carol (a participant in three- and four-party
        protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an
        eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active attacker), Trent (a
        trusted arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor
        (a verifier). These names for roles are either already standard or,
        given the wide popularity of the book, may be expected to quickly
        become so.

:All hardware sucks, all software sucks.: prov.

        [from {scary devil monastery}] A general recognition of the
        fallibility of any computer system, ritually intoned as an attempt
        to quell incipient {holy wars}. It is a common response to any sort
        of {bigot}. When discussing {Wintel} systems, however, it is often
        snidely appended with, `but some suck more than others.'

:all your base are belong to us:

        A declaration of victory or superiority. The phrase stems from a
        1991 adaptation of Toaplan's "Zero Wing" shoot-'em-up arcade game
        for the Sega Genesis game console. A brief introduction was added to
        the opening screen, and it has what many consider to be the worst
        Japanese-to-English translation in video game history. The
        introduction shows the bridge of a starship in chaos as a Borg-like
        figure named CATS materializes and says, "How are you gentlemen!!
        All your base are belong to us." [sic] In 2001, this amusing
        mistranslation spread virally through the Internet, bringing with it
        a slew of JPEGs and a movie of hacked photographs, each showing a
        street sign, store front, package label, etc. hacked to read "All
        your base are belong to us" or one of the other many supremely dopey
        lines from the game (such as "Somebody set up usthe bomb!!!" or
        "What happen?"). When these phrases are used properly, the overall
        effect is both screamingly funny and somewhat chilling, reminiscent
        of the B movie "They Live".

        The original has been generalized to "All your X are belong to us",
        where X is filled in to connote a sinister takeover of some sort.
        Thus, "When Joe signed up for his new job at Yoyodyne, he had to
        sign a draconian NDA. It basically said: All your code are belong to
        us." Has many of the connotations of "Resistance is futile; you will
        be assimilated" (see {Borg}). Considered silly, and most likely to
        be used by the type of person that finds {Jeff K.} hilarious.

:alpha geek: n.

        [from animal ethologists' alpha male] The most technically
        accomplished or skillful person in some implied context. "Ask Larry,
        he's the alpha geek here."

:alpha particles: n.

        See {bit rot}.

:alt: /awlt/

        1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or {clone} keyboard; see {bucky
        bits}, sense 2 (though typical PC usage does not simply set the 0200
        bit).

        2. n. The option key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually
        reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see
        also {feature key}, which is sometimes incorrectly called `alt').

        3. The alt hierarchy on Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by
        users without a formal vote and approval procedure. There is a myth,
        not entirely implausible, that alt is acronymic for "anarchists,
        lunatics, and terrorists"; but in fact it is simply short for
        "alternative".

        4. n.,obs. Rare alternate name for the ASCII ESC character (ASCII
        0011011). This use, derives, with the alt key itself, from archaic
        PDP-10 operating systems, especially {ITS}.

:alt bit: /awlt bit/, adj.

        See {meta bit}.

:Aluminum Book: n.

        [MIT] Common LISP: The Language, by Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital
        Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990). Note that due to a
        technical screwup some printings of the second edition are actually
        of a color the author describes succinctly as "yucky green". See
        also {book titles}.

:ambimouseterous: /amb@mows'terus/, /amb@mowstrus/, adj

        [modeled on ambidextrous] Able to use a mouse with either hand.

:Amiga: n

        A series of personal computer models originally sold by Commodore,
        based on 680x0 processors, custom support chips and an operating
        system that combined some of the best features of Macintosh and Unix
        with compatibility with neither.

        The Amiga was released just as the personal computing world
        standardized on IBM-PC clones. This prevented it from gaining
        serious market share, despite the fact that the first Amigas had a
        substantial technological lead on the IBM XTs of the time. Instead,
        it acquired a small but zealous population of enthusiastic hackers
        who dreamt of one day unseating the clones (see {Amiga Persecution
        Complex}). The traits of this culture are both spoofed and
        illuminated in The BLAZE Humor Viewer. The strength of the Amiga
        platform seeded a small industry of companies building software and
        hardware for the platform, especially in graphics and video
        applications (see {video toaster}).

        Due to spectacular mismanagement, Commodore did hardly any R&D,
        allowing the competition to close Amiga's technological lead. After
        Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 the technology passed through
        several hands, none of whom did much with it. However, the Amiga is
        still being produced in Europe under license and has a substantial
        number of fans, which will probably extend the platform's life
        considerably.

:Amiga Persecution Complex: n.

        The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of
        {bigot}, those who believe that the marginality of their preferred
        machine is the result of some kind of industry-wide conspiracy (for
        without a conspiracy of some kind, the eminent superiority of their
        beloved shining jewel of a platform would obviously win over all,
        market pressures be damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging
        in {flame war}s and calling for boycotts and mailbombings. Amiga
        Persecution Complex is by no means limited to Amiga users; NeXT,
        {NeWS}, {OS/2}, Macintosh, {LISP}, and {GNU} users are also common
        victims. {Linux} users used to display symptoms very frequently
        before Linux started winning; some still do. See also {newbie},
        {troll}, {holy wars}, {weenie}, {Get a life!}.

:amp off: vt.

        [Purdue] To run in {background}. From the Unix shell `&' operator.

:amper: n.

        Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&', ASCII
        0100110) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:and there was much rejoicing:

        [from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.]

        Acknowledgement of a notable accomplishment. Something long-awaited,
        widely desired, possibly unexpected but secretly wished-for, with a
        suggestion that something about the problem (and perhaps the steps
        necessary to make it go away) was deeply disturbing to hacker
        sensibilities.

        In person, the phrase is almost invariably pronounced with the same
        portentious intonation as the movie. The customary in-person
        (approving) response is a weak and halfhearted "Yaaaay...", with one
        index finger raised like a flag and moved in a small circle. The
        reason for this, like most of the Monty Python oeuvre, cannot easily
        be explained outside its original context.

        Example: "changelog entry #436: with the foo driver brain damage
        taken care of, finally obsoleted BROKEN_EVIL_KLUDGE. Removed from
        source tree. (And there was much rejoicing)."

:Angband: n., /ang'band/

        Like {nethack}, {moria}, and {rogue}, one of the large freely
        distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available
        for a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from
        Tolkien's Pits of Angband (compare {elder days}, {elvish}). Has been
        described as "Moria on steroids"; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of
        the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be
        hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work.
        There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is
        probably the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key
        that does not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will
        display "Type ? for help" 50% of the time. The other 50% of the
        time, random error messages including "An error has occurred because
        an error of type 42 has occurred" and "Windows 95 uninstalled
        successfully" will be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to
        kill Santa Claus (who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot
        of friends), "Bull Gates", and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful;
        Barney has a nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband
        home page at http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and a zangband one at
        http://www.zangband.org/. See also {Random Number God}.

:angle brackets: n.

        Either of the characters < (ASCII 0111100) and > (ASCII 0111110)
        (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs). Typographers in the {Real
        World} use angle brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the
        ISO lang * and rang * characters), or significantly smaller (single
        or double guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs. See
        {broket}, {ASCII}.

:angry fruit salad: n.

        A bad visual-interface design that uses too many colors. (This term
        derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned
        fruit salad.) Too often one sees similar effects from interface
        designers using color window systems such as {X}; there is a
        tendency to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting
        but uncomfortable for long-term use.

:annoybot: /@noybot/, n.

        [IRC] See {bot}.

:annoyware: n.

        A type of {shareware} that frequently disrupts normal program
        operation to display requests for payment to the author in return
        for the ability to disable the request messages. (Also called
        nagware) The requests generally require user action to acknowledge
        the message before normal operation is resumed and are often tied to
        the most frequently used features of the software. See also
        {careware}, {charityware}, {crippleware}, {freeware}, {FRS},
        {guiltware}, {postcardware}, and {-ware}; compare {payware}.

:ANSI standard: /an'see stand@rd/

        The ANSI standard usage of ANSI standard refers to any practice
        which is typical or broadly done. It's most appropriately applied to
        things that everyone does that are not quite regulation. For
        example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser printer cartridge to get
        extra life from it, or the ANSI standard word tripling in names of
        usenet alt groups.

        This usage derives from the American National Standards Institute.
        ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards (ISO),
        standardized the C programming language (see {K&R}, {Classic C}),
        and promulgates many other important software standards.

:ANSI standard pizza: /an'see stand@rd peetz@/

        [CMU] Pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most
        pizzas ordered by CMU hackers during some period leading up to
        mid-1990 were of that flavor. See also {rotary debugger}; compare
        {ISO standard cup of tea}.

:anti-idiotarianism: n.

        [very common] Opposition to idiots of all political stripes. First
        coined in the {blog} named Little Green Footballs as part of a post
        expressing disgust with inane responses to post-9/11 Islamic
        terrorism. Anti-idiotarian wrath has focused on Islamic terrorists
        and their sympathizers in the Western political left, but also
        routinely excoriated right-wing politicians backing repressive
        'anti-terror` legislation and Christian religious figures who (in
        the blogosphere's view of the matter) have descended nearly to the
        level of jihad themselves.

:AOL!: n.

        [Usenet] Common synonym for "Me, too!" alluding to the legendary
        propensity of America Online users to utter contentless "Me, too!"
        postings. The number of exclamation points following varies from
        zero to five or so. The pseudo-HTML

          <AOL>Me, too!</AOL>

        is also frequently seen. See also {September that never ended}.

:app: /ap/, n.

        Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program.
        Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to
        create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers
        tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus,
        in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors,
        games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those
        to be apps. (Broadly, an app is often a self-contained environment
        for performing some well-defined task such as `word processing';
        hackers tend to prefer more general-purpose tools.) See {killer
        app}; oppose {tool}, {operating system}.

:Archimedes:

        The world's first RISC microcomputer, available only in the British
        Commonwealth and europe. Built in 1987 in Great Britain by Acorn
        Computers, it was legendary for its use of the ARM-2 microprocessor
        as a CPU. Many a novice hacker in the Commonwealth first learnt his
        or her skills on the Archimedes, since it was specifically designed
        for use in schools and educational institutions. Owners of
        Archimedes machines are often still treated with awe and reverence.
        Familiarly, "archi".

:arena: n.

        [common; Unix] The area of memory attached to a process by brk(2)
        and sbrk(2) and used by malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So named from
        a malloc: corrupt arena message emitted when some early versions
        detected an impossible value in the free block list. See {overrun
        screw}, {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the
        stack}.

:arg: /arg/, n.

        Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to
        have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine
        function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1
        or 2 args." Compare {param}, {parm}, {var}.

:ARMM: n.

        [acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet
        {cancelbot} created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was
        intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites.
        Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings
        triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages!
        Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster
        of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March
        30, 1993 and proceeded to {spam} news.admin.policy with a recursive
        explosion of over 200 messages.

        ARMM's bug produced a recursive {cascade} of messages each of which
        mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers
        of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each
        header took up several screens and each message ID and subject line
        got longer and longer and longer.

        Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
        messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying
        line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM
        debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term
        {despew}), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary
        example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and
        incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the
        subject is archived here. Compare {Great Worm}; {sorcerer's
        apprentice mode}. See also {software laser}, {network meltdown}.

:armor-plated: n.

        Syn. for {bulletproof}.

:asbestos: adj.

        [common] Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from
        {flame}s; also in other highly {flame}-suggestive usages. See, for
        example, {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}.

:asbestos cork award: n.

        Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer} so consistently
        obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed
        posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the
        asbestos cork award. (Any reader in doubt as to the intended
        application of the cork should consult the etymology under {flame}.)
        Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the
        heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity -- but
        there is no agreement on which few.

:asbestos longjohns: n.

        Notional garments donned by {Usenet} posters just before emitting a
        remark they expect will elicit {flamage}. This is the most common of
        the {asbestos} coinages. Also asbestos underwear, asbestos overcoat,
        etc.

:ASCII: /as'kee/, n.

        [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information
        Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character
        set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7
        bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early
        drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) used fewer. This change allowed
        the inclusion of lowercase letters -- a major {win} -- but it did
        not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used
        in English (such as the German sharp-S . or the ae-ligature  which
        is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though.
        It could be much worse. See {EBCDIC} to understand how. A history of
        ASCII and its ancestors is at
        http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html.

        Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
        humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
        characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
        shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names -- some
        formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
        characters are collected here. See also individual entries for
        {bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat},
        {twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.

        This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII
        pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
        character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
        common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
        names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
        are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the particularly
        silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. The abbreviations "l/r" and
        "o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close" respectively. Ordinary
        parentheticals provide some usage information.

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        |     | Common: {bang} ; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat;       |
        | !   | <exclamation mark>. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss;  |
        |     | boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot];         |
        |     | soldier, control.                                          |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark;           |
        | "   | double-glitch; snakebite; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>;   |
        |     | dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime.                         |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp;       |
        | #   | {crunch} ; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch;            |
        |     | octothorpe; flash; <square>, pig-pen; tictactoe;           |
        |     | scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat} .                        |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol;      |
        | $   | buck; cash; bling; string (from BASIC); escape (when used  |
        |     | as the echo of ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].       |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | %   | Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:        |
        |     | [double-oh-seven].                                         |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: <ampersand>; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare:      |
        | &   | address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand;        |
        |     | bitand; background (from sh(1) ); pretzel. [INTERCAL       |
        |     | called this ampersand ; what could be sillier?]            |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime;    |
        | '   | glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation |
        |     | mark>; <acute accent>.                                     |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right;            |
        |     | open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r  |
        | ( ) | parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen;  |
        |     | <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r      |
        |     | round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r  |
        |     | ear.                                                       |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: star; [ {splat} ]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard;     |
        | *   | gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob    |
        |     | (see {glob} ); {Nathan Hale} .                             |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | +   | Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].          |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | ,   | Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].                  |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | -   | Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option;     |
        |     | dak; bithorpe.                                             |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | .   | Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix |
        |     | point; full stop; [spot].                                  |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | /   | Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare:       |
        |     | diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].            |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | :   | Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].                   |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | ;   | Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],         |
        |     | pit-thwong.                                                |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle |
        | < > | bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read      |
        |     | from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out;      |
        |     | crunch/zap (all from UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle].  |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | =   | Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe;         |
        |     | [half-mesh].                                               |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: query; <question mark>; {ques} . Rare: quiz;       |
        | ?   | whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook;         |
        |     | hunchback.                                                 |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;   |
        | @   | [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;      |
        |     | <commercial at>.                                           |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | V   | Rare: [book].                                              |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing  |
        | [ ] | bracket>; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U     |
        |     | turn/U turn back].                                         |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX);      |
        | \   | reverse slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash;    |
        |     | <reverse slant>; reversed virgule; [backslat].             |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare:  |
        | ^   | xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the |
        |     | power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal).                     |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | _   | Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare:    |
        |     | score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].                        |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open     |
        | `   | quote; <grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime;             |
        |     | [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back   |
        |     | glitch; push; <opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote. |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly   |
        |     | bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing   |
        | { } | brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit;  |
        |     | l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet]. A balanced pair of     |
        |     | these may be called curlies .                              |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:  |
        | |   | <vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from |
        |     | UNIX); [spike].                                            |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | ~   | Common: <tilde>; squiggle; {twiddle} ; not. Rare: approx;  |
        |     | wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].                |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        The pronunciation of # as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad
        idea; {Commonwealth Hackish} has its own, rather more apposite use
        of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the  happens to
        replace #; thus Britishers sometimes call # on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard
        `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives
        from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a # suffix to tag
        pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually
        pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over
        the correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which
        has led to the {ha ha only serious} suggestion that it be pronounced
        "shibboleth" (see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh).

        The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for underline
        are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which
        had these graphics in those character positions rather than the
        modern punctuation characters.

        The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign (?1) is not quite the same
        as tilde ~ in typeset material, but the ASCII tilde serves for both
        (compare {angle brackets}).

        Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The #, $, >, and &
        characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different
        communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for
        hexadecimal constants (in particular, # in many
        assembler-programming cultures, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas
        Instruments, and & on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80
        machines). See also {splat}.

        The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the
        world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits
        look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of
        international networks continues to increase (see {software rot}).
        Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to embody the
        assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that
        characters have 7 bits; this is a major irritant to people who want
        to use a character set suited to their own languages. Perversely,
        though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating `national'
        character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a smaller
        subset common to all those in use.

:ASCII art: n.

        The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set
        (mainly |, -, /, \, and +). Also known as character graphics or
        ASCII graphics; see also {boxology}. Here is a serious example:

            o----)||(--+--|<----+   +---------o + D O
              L  )||(  |        |   |             C U
            A I  )||(  +-->|-+  |   +-\/\/-+--o -   T
            C N  )||(        |  |   |      |        P
              E  )||(  +-->|-+--)---+--|(--+-o      U
                 )||(  |        |          | GND    T
            o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+

            A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit
            feeding a capacitor input filter circuit

        And here are some very silly examples:

          |\/\/\/|     ____/|              ___    |\_/|    ___
          |      |     \ o.O|   ACK!      /   \_  |` '|  _/   \
          |      |      =(_)=  THPHTH!   /      \/     \/      \
          | (o)(o)        U             /                       \
          C      _)  (__)                \/\/\/\  _____  /\/\/\/
          | ,___|    (oo)                       \/     \/
          |   /       \/-------\         U                  (__)
         /____\        ||     | \    /---V  `v'-            oo )
        /      \       ||---W||  *  * |--|   || |`.         |_/\

                       //-o-\\
                ____---=======---____
            ====___\   /.. ..\   /___====      Klingons rule OK!
          //        ---\__O__/---        \\
          \_\                           /_/

        There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the
        standard character names in the fashion of a rebus.

        +--------------------------------------------------------+
        |      ^^^^^^^^^^^^                                      |
        | ^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^                       |
        |                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
        |        ^^^^^^^         B       ^^^^^^^^^               |
        |  ^^^^^^^^^          ^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^      |
        +--------------------------------------------------------+
                     " A Bee in the Carrot Patch "

        Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire
        flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are
        reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:

                 (__)              (__)              (__)
                 (\/)              ($$)              (**)
          /-------\/        /-------\/        /-------\/
         / | 666 ||        / |=====||        / |     ||
        *  ||----||       *  ||----||       *  ||----||
           ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~
        Satanic cow    This cow is a Yuppie   Cow in love

        Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting an
        Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:

                                      .-.
                                     /___\
                                     |___|
                                     |]_[|
                                     / I \
                                  JL/  |  \JL
       .-.                    i   ()   |   ()   i                    .-.
       |_|     .^.           /_\  LJ=======LJ  /_\           .^.     |_|
    ._/___\._./___\_._._._._.L_J_/.-.     .-.\_L_J._._._._._/___\._./___\._._._
           ., |-,-| .,       L_J  |_| [I] |_|  L_J       ., |-,-| .,        .,
           JL |-O-| JL       L_J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L_J       JL |-O-| JL        JL
    IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII|_|=======H=======|_|IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII_HH_
    -------[]-------[]-------[_]----\.=I=./----[_]-------[]-------[]--------[]-
     _/\_  ||\\_I_//||  _/\_ [_] []_/_L_J_\_[] [_] _/\_  ||\\_I_//||  _/\_  ||\
     |__|  ||=/_|_\=||  |__|_|_|   _L_L_J_J_   |_|_|__|  ||=/_|_\=||  |__|  ||-
     |__|  |||__|__|||  |__[___]__--__===__--__[___]__|  |||__|__|||  |__|  |||
    IIIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIL___J__II__|_|__II__L___JIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIIII[_]
     \_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_[_]\II/[]\_\I/_/[]\II/[_]\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_/ [_]
    ./   \.L_J/   \L_J./   L_JI  I[]/     \[]I  IL_J    \.L_J/   \L_J./   \.L_J
    |     |L_J|   |L_J|    L_J|  |[]|     |[]|  |L_J     |L_J|   |L_J|     |L_J
    |_____JL_JL___JL_JL____|-||  |[]|     |[]|  ||-|_____JL_JL___JL_JL_____JL_J

        The next step beyond static tableaux in ASCII art is ASCII
        animation. There are not many large examples of this; perhaps the
        best known is the ASCII animation of the original Star Wars movie at
        http://www.asciimation.co.nz/.

        There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art, devoted to this genre; however,
        see also {warlording}.

:ASCIIbetical order: /as'keebe't@kl ordr/, adj.,n.

        Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather
        than alphabetical order. This lexicon is sorted in something close
        to ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and entries beginning
        with non-alphabetic characters moved to the beginning.

:astroturfing: n.

        1. The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular
        movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant
        `concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of
        grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group
        (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term). See also {sock puppet},
        {tentacle}.

        2. What an individual posting to a public forum under an assumed
        name is said to be doing.

        This term became common among hackers after it came to light in
        early 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to
        forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against
        the company. The maneuver backfired horribly, angering a number of
        state attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with
        plans to join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending
        Microsoft on the net for the accusation "You're just astroturfing!".

:atomic: adj.

        [from Gk. atomos, indivisible]

        1. Indivisible; cannot be split up. For example, an instruction may
        be said to do several things `atomically', i.e., all the things are
        done immediately, and there is no chance of the instruction being
        half-completed or of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey
        that an operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. "This routine
        locks the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically."

        2. [primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not
        at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error prevents a
        partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion, it
        must be "backed out", as the database must not be left in an
        inconsistent state.

        Computer usage, in either of the above senses, has none of the
        connotations that `atomic' has in mainstream English (i.e. of
        particles of matter, nuclear explosions etc.).

:attoparsec: n.

        About an inch. atto- is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by
        10^-18. A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an
        attoparsec is thus 3.26  10^-18 light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus,
        1 attoparsec/{microfortnight} equals about 1 inch/sec). This unit is
        reported to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among
        hackers in the U.K. See {micro-}.

:Aunt Tillie: n.

        [linux-kernel mailing list] The archetypal non-technical user, one's
        elderly and scatterbrained maiden aunt. Invoked in discussions of
        usability for people who are not hackers and geeks; one sees
        references to the "Aunt Tillie test".

:AUP: /AUP/

        Abbreviation, "Acceptable Use Policy". The policy of a given ISP
        which sets out what the ISP considers to be (un)acceptable uses of
        its Internet resources.

:autobogotiphobia: /aw'tohbohgot`@fohbee@/

        n. See {bogotify}.

:autoconfiscate:

        To set up or modify a source-code {distribution} so that it
        configures and builds using the GNU project's
        autoconf/automake/libtools suite. Among open-source hackers, a mere
        running binary of a program is not considered a full release; what's
        interesting is a source tree that can be built into binaries using
        standard tools. Since the mid-1990s, autoconf and friends been the
        standard way to adapt a distribution for portability so that it can
        be built on multiple operating systems without change.

:automagically: /awtohmaj'iklee/, adv.

        Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because
        it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial),
        the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See {magic}. "The
        C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to
        produce an executable."

        This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon
        and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in
        advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late
        1940s.

:avatar: n.

        [in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god]

        1. Among people working on virtual reality and {cyberspace}
        interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user in a
        shared virtual reality. The term is sometimes used on {MUD}s.

        2. [CMU, Tektronix] {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a few Unix
        machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar'
        rather than `root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who
        found the terms root and superuser unimaginative, and thought
        `avatar' might better impress people with the responsibility they
        were accepting.

:awk: /awk/

        1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text
        data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan
        (the name derives from their initials). It is characterized by
        C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and
        declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text
        processing. See also {Perl}.

        2. n. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through
        normal {regexp} facilities (for example, one containing a
        {newline}).

        3. vt. To process data using awk(1).

  B

   B1FF

   B5

   back door

   backbone cabal

   backbone site

   backgammon

   background

   backreference

   backronym

   backward combatability

   BAD

   Bad and Wrong

   Bad Thing

   bag on the side

   bagbiter

   bagbiting

   baggy pantsing

   balloonian variable

   bamf

   banana problem

   bandwidth

   bang

   bang on

   bang path

   banner

   banner ad

   banner site

   bar

   bare metal

   barf

   barfmail

   barfulation

   barfulous

   barn

   barney

   baroque

   BASIC

   batbelt

   batch

   bathtub curve

   Batman factor

   baud

   baz

   bazaar

   bboard

   BBS

   BCPL

   BDFL

   beam

   beanie key

   beep

   Befunge

   beige toaster

   bells and whistles

   bells whistles and gongs

   benchmark

   Berkeley Quality Software

   Berzerkeley

   beta

   BFI

   BI

   bible

   BiCapitalization

   biff

   big iron

   Big Red Switch

   Big Room

   big win

   big-endian

   bignum

   bigot

   bikeshedding

   binary four

   bit

   bit bang

   bit bashing

   bit bucket

   bit decay

   bit rot

   bit twiddling

   bit-paired keyboard

   bitblt

   bits

   bitty box

   bixie

   black art

   black hat

   black hole

   black magic

   Black Screen of Death

   blammo

   blargh

   blast

   blat

   bletch

   bletcherous

   blinkenlights

   blit

   blitter

   blivet

   bloatware

   BLOB

   block

   blog

   Bloggs Family

   blogosphere

   blogrolling

   blow an EPROM

   blow away

   blow out

   blow past

   blow up

   BLT

   blue box

   Blue Glue

   blue goo

   Blue Screen of Death

   blue wire

   blurgle

   BNF

   boa

   board

   boat anchor

   bob

   bodge

   BOF

   BOFH

   bogo-sort

   bogometer

   BogoMIPS

   bogon

   bogon filter

   bogon flux

   bogosity

   bogotify

   bogue out

   bogus

   Bohr bug

   boink

   bomb

   bondage-and-discipline language

   bonk/oif

   book titles

   boot

   Borg

   borken

   bot

   bottom feeder

   bottom-post

   bottom-up implementation

   bounce

   bounce message

   boustrophedon

   box

   boxed comments

   boxen

   boxology

   bozotic

   brain dump

   brain fart

   brain-damaged

   brain-dead

   braino

   brainwidth

   bread crumbs

   break

   break-even point

   breath-of-life packet

   breedle

   Breidbart Index

   brick

   bricktext

   bring X to its knees

   brittle

   broadcast storm

   broken

   broken arrow

   broken-ring network

   BrokenWindows

   broket

   Brooks's Law

   brown-paper-bag bug

   browser

   BRS

   brute force

   brute force and ignorance

   BSD

   BSOD

   BUAF

   BUAG

   bubble sort

   bucky bits

   buffer chuck

   buffer overflow

   bug

   bug-compatible

   bug-for-bug compatible

   bug-of-the-month club

   bulletproof

   bullschildt

   bump

   burble

   buried treasure

   burn a CD

   burn-in period

   burst page

   busy-wait

   buzz

   buzzword-compliant

   BWQ

   by hand

   byte

   byte sex

   bytesexual

   Bzzzt! Wrong.

:B1FF: /bif/, BIFF, n.

        The most famous {pseudo}, and the prototypical {newbie}. Articles
        from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with
        bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ
        KL DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE
        THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode}
        abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled sig}),
        and unbounded naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's
        VIC-20. B1FF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come
        from a variety of sites. However, BITNET seems to be the most
        frequent origin. The theory that B1FF is a denizen of BITNET is
        supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address:
        B1FF@BIT.NET.

        [1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was
        originally created by Joe Talmadge <jat@cup.hp.com>, also the author
        of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible". The BIFF
        filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted
        BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the
        amusement of the net at large. See also {Jeff K.} --ESR]

:B5: //

        [common] Abbreviation for "Babylon 5", a science-fiction TV series
        as revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.

:back door: n.

        [common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in
        place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is
        not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out
        of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field
        service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn.
        {trap door}; may also be called a wormhole. See also {iron box},
        {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}.

        Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
        anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken
        Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the
        existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have
        qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time.
        In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize
        when the login command was being recompiled and insert some code
        recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the
        system whether or not an account had been created for him.

        Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the
        source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to
        recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson
        also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was
        compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled
        compiler the code to insert into the recompiled login the code to
        allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself
        and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done
        this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the
        original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the
        back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.

        The Turing lecture that reported this truly moby hack was later
        published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", Communications of the
        ACM 27, 8 (August 1984), pp. 761--763 (text available at
        http://www.acm.org/classics/). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that
        this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear
        in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the
        crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two
        separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out
        of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one
        late-night login across the network by someone using the login name
        "kt".

:backbone cabal: n.

        A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the {Great
        Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {Usenet} during most of the
        1980s. During most of its lifetime, the Cabal (as it was sometimes
        capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost
        obligatory for anyone privy to their secrets to respond "There is no
        Cabal" whenever the existence or activities of the group were
        speculated on in public.

        The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery. Even a
        decade after the cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late 1988
        following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or
        claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only gone
        deeper underground with its power intact.

        This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about
        various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking
        over the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later satirized in
        ways that took on a life of their own. See {Eric Conspiracy} for one
        example. Part of the background for this kind of humor is that many
        hackers cultivate a fondness for conspiracy theory considered as a
        kind of surrealist art; see the bibliography entry on Illuminatus!
        for the novel that launched this trend.

        See {NANA} for the subsequent history of "the Cabal".

:backbone site: n.,obs.

        Formerly, a key Usenet and email site, one that processes a large
        amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of
        any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps. Notable
        backbone sites as of early 1993, when this sense of the term was
        beginning to pass out of general use due to wide availability of
        cheap Internet connections, included uunet and the mail machines at
        Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, {DEC}'s Western Research
        Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas.
        Compare {leaf site}.

        [2001 update: This term has passed into history. The UUCP network
        world that gave it meaning is gone; everyone is on the Internet now
        and network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today
        one might see references to a "backbone router" instead --ESR]

:backgammon:

        See {bignum} (sense 3), {moby} (sense 4), and {pseudoprime}.

:background: n.,adj.,vt.

        [common] To do a task in background is to do it whenever
        {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and
        to background something means to relegate it to a lower priority.
        "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on
        the graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies
        ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in
        contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign neglect
        until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use
        the term for processing that they have queued up for their
        unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon
        encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare {amp off},
        {slopsucker}.

        Technically, a task running in background is detached from the
        terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower
        priority); oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this term is primarily
        associated with {Unix}, but it appears to have been first used in
        this sense on OS/360.

:backreference: n.

        1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was
        matched within grouping parentheses

        2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched text.

        3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has
        been seen or discussed before. "When you said `she' just now, who
        were you backreferencing?"

:backronym: n.

        [portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym
        that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what
        linguists call back formation. Examples are given under {recursive
        acronym} (Cygnus), {Acme}, and {mung}. Discovering backronyms is a
        common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare {retcon}.

:backward combatability: /bak'w@rd k@mbat'@bil'@tee/, n.

        [CMU, Tektronix: from backward compatibility] A property of hardware
        or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts,
        etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of `new and improved'
        protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not
        merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new
        versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering
        instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous
        effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A
        backwards compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions
        to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major
        changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing
        can lead to extreme {software bloat}. See also {flag day}.

:BAD: /BAD/, adj.

        [IBM: acronym, "Broken As Designed"] Said of a program that is
        {bogus} because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of
        bugginess. See {working as designed}.

:Bad and Wrong: adj.

        [Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and
        wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used
        by contrast with, three less common terms -- Bad and Right (a
        kludge, something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown
        GUI or other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right.
        These terms entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been
        imported from elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the
        emphatic form "Evil and Bad and Wrong" (abbreviated EBW) is reported
        from there. There are standard abbreviations: they start with B&R, a
        typo for "Bad and Wrong". Consequently, B&W is actually "Bad and
        Right", G&R = "Good and Wrong", and G&W = "Good and Right". Compare
        {evil and rude}, {Good Thing}, {Bad Thing}.

:Bad Thing: n.

        [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the
        1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That,
        but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] Something
        that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term
        is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the DSL links with
        bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing". Oppose {Good Thing}. British
        correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob.
        therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book
        referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good
        Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom
        on the British side of the pond. It is very common among American
        hackers, but not in mainstream usage in the U.S. Compare {Bad and
        Wrong}.

:bag on the side: n.

        [prob. originally related to a colostomy bag] An extension to an
        established hack that is supposed to add some functionality to the
        original. Usually derogatory, implying that the original was being
        overextended and should have been thrown away, and the new product
        is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also v. phrase, "to hang a bag on
        the side [of]". "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C ...." "They
        want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting system."

:bagbiter: /bag'bi:t@r/, n.

        1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work,
        or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text editor won't let
        me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a
        bagbiter!"

        2. A person who has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or
        otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly.
        Synonyms: {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}.

        3. bite the bag vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps
        crashing every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really
        biting the bag."

        The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene,
        possibly referring to a douche bag or the scrotum (we have reports
        of "Bite the douche bag!" being used as a taunt at MIT 1970-1976,
        and we have another report that "Bite the bag!" was in common use at
        least as early as 1965), but in their current usage they have become
        almost completely sanitized.

:bagbiting: adj.

        [MIT; now rare] Having the quality of a {bagbiter}. "This bagbiting
        system won't let me compute the factorial of a negative number."
        Compare {losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, barfucious (under
        {barfulous}) and chomping (under {chomp}).

:baggy pantsing: v.

        [Georgia Tech] A "baggy pantsing" is used to reprimand hackers who
        incautiously leave their terminals unlocked. The affected user will
        come back to find a post from them on internal newsgroups discussing
        exactly how baggy their pants are, an accepted stand-in for
        "unattentive user who left their work unprotected in the clusters".
        A properly-done baggy pantsing is highly mocking and humorous. It is
        considered bad form to post a baggy pantsing to off-campus
        newsgroups or the more technical, serious groups. A particularly
        nice baggy pantsing may be "claimed" by immediately quoting the
        message in full, followed by your {sig block}; this has the added
        benefit of keeping the embarassed victim from being able to delete
        the post. Interesting baggy-pantsings have been done involving
        adding commands to login scripts to repost the message every time
        the unlucky user logs in; Unix boxes on the residential network,
        when cracked, oftentimes have their homepages replaced (after being
        politely backed-up to another file) with a baggy-pants message;
        .plan files are also occasionally targeted. Usage: "Prof. Greenlee
        fell asleep in the Solaris cluster again; we baggy-pantsed him to
        git.cc.class.2430.flame." Compare {derf}.

:balloonian variable: n.

        [Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of boolean
        variable?] Any variable that doesn't actually hold or control state,
        but must nevertheless be declared, checked, or set. A typical
        balloonian variable started out as a flag attached to some
        environment feature that either became obsolete or was planned but
        never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or politics attached to
        same) may require that such a flag be treated as though it were
        {live}.

:bamf: /bamf/

        1. [from X-Men comics; originally "bampf"] interj. Notional sound
        made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's
        vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD}) electronic
        {fora} when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance or exit.

        2. The sound of magical transformation, used in virtual reality
        {fora} like MUDs.

        3. In MUD circles, "bamf" is also used to refer to the act by which
        a MUD server sends a special notification to the MUD client to
        switch its connection to another server ("I'll set up the old site
        to just bamf people over to our new location.").

        4. Used by MUDders on occasion in a more general sense related to
        sense 3, to refer to directing someone to another location or
        resource ("A user was asking about some technobabble so I bamfed
        them to http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/".)

:banana problem: n.

        [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell
        `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when
        to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One
        may say there is a banana problem of an algorithm with poorly
        defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the
        evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also
        {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under
        {HAKMEM}, which describes a banana problem in a {Dissociated Press}
        implementation. Also, see {one-banana problem} for a superficially
        similar but unrelated usage.

:bandwidth: n.

        1. [common] Used by hackers (in a generalization of its technical
        meaning) as the volume of information per unit time that a computer,
        person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing
        graphics, but I missed some of the detail -- not enough bandwidth, I
        guess." Compare {low-bandwidth}; see also {brainwidth}. This
        generalized usage began to go mainstream after the Internet
        population explosion of 1993-1994.

        2. Attention span.

        3. On {Usenet}, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted
        by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste
        of bandwidth.

:bang:

        1. n. Common spoken name for ! (ASCII 0100001), especially when used
        in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In {elder days} this
        was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers
        preferring {excl} or {shriek}; but the spread of Unix has carried
        `bang' with it (esp. via the term {bang path}) and it is now
        certainly the most common spoken name for !. Note that it is used
        exclusively for non-emphatic written !; one would not say
        "Congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but
        if one wanted to specify the exact characters "foo!" one would speak
        "Eff oh oh bang". See {shriek}, {ASCII}.

        2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved
        enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often
        used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately
        after one has been called on it.

:bang on: vt.

        To stress-test a piece of hardware or software: "I banged on the new
        version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once.
        I guess it is ready for release." The term {pound on} is synonymous.

:bang path: n.

        [now historical] An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address
        specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the
        addressee, so called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang}
        sign. Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me
        directs people to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a
        well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through
        the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox.

        In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers
        and Internet became commonplace, people often published compound
        bang addresses using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths
        from several big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent
        might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example:
        ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4!rice!beta!gamma!me}). Bang paths of 8
        to 10 hops were not uncommon. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would
        cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected
        by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would not
        infrequently get lost. See {the network} and {sitename}.

:banner: n.

        1. A top-centered graphic on a web page. Esp. used in {banner ad}.

        2. On interactive software, a first screen containing a logo and/or
        author credits and/or a copyright notice. Similar to {splash
        screen}.

        3. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers (see
        {spool}). Typically includes user or account ID information in very
        large character-graphics capitals. Also called a burst page, because
        it indicates where to burst (tear apart) fanfold paper to separate
        one user's printout from the next.

        4. A similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of
        fan-fold paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as
        Unix's banner({1,6)}.

:banner ad: n.

        Any of the annoying graphical advertisements that span the tops of
        way too many Web pages.

:banner site: n.

        [warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first
        click on several banners and/or subscribe to various `free'
        services, usually generating some form of revenues for the site
        owner, to be able to access the site. More often than not, the
        username/password painfully obtained by clicking on banners and
        subscribing to bogus services or mailing lists turns out to be
        non-working or gives access to a site that always responds busy. See
        {ratio site}, {leech mode}.

:bar: /bar/, n.

        1. [very common] The second {metasyntactic variable}, after {foo}
        and before {baz}. "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR. FOO
        calls BAR...."

        2. Often appended to {foo} to produce {foobar}.

:bare metal: n.

        1. [common] New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and
        delusions as an {operating system}, an {HLL}, or even assembler.
        Commonly used in the phrase programming on the bare metal, which
        refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} needed to create these
        basic tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves
        things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic
        monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers
        that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the
        new machine a real development environment.

        2. "Programming on the bare metal" is also used to describe a style
        of {hand-hacking} that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a
        particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space
        optimization that rely on crocks such as overlapping instructions
        (or, as in the famous case described in The Story of Mel' (in
        Appendix A), interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize
        fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of
        thing has become rare as the relative costs of programming time and
        machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily
        constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems. See
        {Real Programmer}.

:barf: /barf/, n.,v.

        [common; from mainstream slang meaning `vomit']

        1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent
        of the Valspeak "gag me with a spoon". (Like, euwww!) See {bletch}.

        2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit some similar expression of disgust. "I
        showed him my latest hack and he barfed" means only that he
        complained about it, not that he literally vomited.

        3. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable input, perhaps with a
        suitable error message, perhaps not. Examples: "The division
        operation barfs if you try to divide by 0." (That is, the division
        operation checks for an attempt to divide by zero, and if one is
        encountered it causes the operation to fail in some unspecified, but
        generally obvious, manner.) "The text editor barfs if you try to
        read in a new file before writing out the old one."

        See {choke}. In Commonwealth Hackish, barf is generally replaced by
        `puke' or `vom'. {barf} is sometimes also used as a {metasyntactic
        variable}, like {foo} or {bar}.

:barfmail: n.

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

:barfulation: /bar`fyoolay'sh@n/, interj.

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

:barfulous: /bar'fyool@s/, adj.

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

:barn: n.

        [uncommon; prob. from the nuclear military] An unexpectedly large
        quantity of something: a unit of measurement. "Why is /var/adm
        taking up so much space?" "The logs have grown to several barns."
        The source of this is clear: when physicists were first studying
        nuclear interactions, the probability was thought to be proportional
        to the cross-sectional area of the nucleus (this probability is
        still called the cross-section). Upon experimenting, they discovered
        the interactions were far more probable than expected; the nuclei
        were "as big as a barn". The units for cross-sections were
        christened Barns, (10^-24 cm^2) and the book containing
        cross-sections has a picture of a barn on the cover.

:barney: n.

        In Commonwealth hackish, barney is to {fred} (sense #1) as {bar} is
        to {foo}. That is, people who commonly use fred as their first
        metasyntactic variable will often use barney second. The reference
        is, of course, to Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the
        Flintstones cartoons.

:baroque: adj.

        [common] Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive.
        Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the
        connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme
        and not pejorative in itself. In the absence of other, more negative
        descriptions this term suggests that the software is trembling on
        the edge of bad taste but has not quite tipped over into it.
        "Metafont even has features to introduce random variations to its
        letterform output. Now that is baroque!" See also {rococo}.

:BASIC: /bay'sic/, n.

        A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's
        experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many
        years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger
        W. Dijkstra observed in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal
        Perspective that "It is practically impossible to teach good
        programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC:
        as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
        regeneration." This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading
        {lossage} that happens when a language deliberately designed as an
        educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short
        BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing
        anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits
        that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This
        wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so
        common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined
        tens of thousands of potential wizards.

        [1995: Some languages called "BASIC" aren't quite this nasty any
        more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control
        structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR]

        BASIC stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
        Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later {backronym}
        were incorrect.

:batbelt: n.

        Many hackers routinely hang numerous devices such as pagers,
        cell-phones, personal organizers, leatherman multitools, pocket
        knives, flashlights, walkie-talkies, even miniature computers from
        their belts. When many of these devices are worn at once, the
        hacker's belt somewhat resembles Batman's utility belt; hence it is
        referred to as a batbelt.

:batch: adj.

        1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the
        traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches
        on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive
        non-interactive command input are often referred to as batch mode
        switches. A batch file is a series of instructions written to be
        handed to an interactive program running in batch mode.

        2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "I finally sat
        down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I guess
        they'll turn the electricity back on next week..."

        3. batching up: Accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be
        lumped together for greater efficiency. "I'm batching up those
        letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to take to the
        recycling center."

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

:bathtub curve: n.

        Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one
        of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected
        failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to
        near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it
        `tires out'. See also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}.

:Batman factor: n.

        1. An integer number representing the number of items hanging from a
        {batbelt}. In most settings, a Batman factor of more than 3 is not
        acceptable without odd stares and whispering. This encourages the
        hacker in question to choose items for the batbelt carefully to
        avoid awkward social situations, usually amongst non-hackers.

        2. A somewhat more vaguely defined index of contribution to sense 1.
        Devices that are especially obtrusive, such as large, older model
        cell phones, "Pocket" PC devices and walkie talkies are said to have
        a high batman factor. Sleeker devices such as a later-model Palm or
        StarTac phone are prized for their low batman factor and lessened
        obtrusiveness and weight.

:baud: /bawd/, n.

        [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence
        kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical
        meaning is level transitions per second; this coincides with bps
        only for two-level modulation with no framing or stop bits. Most
        hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them.

        Historical note: baud was originally a unit of telegraph signalling
        speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at the November,
        1926 conference of the Comit Consultatif International Des
        Communications Tlgraphiques as an improvement on the then standard
        practice of referring to line speeds in terms of words per minute,
        and named for Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French
        engineer who did a lot of pioneering work in early teleprinters.

:baz: /baz/, n.

        1. [common] The third {metasyntactic variable} "Suppose we have
        three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which calls
        BAZ...." (See also {fum})

        2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this usage the term is often
        drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, producing an effect not unlike the
        bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/.

        3. Occasionally appended to {foo} to produce `foobaz'.

        Earlier versions of this lexicon derived baz as a Stanford
        corruption of {bar}. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the {TMRC}
        lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined TMRC in 1958.
        He says "It came from Pogo. Albert the Alligator, when vexed or
        outraged, would shout `Bazz Fazz!' or `Rowrbazzle!' The club layout
        was said to model the (mythical) New England counties of Rowrfolk
        and Bassex (Rowrbazzle mingled with
        (Norfolk/Suffolk/Middlesex/Essex)."

:bazaar: n.,adj.

        In 1997, after meditating on the success of {Linux} for three years,
        the Jargon File's own editor ESR wrote an analytical paper on hacker
        culture and development models titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
        The main argument of the paper was that {Brooks's Law} is not the
        whole story; given the right social machinery, debugging can be
        efficiently parallelized across large numbers of programmers. The
        title metaphor caught on (see also {cathedral}), and the style of
        development typical in the Linux community is now often referred to
        as the bazaar mode. Its characteristics include releasing code early
        and often, and actively seeking the largest possible pool of peer
        reviewers. After 1998, the evident success of this way of doing
        things became one of the strongest arguments for {open source}.

:bboard: /bee'bord/, n.

        [contraction of `bulletin board']

        1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems running
        on personal micros, less frequently of a Usenet {newsgroup} (in
        fact, use of this term for a newsgroup generally marks one either as
        a {newbie} fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer
        predating Usenet).

        2. At CMU and other colleges with similar facilities, refers to
        campus-wide electronic bulletin boards.

        3. The term physical bboard is sometimes used to refer to an
        old-fashioned, non-electronic cork-and-thumbtack memo board. At CMU,
        it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge.

        In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the name
        of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or `market
        bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read bboards
        may be referred to by name alone, as in (at CMU) "Don't post
        for-sale ads on general".

:BBS: /BBS/, n.

        [common; abbreviation, "Bulletin Board System"] An electronic
        bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can
        log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically)
        into {topic group}s. The term was especially applied to the
        thousands of local BBS systems that operated during the pre-Internet
        microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to 1995, typically run by amateurs
        for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line
        each. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial timesharing
        bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes
        the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they served a
        valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in
        the personal-micro world who would otherwise have been unable to
        exchange code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs are likely to be local
        newsgroups on an ISP; efficiency has increased but a certain flavor
        has been lost. See also {bboard}.

:BCPL: //, n.

        [abbreviation, "Basic Combined Programming Language") A programming
        language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It is
        remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be
        run in 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at
        a very early stage, and was the language in which the original
        {hello world} program was written. It has been ported to so many
        different systems that its creator confesses to having lost count.
        It has only one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an
        integer, a character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost
        anything else, depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C,
        which inherited some of its features.

:BDFL:

        [Python; common] Benevolent Dictator For Life. {Guido}, considered
        in his role as the project leader of {Python}. People who are
        feeling temporarily cheesed off by one of his decisions sometimes
        leave off the B. The mental image that goes with this, of a
        cigar-chomping caudillo in gold braid and sunglasses, is extremely
        funny to anyone who has ever met Guido in person.

:beam: vt.

        [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"]

        1. To transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in
        combining forms such as beam me a copy or beam that over to his
        site.

        2. Palm Pilot users very commonly use this term for the act of
        exchanging bits via the infrared links on their machines (this term
        seems to have originated with the ill-fated Newton Message Pad).
        Compare {blast}, {snarf}, {BLT}.

:beanie key: n.

        [Mac users] See {command key}.

:beep: n.,v.

        Syn. {feep}. This term is techspeak under MS-DOS/Windows and OS/2,
        and seems to be generally preferred among micro hobbyists.

:Befunge: n.

        A worthy companion to {INTERCAL}; a computer language family which
        escapes the quotidian limitation of linear control flow and embraces
        program counters flying through multiple dimensions with exotic
        topologies. The Befunge home page is at
        http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/befunge/.

:beige toaster: n.

        [obs.] An original Macintosh in the boxy beige case. See {toaster};
        compare {Macintrash}, {maggotbox}.

:bells and whistles: n.

        [common] Features added to a program or system to make it more
        {flavorful} from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily
        adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from
        {chrome}, which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've got
        the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and
        whistles." No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a
        whistle. The recognized emphatic form is "bells, whistles, and
        gongs".

        It used to be thought that this term derived from the toyboxes on
        theater organs. However, the "and gongs" strongly suggests a
        different origin, at sea. Before powered horns, ships routinely used
        bells, whistles, and gongs to signal each other over longer
        distances than voice can carry.

        Sometimes `trouble' is spelled {bells and whistles}...

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-06-04. The previous one
        is 73-05-28.)

:bells whistles and gongs: n.

        A standard elaborated form of {bells and whistles}; typically said
        with a pronounced and ironic accent on the `gongs'.

:benchmark: n.

        [techspeak] An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the
        computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies,
        and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone,
        Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks, the SPECmark
        suite, and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}, {smoke and
        mirrors}.

:Berkeley Quality Software: adj.

        (often abbreviated "BQS") Term used in a pejorative sense to refer
        to software that was apparently created by rather spaced-out hackers
        late at night to solve some unique problem. It usually has
        nonexistent, incomplete, or incorrect documentation, has been tested
        on at least two examples, and core dumps when anyone else attempts
        to use it. This term was frequently applied to early versions of the
        dbx(1) debugger. See also {Berzerkeley}.

        Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk'lee/, not
        /barklee/ as in British Received Pronunciation.

:Berzerkeley: /b@rzer'klee/, n.

        [from `berserk', via the name of a now-deceased record label; poss.
        originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous distortion of
        "Berkeley" used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the
        {BSD} Unix hackers. See {software bloat}, {Berkeley Quality
        Software}.

        Mainstream use of this term in reference to the cultural and
        political peculiarities of UC Berkeley as a whole has been reported
        from as far back as the 1960s.

:beta: /bay't@/, /bet@/, /beet@/, n.

        1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with "in": in
        beta. In the {Real World}, hardware or software systems often go
        through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta
        (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky
        (or unlucky) trusted customers.

        2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in
        beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving
        judgment.

        3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously
        buggy).

        Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a
        pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software
        by making it available to selected (or self-selected) customers and
        users. This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product
        cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout
        the industry. Alpha Test was the unit, module, or component test
        phase; Beta Test was initial system test. These themselves came from
        earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility
        and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to
        design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the
        engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding
        to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the
        production design, and the D test was the C test repeated after the
        model had been in production a while.

:BFI: /BFI/, n.

        See {brute force and ignorance}. Also encountered in the variants
        BFMI, "brute force and massive ignorance" and BFBI "brute force and
        bloody ignorance". In some parts of the U.S. this abbreviation was
        probably reinforced by a company called Browning-Ferris Industries
        in the waste-management business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue
        could be seen on the sides of garbage trucks.

:BI: //

        Common written abbreviation for {Breidbart Index}.

:bible: n.

        1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as
        {Knuth}, {K&R}, or the {Camel Book}.

        2. The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular
        language, operating system, or other complex software system.

:BiCapitalization: n.

        The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as
        {PostScript}, NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver,
        EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage
        by nonstandard capitalization. Too many {marketroid} types think
        this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it.
        Compare {studlycaps}, {InterCaps}.

:biff: /bif/, vt.

        [now rare] To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility
        biff(1), which was in turn named after a friendly dog who used to
        chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD was in development.
        There was a legend that it had a habit of barking whenever the
        mailman came, but the author of biff says this is not true. No
        relation to {B1FF}.

:big iron: n.

        [common] Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of
        {number-crunching} supercomputers, but can include more conventional
        big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of approval; compare {heavy
        metal}, oppose {dinosaur}.

:Big Red Switch: n.

        [IBM] The power switch on a computer, esp. the `Emergency Pull'
        switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch on an IBM PC where
        it really is large and red. "This !@%$% {bitty box} is hung again;
        time to hit the Big Red Switch." Sources at IBM report that, in tune
        with the company's passion for {TLA}s, this is often abbreviated as
        BRS (this has also become established on FidoNet and in the PC
        {clone} world). It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an
        IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power
        feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes physically drop a block
        into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired
        for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also
        {molly-guard}). Compare {power cycle}, {three-finger salute}; see
        also {scram switch}.

:Big Room: n.

        (Also Big Blue Room) The extremely large room with the blue ceiling
        and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with
        lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all
        computer installations. "He can't come to the phone right now, he's
        somewhere out in the Big Room."

:big win: n.

        1. [common] Major success.

        2. [MIT] Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered
        high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had
        been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule.
        Small mistake; big win!" See {win big}.

:big-endian: adj.

        [common; From Swift's Gulliver's Travels via the famous paper On
        Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137,
        dated April 1, 1980]

        1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given
        multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte has the
        lowest address (the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most
        processors, including the IBM 370 family, the {PDP-10}, the Motorola
        microprocessor families, and most of the various RISC designs are
        big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also sometimes called network
        order. See {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}, {swab}.

        2. An Internet address the wrong way round. Most of the world
        follows the Internet standard and writes email addresses starting
        with the name of the computer and ending up with the name of the
        country. In the U.K.: the Joint Academic Networking Team had decided
        to do it the other way round before the Internet domain standard was
        established. Most gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in their mailers
        to handle this, but can still be confused. In particular, the
        address me@uk.ac.bris.pys.as could be interpreted in JANET's
        big-endian way as one in the U.K. (domain uk) or in the standard
        little-endian way as one in the domain as (American Samoa) on the
        opposite side of the world.

:bignum: /big'nuhm/, n.

        [common; orig. from MIT MacLISP]

        1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very
        large integers.

        2. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at
        the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!"

        3. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice especially a
        roll of double fives or double sixes (compare {moby}, sense 4). See
        also {El Camino Bignum}.

        Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages
        provide a kind of data called integer, but such computer integers
        are usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than
        2^31 (2,147,483,648). If you want to work with numbers larger than
        that, you have to use floating-point numbers, which are usually
        accurate to only six or seven decimal places. Computer languages
        that provide bignums can perform exact calculations on very large
        numbers, such as 1000! (the factorial of 1000, which is 1000 times
        999 times 998 times ... times 2 times 1). For example, this value
        for 1000! was computed by the MacLISP system using bignums:

        40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
        46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
        00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
        94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
        59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
        56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
        63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
        74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
        43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
        52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
        86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
        89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
        02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
        48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
        66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
        60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
        34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
        50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
        01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
        81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
        88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
        88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
        12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
        81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
        90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
        39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
        26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
        34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
        59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
        24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
        24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
        55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
        77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
        64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
        97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
        01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
        37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
        74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
        44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
        28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
        42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
        25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
        87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
        21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
        77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
        56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
        79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
        00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
        00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
        00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
        00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
        00000000000000000.

:bigot: n.

        [common] A person who is religiously attached to a particular
        computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see
        {religious issues}). Usually found with a specifier; thus, Cray
        bigot, ITS bigot, APL bigot, VMS bigot, Berkeley bigot. Real bigots
        can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that
        they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or
        technology is threatening to obsolete the favored tool. It is truly
        said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." Compare
        {weenie}, {Amiga Persecution Complex}.

:bikeshedding:

        [originally BSD, now common] Technical disputes over minor, marginal
        issues conducted while more serious ones are being overlooked. The
        implied image is of people arguing over what color to paint the
        bicycle shed while the house is not finished.

:binary four: n.

        [Usenet] The finger, in the sense of digitus impudicus. This comes
        from an analogy between binary and the hand, i.e. 1=00001=thumb,
        2=00010=index finger, 3=00011=index and thumb, 4=00100. Considered
        silly. Prob. from humorous derivative of {finger}, sense 4.

:bit: n.

        [from the mainstream meaning and "Binary digIT"]

        1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
        obtained from knowing the answer to a yes-or-no question for which
        the two outcomes are equally probable.

        2. [techspeak] A computational quantity that can take on one of two
        values, such as true and false or 0 and 1.

        3. A mental flag: a reminder that something should be done
        eventually. "I have a bit set for you." (I haven't seen you for a
        while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you something.)

        4. More generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental state of belief. "I
        have a bit set that says that you were the last guy to hack on
        EMACS." (Meaning "I think you were the last guy to hack on EMACS,
        and what I am about to say is predicated on this, so please stop me
        if this isn't true.") "I just need one bit from you" is a polite way
        of indicating that you intend only a short interruption for a
        question that can presumably be answered yes or no.

        A bit is said to be set if its value is true or 1, and reset or
        clear if its value is false or 0. One speaks of setting and clearing
        bits. To {toggle} or invert a bit is to change it, either from 0 to
        1 or from 1 to 0. See also {flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}.

        The term bit first appeared in print in the computer-science sense
        in a 1948 paper by information theorist Claude Shannon, and was
        there credited to the early computer scientist John Tukey (who also
        seems to have coined the term software). Tukey records that bit
        evolved over a lunch table as a handier alternative to bigit or
        binit, at a conference in the winter of 1943-44.

:bit bang: n.

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

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

:bit bashing: n.

        (alt.: bit diddling or {bit twiddling}) Term used to describe any of
        several kinds of low-level programming characterized by manipulation
        of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble}, and other smaller-than-character-sized
        pieces of data; these include low-level device control, encryption
        algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions,
        some flavors of graphics programming (see {bitblt}), and
        assembler/compiler code generation. May connote either tedium or a
        real technical challenge (more usually the former). "The command
        decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the
        bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." See also
        {mode bit}.

:bit bucket: n.

        [very common]

        1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used
        to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a
        shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to
        have gone to the bit bucket. On {Unix}, often used for {/dev/null}.
        Sometimes amplified as the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky.

        2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go.
        The selection is performed according to {Finagle's Law}; important
        mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail,
        which has an almost 100% probability of getting delivered. Routing
        to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer
        agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network.

        3. The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses: "Flames about
        this article to the bit bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to
        overflow one's mailbox with flames.

        4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I mailed you those
        figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket." Compare
        {black hole}.

        This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion
        that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced.
        This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box',
        about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also
        report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits
        into memory it was actually pulling them "out of the bit box". See
        also {chad box}.

        Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the
        "parity preservation law", the number of 1 bits that go to the bit
        bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in
        bits filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can
        empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.

        The source for all these meanings, is, historically, the fact that
        the {chad box} on a paper-tape punch was sometimes called a bit
        bucket.

        A literal {bit bucket}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-02-14. The previous one
        is 75-10-04.)

:bit decay: n.

        See {bit rot}. People with a physics background tend to prefer this
        variant for the analogy with particle decay. See also {computron},
        {quantum bogodynamics}.

:bit rot: n.

        [common] Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence of
        which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or
        features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed,
        even if `nothing has changed'. The theory explains that bits decay
        as if they were radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file
        or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled.

        There actually are physical processes that produce such effects
        (alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip
        packages, for example, can change the contents of a computer memory
        unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can
        corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and
        computers are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate for
        them). The notion long favored among hackers that cosmic rays are
        among the causes of such events turns out to be a myth; see the
        {cosmic rays} entry for details.

        The term {software rot} is almost synonymous. Software rot is the
        effect, bit rot the notional cause.

:bit twiddling: n.

        [very common]

        1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see {tune}) in which
        incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little
        noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code becomes
        incomprehensible.

        2. Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless
        goal.

        3. Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of frobbing
        the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it
        back to a known state.

:bit-paired keyboard: n.,obs.

        (alt.: bit-shift keyboard) A non-standard keyboard layout that seems
        to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for
        several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a
        mechanical device (see {EOU}), so the only way to generate the
        character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The
        design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern
        that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key
        was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing even more of a kluge
        than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared
        the same basic bit pattern on one key.

        Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:

        high  low bits
        bits  0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001
         010        !    "    #    $    %    &    '    (    )
         011   0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9

        This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a
        Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). The
        Teletype Model 33 was actually designed before ASCII existed, and
        was originally intended to use a code that contained these two rows:

              low bits
        high  0000  0010  0100  0110  1000  1010  1100  1110
        bits     0001  0011  0101  0111  1001  1011  1101  1111
          10   )  ! bel #  $  % wru &  *  (  "  :  ?  _  ,   .
          11   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  '  ;  /  - esc del

        The result would have been something closer to a normal keyboard.
        But as it happened, Teletype had to use a lot of persuasion just to
        keep ASCII, and the Model 33 keyboard, from looking like this
        instead:

                  !  "  ?  $  '  &  -  (  )  ;  :  *  /  ,  .
               0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  +  ~  <  >    |

        Teletype's was not the weirdest variant of the {QWERTY} layout
        widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of
        several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029
        card punches.

        When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there
        was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be
        laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while
        others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their
        product look like an office typewriter. Either choice was supported
        by the ANSI computer keyboard standard, X4.14-1971, which referred
        to the alternatives as "logical bit pairing" and "typewriter
        pairing". These alternatives became known as bit-paired and
        typewriter-paired keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard
        seemed far more logical -- and because most hackers in those days
        had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the
        pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard.

        The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction
        of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where
        out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The
        typewriter-paired standard became universal, X4.14 was superseded by
        X4.23-1982, bit-paired hardware was quickly junked or relegated to
        dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.

        However, in countries without a long history of touch typing, the
        argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or
        nonexistent. As a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on
        PCs, Unix boxen etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'() characters above
        the numbers in the ASR-33 layout.

:bitblt: /bit'blit/, n.

        [from {BLT}, q.v.:]

        1. [common] Any of a family of closely related algorithms for moving
        and copying rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a
        bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display
        memory (the requirement to do the {Right Thing} in the case of
        overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt
        tricky).

        2. Synonym for {blit} or {BLT}. Both uses are borderline techspeak.

:bits: pl.n.

        1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I
        need to know about file formats.") Compare {core dump}, sense 4.

        2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as
        contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon File;
        does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See {softcopy}, {source
        of all good bits} See also {bit}.

:bitty box: /bit'ee boks/, n.

        1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to
        cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing
        software on or for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent,
        single-tasking-only personal machines such as the Atari 800,
        Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC.

        2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see
        {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}.

:bixie: /bik'see/, n.

        Variant {emoticon}s used BIX (the BIX Information eXchange); the
        term survived the demise of BIX itself. The most common ({smiley})
        bixie is <@_@>, representing two cartoon eyes and a mouth. These
        were originally invented in an SF fanzine called APA-L and imported
        to BIX by one of the earliest users.

:black art: n.

        [common] A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication)
        mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or
        systems area (compare {black magic}). VLSI design and compiler code
        optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples
        of black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once
        standard textbooks had been written, became merely {heavy wizardry}.
        The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading
        around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty
        years has made both the term black art and what it describes less
        common than formerly. See also {voodoo programming}.

:black hat:

        1. [common among security specialists] A {cracker}, someone bent on
        breaking into the system you are protecting. Oppose the less comon
        white hat for an ally or friendly security specialist; the term gray
        hat is in occasional use for people with cracker skills operating
        within the law, e.g. in doing security evaluations. All three terms
        derive from the dress code of formulaic Westerns, in which bad guys
        wore black hats and good guys white ones.

        2. [spamfighters] `Black hat', `white hat', and `gray hat' are also
        used to denote the spam-friendliness of ISPs: a black hat ISP
        harbors spammers and doesn't terminate them; a white hat ISP
        terminates upon the first LART; and gray hat ISPs terminate only
        reluctantly and/or slowly. This has led to the concept of a hat
        check: someone considering a potential business relationship with an
        ISP or other provider will post a query to a {NANA} group, asking
        about the provider's hat color. The term albedo has also been used
        to describe a provider's spam-friendliness.

:black hole: n.,vt.

        [common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream of
        TCP/IP packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously
        between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning
        a {bounce message}). "I think there's a black hole at foovax!"
        conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff
        on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). The implied metaphor
        of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. Readily
        verbed as blackhole: "That router is blackholing IDP packets."
        Compare {bit bucket} and see {RBL}.

:black magic: n.

        [common] A technique that works, though nobody really understands
        why. More obscure than {voodoo programming}, which may be done by
        cookbook. Compare also {black art}, {deep magic}, and {magic number}
        (sense 2).

:Black Screen of Death:

        [prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous Far Side
        cartoon.] A failure mode of {Microsloth Windows}. On an attempt to
        launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks
        the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold
        {boot} to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black
        Screen of Death. See also {Blue Screen of Death}, which has become
        rather more common.

:blammo: v.

        [Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To forcibly remove
        someone from any interactive system, especially talker systems. The
        operators, who may remain hidden, may "blammo" a user who is
        misbehaving. Very similar to archaic MIT gun; in fact, the
        blammo-gun is a notional device used to "blammo" someone. While in
        actual fact the only incarnation of the blammo-gun is the command
        used to forcibly eject a user, operators speak of different levels
        of blammo-gun fire; e.g., a blammo-gun to `stun' will temporarily
        remove someone, but a blammo-gun set to `maim' will stop someone
        coming back on for a while.

:blargh: /blarg/, n.

        [MIT; now common] The opposite of {ping}, sense 5; an exclamation
        indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a quantum of
        unhappiness. Less common than {ping}.

:blast:

        1. v.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data sends over a
        network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage: uncommon. The
        variant `blat' has been reported.

        2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense 3). Sometimes the
        message Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)? would appear
        in the command window upon logout.

:blat: n.

        1. Syn. {blast}, sense 1.

        2. See {thud}.

:bletch: /blech/, interj.

        [very common; from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss. via
        comic-strip exclamation `blech'] Term of disgust. Often used in
        "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.

:bletcherous: /blech'@r@s/, adj.

        Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This
        word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!"
        (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) See
        {losing}, {cretinous}, {bagbiting}, {bogus}, and {random}. The term
        {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so described;
        similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast, something that is losing or
        bagbiting may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also
        {bogus} and {random}, which have richer and wider shades of meaning
        than any of the above.

:blinkenlights: /blink'@nli:tz/, n.

        [common] Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a
        {dinosaur}. Now that dinosaurs are rare, this term usually refers to
        status lights on a modem, network hub, or the like.

        This term derives from the last word of the famous
        blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced
        about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One
        version ran in its entirety as follows:

                          ACHTUNG!  ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

        Alles touristen und non-technischen looken peepers!
        Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
        Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
        mit spitzensparken.  Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
        Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das
        pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

        This silliness dates back at least as far as 1955 at IBM and had
        already gone international by the early 1960s, when it was reported
        at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several
        variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with
        the word `blinkenlights'.

        In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers have
        developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in
        fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:

                                      ATTENTION

        This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
        Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
        allowed for die experts only!  So all the "lefthanders" stay away
        and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
        intelligencies.  Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
        anderswhere!  Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished
        the blinkenlights.

        See also {geef}.

        Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because
        they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly,
        very few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard
        certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of
        front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret
        machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only part of the
        story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the
        lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor
        machines. But the most fundamental fact is that there are very few
        signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs, you
        could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, but even
        at 33/66/150MHz (let alone gigahertz speeds) it's all a blur.

        Despite this, a couple of relatively recent computer designs of note
        have featured programmable blinkenlights that were added just
        because they looked cool. The Connection Machine, a 65,536-processor
        parallel computer designed in the mid-1980s, was a black cube with
        one side covered with a grid of red blinkenlights; the sales demo
        had them evolving {life} patterns. A few years later the ill-fated
        BeBox (a personal computer designed to run the BeOS operating
        system) featured twin rows of blinkenlights on the case front. When
        Be, Inc. decided to get out of the hardware business in 1996 and
        instead ported their OS to the PowerPC and later to the Intel
        architecture, many users suffered severely from the absence of their
        beloved blinkenlights. Before long an external version of the
        blinkenlights driven by a PC serial port became available; there is
        some sort of plot symmetry in the fact that it was assembled by a
        German.

        Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on
        news.admin.net-abuse.email:

                            ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

        Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und giffengrabben. Ist easy
        droppenpacket der routers und overloaden der backbone mit der spammen
        und der me-tooen.  Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das
        mausklicken sichtseeren keepen das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets
        muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken.

        This newest version partly reflects reports that the word
        `blinkenlights' is (in 1999) undergoing something of a revival in
        usage, but applied to networking equipment. The transmit and receive
        lights on routers, activity lights on switches and hubs, and other
        network equipment often blink in visually pleasing and seemingly
        coordinated ways. Although this is different in some ways from
        register readings, a tall stack of Cisco equipment or a 19-inch rack
        of ISDN terminals can provoke a similar feeling of hypnotic awe,
        especially in a darkened network operations center or server room.

        The ancestor of the original blinkenlights posters of the 1950s was
        probably this:

        WWII-era machine-shop poster

        We are informed that cod-German parodies of this kind were very
        common in Allied machine shops during and following WWII. Germans,
        then as now, had a reputation for being both good with precision
        machinery and prone to officious notices.

:blit: /blit/, vt.

        1. [common] To copy a large array of bits from one part of a
        computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is
        being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The
        storage allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts
        up into high memory, and then blits it all back down again." See
        {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast}, {snarf}. More generally, to
        perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits
        while moving them.

        2. [historical, rare] Sometimes all-capitalized as BLIT: an early
        experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs,
        later commercialized as the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from
        "Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal" is incorrect. Its creators liked to
        claim that "Blit" stood for the Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive
        Tomato.)

:blitter: /blit'r/, n.

        [common] A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform
        {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped
        graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but
        since 1990 the trend has been away from them (however, see {cycle of
        reincarnation}). Syn. {raster blaster}.

:blivet: /bliv'@t/, n.

        [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of
        manure in a five-pound bag"]

        1. An intractable problem.

        2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it
        breaks.

        3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent
        programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks.

        4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort.

        5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo.

        6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a
        denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that
        have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a
        multi-user system).

        This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among
        experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it
        seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to
        hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing
        trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears
        to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the
        parts fit together in an impossible way.

        This is a blivet

:bloatware: n.

        [common] Software that provides minimal functionality while
        requiring a disproportionate amount of diskspace and memory.
        Especially used for application and OS upgrades. This term is very
        common in the Windows/NT world. So is its cause.

:BLOB:

        1. n. [acronym: Binary Large OBject] Used by database people to
        refer to any random large block of bits that needs to be stored in a
        database, such as a picture or sound file. The essential point about
        a BLOB is that it's an object that cannot be interpreted within the
        database itself.

        2. v. To {mailbomb} someone by sending a BLOB to him/her; esp. used
        as a mild threat. "If that program crashes again, I'm going to BLOB
        the core dump to you."

:block: v.

        [common; from process scheduling terminology in OS theory]

        1. vi. To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're
        blocking until everyone gets here." Compare {busy-wait}.

        2. block on vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked
        on Phil's arrival."

:blog: n.

        [common] Short for weblog, an on-line web-zine or diary (usually
        with facilities for reader comments and discussion threads) made
        accessible through the World Wide Web. This term is widespread and
        readily forms derivatives, of which the best known may be
        {blogosphere}.

:Bloggs Family: n.

        An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their
        children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to
        show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For
        example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique
        person, whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different
        people. Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in
        bizarre places such as the old {DEC} Telephone Directory. Compare
        {Dr. Fred Mbogo}; {J. Random Hacker}; {Fred Foobar}.

:blogosphere:

        The totality of all {blog}s. A culture heavily overlapping with but
        not coincident with hackerdom; a few of its key coinages
        ({blogrolling}, {fisking}, {anti-idiotarianism}) are recorded in
        this lexicon for flavor. Bloggers often divide themselves into
        warbloggers and techbloggers. The techbloggers write about
        technology and technology policy, while the warbloggers are more
        politically focused and tend to be preoccupied with U.S. and world
        response to the post-9/11 war against terrorism. The overlap with
        hackerdom is heaviest among the techbloggers, but several of the
        most prominent warbloggers are also hackers. Bloggers in general
        tend to be aware of and sympathetic to the hacker culture.

:blogrolling:

        [From the American political term `logrolling', for supporting
        another's pet bill in the legislature in exchange for reciprocal
        support,] When you hotlink to other bloggers' blogs (and-or other
        bloggers' specific blog entries) in your blog, you are blogrolling.
        This is frequently reciprocal.

:blow an EPROM: /bloh @n ee'prom/, v.

        (alt.: blast an EPROM, burn an EPROM) To program a read-only memory,
        e.g.: for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the
        programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs)
        that preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories
        (EPROMs) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the
        chip. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard)
        even though the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.

:blow away: vt.

        To remove (files and directories) from permanent storage, generally
        by accident. "He reformatted the wrong partition and blew away last
        night's netnews." Oppose {nuke}.

:blow out: vi.

        [prob.: from mining and tunneling jargon] Of software, to fail
        spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow
        past}, {blow up}, {die horribly}.

:blow past: vt.

        To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The server blew past the 5K
        reserve buffer."

:blow up: vi.

        1. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that the
        computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon overflow or at
        least go {nonlinear}.

        2. Syn. {blow out}.

:BLT: /BLT/, /bl@t/, /belt/, n.,vt.

        Synonym for {blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the
        ancestor of {bitblt}. It referred to any large bit-field copy or
        move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling operation
        done on pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS, and TOPS-10 was
        sardonically referred to as "The Big BLT"). The jargon usage has
        outlasted the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT}
        derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always means
        "Branch if Less Than zero".

:blue box:

        n.

        1. obs. Once upon a time, before all-digital switches made it
        possible for the phone companies to move them out of band, one could
        actually hear the switching tones used to route long-distance calls.
        Early {phreaker}s built devices called blue boxes that could
        reproduce these tones, which could be used to commandeer portions of
        the phone network. (This was not as hard as it may sound; one early
        phreak acquired the sobriquet "Captain Crunch" after he proved that
        he could generate switching tones with a plastic whistle pulled out
        of a box of Captain Crunch cereal!) There were other colors of box
        with more specialized phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver
        boxes, etc. There were boxes of other colors as well, but the blue
        box was the original and archetype.

        2. n. An {IBM} machine, especially a large (non-PC) one.

:Blue Glue: n.

        [IBM; obs.] IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly
        {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol once widely
        favored at commercial shops that didn't know any better (like other
        proprietary networking protocols, it became obsolete and effectively
        disappeared after the Internet explosion c.1994). The official IBM
        definition is "that which binds blue boxes together." See {fear and
        loathing}. It may not be irrelevant that Blue Glue is the trade name
        of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet
        squares to the removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. A
        correspondent at U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has
        about 80 bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to
        any messy work to be done as using the blue glue.

:blue goo: n.

        Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray goo},
        denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the
        stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the
        American way, etc. The term "Blue Goo" can be found in Dr. Seuss's
        Fox In Socks to refer to a substance much like bubblegum. `Would you
        like to chew blue goo, sir?'. See {nanotechnology}.

:Blue Screen of Death: n.

        [common] This term is closely related to the older {Black Screen of
        Death} but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up).
        Due to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows,
        misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS
        sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death,
        sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this
        happens. (Commonly abbreviated {BSOD}.) The following entry from the
        Salon Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the term:

                Windows NT crashed.
                I am the Blue Screen of Death
                No one hears your screams.

:blue wire: n.

        [IBM] Patch wires (esp. 30 AWG gauge) added to circuit boards at the
        factory to correct design or fabrication problems. Blue wire is not
        necessarily blue, the term describes function rather than color.
        These may be necessary if there hasn't been time to design and
        qualify another board version. In Great Britain this can be bodge
        wire, after mainstream slang bodge for a clumsy improvisation or
        sloppy job of work. Compare {purple wire}, {red wire}, {yellow
        wire}, {pink wire}.

:blurgle: /bler'gl/, n.

        [UK] Spoken {metasyntactic variable}, to indicate some text that is
        obvious from context, or which is already known. If several words
        are to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or tripled. "To look
        for something in several files use `grep string blurgle blurgle'."
        In each case, "blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced
        by the file you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, sense 7.

:BNF: /BNF/, n.

        1. [techspeak] Acronym for Backus Normal Form (later retronymed to
        Backus-Naur Form because BNF was not in fact a normal form), a
        metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
        languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used for language
        descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must usually
        be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this BNF for a
        U.S. postal address:

         <postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part>

         <personal-part> ::= <name> | <initial> "."

         <name-part> ::= <personal-part> <last-name> [<jr-part>] <EOL>
                       | <personal-part> <name-part>

         <street-address> ::= [<apt>] <house-num> <street-name> <EOL>

         <zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <ZIP-code> <EOL>

        This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a
        name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code
        part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial
        followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part
        followed by a last name followed by an optional jr-part (Jr., Sr.,
        or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by
        a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs,
        covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names
        and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment
        specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A
        zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a
        state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note
        that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment
        specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed to
        be obvious from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also
        {parse}.

        2. Any of a number of variants and extensions of BNF proper,
        possibly containing some or all of the {regexp} wildcards such as *
        or +. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the
        Algol-60 report; it uses [], which was introduced a few years later
        in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognized.

        3. In {science-fiction fandom}, a `Big-Name Fan' (someone famous or
        notorious). Years ago a fan started handing out black-on-green BNF
        buttons at SF conventions; this confused the hacker contingent
        terribly.

:boa: n.

        Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a {dinosaur
        pen}. Possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of
        their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have
        been coiled for some time. It is rumored within IBM that channel
        cables for the 370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that
        length the boas get dangerous -- and it is worth noting that one of
        the major cable makers uses the trademark `Anaconda'.

:board: n.

        1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used even for Usenet
        newsgroups (but see usage note under {bboard}, sense 1).

        2. An electronic circuit board.

:boat anchor: n.

        [common; from ham radio]

        1. Like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that the offending
        hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "That was a working
        motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!"

        2. A person who just takes up space.

        3. Obsolete but still working hardware, especially when used of an
        old, bulky, quirky system; originally a term of annoyance, but
        became more and more affectionate as the hardware became more and
        more obsolete.

        Auctioneers use this term for a large, undesirable object such as a
        washing machine; actual boating enthusiasts, however, use "mooring
        anchor" for frustrating (not actually useless) equipment.

:bob: n.

        At Demon Internet, all tech support personnel are called "Bob".
        (Female support personnel have an option on "Bobette"). This has
        nothing to do with Bob the divine drilling-equipment salesman of the
        {Church of the SubGenius}. Nor is it acronymized from "Brother Of
        {BOFH}", though all parties agree it could have been. Rather, it was
        triggered by an unusually large draft of new tech-support people in
        1995. It was observed that there would be much duplication of names.
        To ease the confusion, it was decided that all support techs would
        henceforth be known as "Bob", and identity badges were created
        labelled "Bob 1" and "Bob 2". ("No, we never got any further"
        reports a witness).

        The reason for "Bob" rather than anything else is due to a {luser}
        calling and asking to speak to "Bob", despite the fact that no "Bob"
        was currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know "the
        customer is always right", it was decided that there had to be at
        least one "Bob" on duty at all times, just in case.

        This sillyness snowballed inexorably. Shift leaders and managers
        began to refer to their groups of "bobs". Whole ranks of support
        machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS as of 1999) as bob1
        through bobN. Then came alt.tech-support.recovery, and it was filled
        with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and
        to others, as "bob", and after a while it caught on. There is now a
        Bob Code describing the Bob nature.

:bodge:

        [Commonwealth hackish] Syn. {kludge} or {hack} (sense 1). "I'll
        bodge this in now and fix it later".

:BOF: /BOF/, /bof/, n.

        1. [common] Abbreviation for the phrase "Birds Of a Feather"
        (flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or bull
        session scheduled on a conference program. It is not clear where or
        when this term originated, but it is now associated with the USENIX
        conferences for Unix techies and was already established there by
        1984. It was used earlier than that at DECUS conferences and is
        reported to have been common at SHARE meetings as far back as the
        early 1960s.

        2. Acronym, "Beginning of File".

:BOFH: //, n.

        [common] Acronym, Bastard Operator From Hell. A system administrator
        with absolutely no tolerance for {luser}s. "You say you need more
        filespace? <massive-global-delete> Seems to me you have plenty
        left..." Many BOFHs (and others who would be BOFHs if they could get
        away with it) hang out in the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery,
        although there has also been created a top-level newsgroup hierarchy
        (bofh.*) of their own.

        Several people have written stories about BOFHs. The set usually
        considered canonical is by Simon Travaglia and may be found at the
        Bastard Home Page. BOFHs and BOFH wannabes hang out on {scary devil
        monastery} and wield {LART}s.

:bogo-sort: /boh`gohsort'/, n.

        (var.: stupid-sort) The archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as
        opposed to {bubble sort}, which is merely the generic bad
        algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of
        cards in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing
        whether they are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example
        of awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one
        might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Esp. appropriate
        for algorithms with factorial or super-exponential running time in
        the average case and probabilistically infinite worst-case running
        time. Compare {bogus}, {brute force}.

        A spectacular variant of bogo-sort has been proposed which has the
        interesting property that, if the Many Worlds interpretation of
        quantum mechanics is true, it can sort an arbitrarily large array in
        linear time. (In the Many-Worlds model, the result of any quantum
        action is to split the universe-before into a sheaf of
        universes-after, one for each possible way the state vector can
        collapse; in any one of the universes-after the result appears
        random.) The steps are: 1. Permute the array randomly using a
        quantum process, 2. If the array is not sorted, destroy the universe
        (checking that the list is sorted requires O(n) time).
        Implementation of step 2 is left as an exercise for the reader.

:bogometer: /bohgom'@ter/, n.

        A notional instrument for measuring {bogosity}. Compare the
        {Troll-O-Meter} and the `wankometer' described in the {wank} entry;
        see also {bogus}.

:BogoMIPS: /bo'gomips/, n.

        The number of million times a second a processor can do absolutely
        nothing. The {Linux} OS measures BogoMIPS at startup in order to
        calibrate some soft timing loops that will be used later on; details
        at the BogoMIPS mini-HOWTO. The name Linus chose, of course, is an
        ironic comment on the uselessness of all other {MIPS} figures.

:bogon: /boh'gon/, n.

        [very common; by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless
        reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons';
        see the Bibliography in Appendix C and note that Arthur Dent
        actually mispronounces `Vogons' as `Bogons' at one point]

        1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}).
        For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it
        is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion.

        2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root
        server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit.

        3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network.

        4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like
        to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff
        bogon".

        5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was
        historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its
        derivative senses 1--4. See also {bogosity}, {bogus}; compare
        {psyton}, {fat electrons}, {magic smoke}.

        The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce
        particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible
        particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon)
        and the futon (elementary particle of {randomness}, or sometimes of
        lameness). These are not so much live usages in themselves as
        examples of a live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard
        joke or linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious
        circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. And these imply
        nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof (we
        might note parenthetically that this is a generalization from
        "(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!).
        Perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls and
        wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to construct
        explanatory myths. Of course, playing on an existing word (as in the
        `futon') yields additional flavor. Compare {magic smoke}.

:bogon filter: /boh'gon fil'tr/, n.

        Any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow
        and/or emission of bogons. "Engineering hacked a bogon filter
        between the Cray and the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped
        packets." See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.

:bogon flux: /boh'gon fluhks/, n.

        A measure of a supposed field of {bogosity} emitted by a speaker,
        measured by a {bogometer}; as a speaker starts to wander into
        increasing bogosity a listener might say "Warning, warning, bogon
        flux is rising". See {quantum bogodynamics}.

:bogosity: /bohgo's@tee/, n.

        1. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something is
        {bogus}. Bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; in a seminar, when
        a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and
        say "My bogometer just triggered". More extremely, "You just pinned
        my bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously
        bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the
        highest possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my
        bogometer"). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the {microLenat}.

        2. The potential field generated by a {bogon flux}; see {quantum
        bogodynamics}. See also {bogon flux}, {bogon filter}, {bogus}.

:bogotify: /bohgo't@fi:/, vt.

        To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many
        times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If
        you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the
        bolt has become bogotified and you had better not use it any more.
        This coinage led to the notional autobogotiphobia defined as `the
        fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has
        ever been `live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon
        about jargon. See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.

:bogue out: /bohg owt/, vi.

        To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively
        sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued out
        and did nothing but {flame} afterwards." See also {bogosity},
        {bogus}.

:bogus: adj.

        1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus."

        2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program."

        3. False. "Your arguments are bogus."

        4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus."

        5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem for
        Turing Machines? That's totally bogus."

        6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas."

        Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break.
        So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a
        scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of
        the connotations of {random} -- mostly the negative ones.)

        It is claimed that bogus was originally used in the hackish sense at
        Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by
        Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus
        words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized there
        about 1975-76. These coinages spread into hackerdom from CMU and
        MIT. Most of them remained wordplay objects rather than actual
        vocabulary items or live metaphors. Examples: amboguous (having
        multiple bogus interpretations); bogotissimo (in a gloriously bogus
        manner); bogotophile (one who is pathologically fascinated by the
        bogus); paleobogology (the study of primeval bogosity).

        Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to be
        listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see {bogometer}, {bogon},
        {bogotify}, and {quantum bogodynamics} and the related but unlisted
        {Dr. Fred Mbogo}.

        By the early 1980s `bogus' was also current in something like hacker
        usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by
        1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by contrast, that
        these uses of bogus grate on British nerves; in Britain the word
        means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound
        note". According to Merriam-Webster, the word dates back to 1825 and
        originally referred to a counterfeiting machine.

:Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/, n.

        [from quantum physics] A repeatable {bug}; one that manifests
        reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of
        conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}; see also {mandelbug},
        {schroedinbug}.

:boink: /boynk/

        1. [Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV series Cheers,
        Moonlighting, and Soap]v. To have sex with; compare {bounce}, sense
        2. (This is mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant
        `bonk' is more common.

        2. n. After the original Peter Korn `Boinkon' {Usenet} parties, used
        for almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink
        held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota
        in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San
        Francisco Bay Area. Compare {@-party}.

        3. Var of bonk; see {bonk/oif}.

:bomb:

        1. v. General synonym for {crash} (sense 1) except that it is not
        used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS failures. "Don't run
        Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb."

        2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix panic or Amiga
        {guru meditation}, in which icons of little black-powder bombs or
        mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has died.
        On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally
        hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga
        {guru meditation} number. {MS-DOS} machines tend to get {locked up}
        in this situation.

:bondage-and-discipline language: n.

        A language (such as {Pascal}, Ada, APL, or Prolog) that, though
        ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's
        theory of `right programming' even though said theory is
        demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla
        general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may
        speak of things "having the B&D nature". See {Pascal}; oppose
        {languages of choice}.

:bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/, interj.

        In the U.S. {MUD} community, it has become traditional to express
        pique or censure by bonking the offending person. Convention holds
        that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying "oif!" and there is a
        myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif
        balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have
        implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. Note: in parts
        of the U.K. `bonk' is a sexually loaded slang term; care is advised
        in transatlantic conversations (see {boink}). Commonwealth hackers
        report a similar convention involving the `fish/bang' balance. See
        also {talk mode}.

:book titles:

        There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important
        textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their
        covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of
        these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. See
        {Aluminum Book}, {Camel Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {daemon book},
        {Dragon Book}, {Orange Book}, {Purple Book}, {Wizard Book}, and
        {bible}; see also {rainbow series}. Since about 1993 this tradition
        has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and Associates line of
        technical books, which usually feature some kind of exotic animal on
        the cover and are often called by the name of that animal.

:boot: v.,n.

        [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To load and initialize the
        operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer jargon
        (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some
        derivatives that are still jargon.

        The derivative reboot implies that the machine hasn't been down for
        long, or that the boot is a {bounce} (sense 4) intended to clear
        some state of {wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of human thought
        processes, as in the following exchange: "You've lost me." "OK,
        reboot. Here's the theory...."

        This term is also found in the variants cold boot (from power-off
        condition) and warm boot (with the CPU and all devices already
        powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash).

        Another variant: soft boot, reinitialization of only part of a
        system, under control of other software still running: "If you're
        running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a
        soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system
        running."

        Opposed to this there is hard boot, which connotes hostility towards
        or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have to
        hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." One often
        hard-boots by performing a {power cycle}.

        Historical note: this term derives from bootstrap loader, a short
        program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in
        from the front panel switches. This program was always very short
        (great efforts were expended on making it short in order to minimize
        the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in), but was
        just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex program
        (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it handed
        control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the
        application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk
        drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up by
        its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap
        is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from
        a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot block'. When this
        program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS
        and hand control over to it.

:Borg: n.

        In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Borg is a species of cyborg
        that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life into itself;
        their slogan is "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." In
        hacker parlance, the Borg is usually {Microsoft}, which is thought
        to be trying just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the
        entire Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of
        Bill Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often
        referred to as being "Borged". Interestingly, the {Halloween
        Documents} reveal that this jargon is live within Microsoft itself.
        See also {Evil Empire}, {Internet Exploiter}.

        Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally
        been equated to the Borg. In IETF circles, where direct pressure
        from Microsoft is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco.
        This usage commemorates their tendency to pay any price to hire
        talent away from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997
        IETF, a large number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of
        Routing Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with "Recovering
        Borg".

:borken: adj.

        (also borked) Common deliberate typo for `broken'.

:bot: n

        [common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from "robot"]

        1. An {IRC} or {MUD} user who is actually a program. On IRC,
        typically the robot provides some useful service. Examples are
        NickServ, which tries to prevent random users from adopting {nick}s
        already claimed by others, and MsgServ, which allows one to send
        asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on.
        Also common are `annoybots', such as KissServ, which perform no
        useful function except to send cute messages to other people.
        Service bots are less common on MUDs; but some others, such as the
        `Julia' bot active in 1990--91, have been remarkably impressive
        Turing-test experiments, able to pass as human for as long as ten or
        fifteen minutes of conversation.

        2. An AI-controlled player in a computer game (especially a
        first-person shooter such as Quake) which, unlike ordinary monsters,
        operates like a human-controlled player, with access to a player's
        weapons and abilities. An example can be found at
        http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/.

        3. Term used, though less commonly, for a web {spider}. The file for
        controlling spider behavior on your site is officially the "Robots
        Exclusion File" and its URL is "http://<somehost>/robots.txt")

        Note that bots in all senses were `robots' when the terms first
        appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now habitual.

:bottom feeder: n.

        1. An Internet user that leeches off ISPs -- the sort you can never
        provide good enough services for, always complains about the price,
        no matter how low it may be, and will bolt off to another service
        the moment there is even the slimmest price difference. While most
        bottom feeders infest free or almost free services such as AOL, MSN,
        and Hotmail, too many flock to whomever happens to be the cheapest
        regional ISP at the time. Bottom feeders are often the classic
        problem user, known for unleashing spam, flamage, and other breaches
        of {netiquette}.

        2. Syn. for {slopsucker}, derived from the fishermen's and
        naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist on the primordial
        ooze. (This sense is older.)

:bottom-post: v.

        In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email
        message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is
        correct form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet
        that neither the term `bottom-post' nor its antonym {top-post}
        existed. Hackers consider that the best practice is actually to
        excerpt only the relevent portions of the parent message, then
        intersperse the poster's response in such a way that each section of
        response appears directly after the excerpt it applies to. This
        reduces message bulk, keeps thread content in a logical order, and
        facilitates reading.

:bottom-up implementation: n.

        Hackish opposite of the techspeak term top-down design. It has been
        received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to
        design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying
        sequences of action in increasing detail until you get to actual
        code. Hackers often find (especially in exploratory designs that
        cannot be closely specified in advance) that it works best to build
        things in the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of
        primitive operations and then knitting them together. Naively
        applied, this leads to hacked-together bottom-up implementations; a
        more sophisticated response is middle-out implementation, in which
        scratch code within primitives at the mid-level of the system is
        gradually replaced with a more polished version of the lowest level
        at the same time the structure above the midlevel is being built.

:bounce: v.

        1. [common; perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check] An electronic
        mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification
        to the sender is said to bounce. See also {bounce message}.

        2. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob.: from the expression
        `bouncing the mattress', but influenced by Roo's psychosexually
        loaded "Try bouncing me, Tigger!" from the Winnie-the-Pooh books.
        Compare {boink}.

        3. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient
        problem (possibly editing a configuration file in the process, if it
        is one that is only re-read at boot time). Reported primarily among
        {VMS} and {Unix} users.

        4. [VM/CMS programmers] Automatic warm-start of a machine after an
        error. "I logged on this morning and found it had bounced 7 times
        during the night"

        6. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it.

:bounce message: n.

        [common] Notification message returned to sender by a site unable to
        relay {email} to the intended Internet address recipient or the next
        link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}, sense 1). Reasons might include
        a nonexistent or misspelled username or a {down} relay site. Bounce
        messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see
        {sorcerer's apprentice mode} and {software laser}. The terms bounce
        mail and barfmail are also common.

:boustrophedon: n.

        [from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An ancient
        method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left
        lines. This term is actually philologists' techspeak and
        typesetters' jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an optimization
        performed by some computer typesetting software and moving-head
        printers. The adverbial form `boustrophedonically' is also found
        (hackers purely love constructions like this).

:box: n.

        A computer; esp. in the construction foo box where foo is some
        functional qualifier, like graphics, or the name of an OS (thus,
        Unix box, Windows box, etc.) "We preprocess the data on Unix boxes
        before handing it up to the mainframe."

:boxed comments: n.

        Comments (explanatory notes attached to program instructions) that
        occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler
        and C code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something
        like this:

        /*************************************************
         *
         * This is a boxed comment in C style
         *
         *************************************************/

        Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2 or add
        a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The
        sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves; the
        `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}.

:boxen: /bok'sn/, pl.n.

        [very common; by analogy with {VAXen}] Fanciful plural of {box}
        often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe
        commodity {Unix} hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix
        boxen are interchangeable.

:boxology: /boksol'@jee/, n.

        Syn. {ASCII art}. This term implies a more restricted domain, that
        of box-and-arrow drawings. "His report has a lot of boxology in it."
        Compare {macrology}.

:bozotic: /bohzoh'tik/, /bohzotik/, adj.

        [from the name of a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald]
        Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish,
        ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky},
        {demented}. Note that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang, but the
        mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New England)
        `bozoish'.

:brain dump: n.

        [common] The act of telling someone everything one knows about a
        particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to
        let a new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to
        an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a lot of useful
        {state} before an exit. "You'll have to give me a brain dump on
        FOOBAR before you start your new job at HackerCorp." See {core dump}
        (sense 4). At Sun, this is also known as TOI (transfer of
        information).

:brain fart: n.

        The actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to the mental glitch
        that is the braino itself. E.g., typing dir on a Unix box after a
        session with DOS.

:brain-damaged: adj.

        1. [common; generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a
        theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
        Honeywell {Multics}] adj. Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}.
        There is an implication that the person responsible must have
        suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling
        something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is
        unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather
        than some accident. "Only six monocase characters per file name? Now
        that's brain-damaged!"

        2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free demonstration software
        that has been deliberately crippled in some way so as not to compete
        with the product it is intended to sell. Syn. {crippleware}.

:brain-dead: adj.

        [common] Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply terminal
        design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. "This
        comm program doesn't know how to send a break -- how brain-dead!"

:braino: /bray'no/, n.

        Syn. for {thinko}. See also {brain fart}.

:brainwidth: n.

        [Great Britain] Analagous to {bandwidth} but used strictly for human
        capacity to process information and especially to multitask.
        "Writing email is taking up most of my brainwidth right now, I can't
        look at that Flash animation."

:bread crumbs: n.

        1. Debugging statements inserted into a program that emit output or
        log indicators of the program's {state} to a file so you can see
        where it dies or pin down the cause of surprising behavior. The term
        is probably a reference to the Hansel and Gretel story from the
        Brothers Grimm or the older French folktale of Thumbelina; in
        several variants of these, a character leaves a trail of bread
        crumbs so as not to get lost in the woods.

        2. In user-interface design, any feature that allows some tracking
        of where you've been, like coloring visited links purple rather than
        blue in Netscape (also called footprinting).

:break:

        1. vt. To cause to be {broken} (in any sense). "Your latest patch to
        the editor broke the paragraph commands."

        2. v. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged.
        The place where it stops is a breakpoint.

        3. [techspeak] vi. To send an RS-232 break (two character widths of
        line high) over a serial comm line.

        4. [Unix] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver
        to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally, break (sense 3),
        delete or {control-C} does this.

        5. break break may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an
        example of verb doubling). This usage comes from radio
        communications, which in turn probably came from landline
        telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's Band
        craze of the early 1980s.

:break-even point: n.

        In the process of implementing a new computer language, the point at
        which the language is sufficiently effective that one can implement
        the language in itself. That is, for a new language called,
        hypothetically, FOOGOL, one has reached break-even when one can
        write a demonstration compiler for FOOGOL in FOOGOL, discard the
        original implementation language, and thereafter use working
        versions of FOOGOL to develop newer ones. This is an important
        milestone; see {MFTL}.

        Since this entry was first written, several correspondents have
        reported that there actually was a compiler for a tiny Algol-like
        language called Foogol floating around on various {VAXen} in the
        early and mid-1980s. A FOOGOL implementation is available at the
        Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.

:breath-of-life packet: n.

        [XEROX PARC] An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see {boot})
        code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the
        `breath of life' into any computer on the network that has happened
        to crash. Machines depending on such packets have sufficient
        hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet
        during the reboot process. See also {dickless workstation}.

        The notional kiss-of-death packet, with a function complementary to
        that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with
        hosts that consume too many network resources. Though `kiss-of-death
        packet' is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented
        instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a
        gateway machine in which such packets were routinely used to compete
        for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce
        parking spaces.

:breedle: n.

        See {feep}.

:Breidbart Index: /bri:d'bart ind@ks/

        A measurement of the severity of spam invented by long-time hacker
        Seth Breidbart, used for programming cancelbots. The Breidbart Index
        takes into account the fact that excessive multi-posting {EMP} is
        worse than excessive cross-posting {ECP}. The Breidbart Index is
        computed as follows: For each article in a spam, take the
        square-root of the number of newsgroups to which the article is
        posted. The Breidbart Index is the sum of the square roots of all of
        the posts in the spam. For example, one article posted to nine
        newsgroups and again to sixteen would have BI = sqrt(9) + sqrt(16) =
        7. It is generally agreed that a spam is cancelable if the Breidbart
        Index exceeds 20.

        The Breidbart Index accumulates over a 45-day window. Ten articles
        yesterday and ten articles today and ten articles tomorrow add up to
        a 30-article spam. Spam fighters will often reset the count if you
        can convince them that the spam was accidental and/or you have seen
        the error of your ways and won't repeat it. Breidbart Index can
        accumulate over multiple authors. For example, the "Make Money Fast"
        pyramid scheme exceeded a BI of 20 a long time ago, and is now
        considered "cancel on sight".

:brick: n.

        1. A piece of equipment that has been programmed or configured into
        a {hung}, {wedged},unusable state. Especially used to describe what
        happens to devices like routers or PDAs that run from firmware when
        the firmware image is damaged or its settings are somehow patched to
        impossible values. This term usually implies irreversibility, but
        equipment can sometimes be unbricked by performing a hard reset or
        some other drastic operation. Sometimes verbed: "Yeah, I bricked the
        router because I forgot about adding in the new access-list.".

        2. An outboard power transformer of the kind associated with
        laptops, modems, routers and other small computing appliances,
        especially one of the modern type with cords on both ends, as
        opposed to the older and obnoxious type that plug directly into wall
        or barrier strip.

:bricktext:

        [Usenet: common] Text which is carefully composed to be
        right-justified (and sometimes to have a deliberate gutter at
        mid-page) without use of extra spaces, just through careful
        word-length choices. A minor art form. The best examples have
        something of the quality of imagist poetry.

:bring X to its knees: v.

        [common] To present a machine, operating system, piece of software,
        or algorithm with a load so extreme or {pathological} that it grinds
        to a halt.: "To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users
        running {vi} -- or four running {EMACS}." Compare {hog}.

:brittle: adj.

        Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in
        operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the
        software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and
        disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g., a file
        system that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said
        to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a
        research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be
        applied to commercial software, which (due to closed-source
        development) displays the quality far more often than it ought to.
        Oppose {robust}.

:broadcast storm: n.

        [common] An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most
        hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that
        start the process over again. See {network meltdown}; compare {mail
        storm}.

:broken: adj.

        1. Not working according to design (of programs). This is the
        mainstream sense.

        2. Improperly designed, This sense carries a more or less
        disparaging implication that the designer should have known better,
        while sense 1 doesn't necessarily assign blame. Which of senses 1 or
        2 is intended is conveyed by context and nonverbal cues.

        3. Behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting
        extreme depression.

:broken arrow: n.

        [IBM] The error code displayed on line 25 of a 3270 terminal (or a
        PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of protocol violations and
        "unexpected" error conditions (including connection to a {down}
        computer). On a PC, simulated with `->/_', with the two center
        characters overstruck.

        Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that "broken
        arrow" is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear
        weapons....

:broken-ring network:

        Pejorative hackerism for "token-ring network", an early and very
        slow LAN technology from IBM that lost the standards war to
        Ethernet. Though token-ring survives in a few niche markets (such as
        factory automation) that put a high premium on resistance to
        electrical noise, the term is now (2000) primarily historical.

:BrokenWindows: n.

        Abusive hackerism for the {crufty} and {elephantine} {X} environment
        on Sun machines; properly called `OpenWindows'.

:broket: /broh'k@t/, /brohket`/, n.

        [rare; by analogy with `bracket': a `broken bracket'] Either of the
        characters < and >, when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This
        word originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket',
        that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and
        apparently in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called
        {angle brackets}.)

:Brooks's Law: prov.

        "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" -- a
        result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting
        development work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional
        to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with
        coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is,
        proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a
        manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of The Mythical Man-Month
        (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-2), an excellent early book
        on software engineering. The myth in question has been most tersely
        expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established
        conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice
        (though it's not the whole story; see {bazaar}); too often,
        {management} still does. See also {creationism}, {second-system
        effect}, {optimism}.

:brown-paper-bag bug: n.

        A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing that the
        author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head for a while
        so he won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular usage after
        the early-1999 release of the first Linux 2.2, which had one. The
        phrase was used in Linus Torvalds's apology posting.

:browser: n.

        A program specifically designed to help users view and navigate
        hypertext, on-line documentation, or a database. While this general
        sense has been present in jargon for a long time, the proliferation
        of browsers for the World Wide Web after 1992 has made it much more
        popular and provided a central or default techspeak meaning of the
        word previously lacking in hacker usage. Nowadays, if someone
        mentions using a `browser' without qualification, one may assume it
        is a Web browser.

:BRS: /BRS/, n.

        Syn. {Big Red Switch}. This abbreviation is fairly common on-line.

:brute force: adj.

        Describes a primitive programming style, one in which the programmer
        relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his or
        her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring
        problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small
        problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in
        reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in
        a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any
        elegance or useful abstraction (see also {brute force and
        ignorance}).

        The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated
        with the `traveling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical {NP-}hard
        problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to
        N other cities. In what order should the cities be visited in order
        to minimize the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to
        simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while
        guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is
        clearly very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd
        routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New
        York, in that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly
        becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are
        already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N =
        1000 -- well, see {bignum}). Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no
        better general solution than brute force. See also {NP-} and
        {rubber-hose cryptanalysis}.

        A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding
        the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing
        program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the
        first number off the front.

        Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered stupid
        or not depends on the context; if the problem is not terribly big,
        the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less
        than the programmer time it would take to develop a more
        `intelligent' algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm
        may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are
        justified by the speed improvement.

        Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the
        epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this
        as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original Unix kernel's preference
        for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over {brittle} `smart'
        ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of
        that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice
        between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a
        difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate
        esthetic judgment.

:brute force and ignorance: n.

        A popular design technique at many software houses -- {brute force}
        coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been
        previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design
        methodologies tends to encourage this sort of thing. Characteristic
        of early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never
        outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI: "Gak, they used a {bubble sort}!
        That's strictly from BFI." Compare {bogosity}. A very similar usage
        is said to be mainstream in Great Britain.

:BSD: /BSD/, n.

        [abbreviation for `Berkeley Software Distribution'] a family of
        {Unix} versions for the {DEC} {VAX} and {PDP-11} developed by Bill
        Joy and others at {Berzerkeley} starting around 1977, incorporating
        paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking enhancements, and many other
        features. The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial
        versions derived from them (SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the
        technical lead in the Unix world until AT&T's successful
        standardization efforts after about 1986; descendants including
        Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and MacOS X are still widely popular. Note
        that BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often referred to by their
        version numbers alone, without the BSD prefix. See also {Unix}.

:BSOD: /BSOD/

        Very common abbreviation for {Blue Screen of Death}. Both spoken and
        written.

:BUAF: //, n.

        [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Font -- a
        special form of {ASCII art}. Various programs exist for rendering
        text strings into block, bloob, and pseudo-script fonts in cells
        between four and six character cells on a side; this is smaller than
        the letters generated by older {banner} (sense 2) programs. These
        are sometimes used to render one's name in a {sig block}, and are
        critically referred to as BUAFs. See {warlording}.

:BUAG: //, n.

        [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Graphic.
        Pejorative term for ugly {ASCII art}, especially as found in {sig
        block}s. For some reason, mutations of the head of Bart Simpson are
        particularly common in the least imaginative {sig block}s. See
        {warlording}.

:bubble sort: n.

        Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of
        adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and
        interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble
        upward' in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort
        value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is
        the one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers,
        hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm.
        (However, it's been shown by repeated experiment that below about
        5000 records bubble-sort is OK anyway.) The canonical example of a
        really bad algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out
        of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain
        damage or willful perversity.

:bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/, n.

        1. [obs.] The bits produced by the CONTROL and META shift keys on a
        SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400 respectively), resulting in a 9-bit
        keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended
        this with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL and META keys,
        resulting in a 12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines added such
        keys as SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see {space-cadet keyboard}).

        2. By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any
        keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a
        Macintosh.

        It has long been rumored that bucky bits were named for Buckminster
        Fuller during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually,
        bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirth when he was at Stanford in
        1964--65; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th
        bit of an otherwise 7-bit ASCII character). It seems that, unknown
        to Wirth, certain Stanford hackers had privately nicknamed him
        `Bucky' after a prominent portion of his dental anatomy, and this
        nickname transferred to the bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in a
        number of editors written at Stanford, including most notably
        TV-EDIT and NLS.

        The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use.
        Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its derivation for
        nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up this history in early 1993! See
        {double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}.

:buffer chuck: n.

        Shorter and ruder syn. for {buffer overflow}.

:buffer overflow: n.

        What happens when you try to stuff more data into a buffer (holding
        area) than it can handle. This problem is commonly exploited by
        {cracker}s to get arbitrary commands executed by a program running
        with root permissions. This may be due to a mismatch in the
        processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see
        {overrun} and {firehose syndrome}), or because the buffer is simply
        too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece
        of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that
        {crunch}es a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in
        {lossage} as input from a long line overflows the buffer and trashes
        data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow
        on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full
        up. The term is used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "What
        time did I agree to meet you? My buffer must have overflowed." Or
        "If I answer that phone my buffer is going to overflow." See also
        {spam}, {overrun screw}.

:bug: n.

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

        Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer
        better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a
        technician solved a {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II machine by
        pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its
        relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense
        as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit,
        she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook
        associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth)
        sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).
        The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped
        into it, is recorded in the Annals of the History of Computing, Vol.
        3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.

        The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545
        Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
        found". This wording establishes that the term was already in use at
        the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper herself reports
        that the term bug was regularly applied to problems in radar
        electronics during WWII.

        The `original bug' (the caption date is incorrect)

        Indeed, the use of bug to mean an industrial defect was already
        established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather
        modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from 1896
        (Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity, Theo. Audel & Co.) which
        says: "The term `bug' is used to a limited extent to designate any
        fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric
        apparatus." It further notes that the term is "said to have
        originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred to all
        electric apparatus."

        The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the
        term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in a
        telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines. Though this derivation
        seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory of a joke
        first current among telegraph operators more than a century ago!

        Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the
        term "bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to
        refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would
        send a string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex
        keyers (which were among the most common of this type) even had a
        graphic of a beetle on them (and still do)! While the ability to
        send repeated dots automatically was very useful for professional
        morse code operators, these were also significantly trickier to use
        than the older manual keyers, and it could take some practice to
        ensure one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the code by holding
        the key down a fraction too long. In the hands of an inexperienced
        operator, a Vibroplex "bug" on the line could mean that a lot of
        garbled Morse would soon be coming your way.

        Further, the term "bug" has long been used among radio technicians
        to describe a device that converts electromagnetic field variations
        into acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference and
        look for dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives
        from the roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century
        physicists. The first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach
        body), with the two wire ends sticking out and bent back to nearly
        touch forming a spark gap (roach antennae). The bug is to the radio
        technician what the stethoscope is to the stereotypical medical
        doctor. This sense is almost certainly ancestral to modern use of
        "bug" for a covert monitoring device, but may also have contributed
        to the use of "bug" for the effects of radio interference itself.

        Actually, use of bug in the general sense of a disruptive event goes
        back to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V, Scene II: King
        Edward: "So, lie thou there. Die thou; and die our fear; For Warwick
        was a bug that fear'd us all.") In the first edition of Samuel
        Johnson's dictionary one meaning of bug is "A frightful object; a
        walking spectre"; this is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh term for a
        variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has
        recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy
        role-playing games.

        In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects. Here
        is a plausible conversation that never actually happened: "There is
        a bug in this ant farm!" "What do you mean? I don't see any ants in
        it." "That's the bug."

        A careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found in a
        paper by Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, "Entomology of the Computer Bug:
        History and Folklore", American Speech 62(4):376-378.

        [There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved to
        the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so asserted. A
        correspondent who thought to check discovered that the bug was not
        there. While investigating this in late 1990, your editor discovered
        that the NSWC still had the bug, but had unsuccessfully tried to get
        the Smithsonian to accept it -- and that the present curator of
        their History of American Technology Museum didn't know this and
        agreed that it would make a worthwhile exhibit. It was moved to the
        Smithsonian in mid-1991, but due to space and money constraints was
        not actually exhibited for years afterwards. Thus, the process of
        investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely
        unexpected way, by making the myth true! --ESR]

        It helps to remember that this dates from 1973.

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

:bug-compatible: adj.

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

:bug-for-bug compatible: n.

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

:bug-of-the-month club: n.

        [from "book-of-the-month club", a time-honored mail-order-marketing
        technique in the U.S.] A mythical club which users of sendmail(8)
        (the Unix mail daemon) belong to; this was coined on the Usenet
        newsgroup comp.security.unix at a time when sendmail security holes,
        which allowed outside {cracker}s access to the system, were being
        uncovered at an alarming rate, forcing sysadmins to update very
        often. Also, more completely, fatal security bug-of-the-month club.
        See also {kernel-of-the-week club}.

:bulletproof: adj.

        Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely
        {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from
        any imaginable exception condition -- a rare and valued quality.
        Implies that the programmer has thought of all possible errors, and
        added {code} to protect against each one. Thus, in some cases, this
        can imply code that is too heavyweight, due to excessive paranoia on
        the part of the programmer. Syn. {armor-plated}.

:bullschildt: /bul'shilt/, n.

        [comp.lang.c on USENET] A confident, but incorrect, statement about
        a programming language. This immortalizes a very bad book about {C},
        Herbert Schildt's C - The Complete Reference. One reviewer commented
        "The naive errors in this book would be embarrassing even in a
        programming assignment turned in by a computer science college
        sophomore."

:bump: vt.

        Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as C's ++ operator. Used
        esp. of counter variables, pointers, and index dummies in for,
        while, and do-while loops.

:burble: v.

        [from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky] Like {flame}, but connotes that
        the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be
        competent). A term of deep contempt. "There's some guy on the phone
        burbling about how he got a DISK FULL error and it's all our comm
        software's fault." This is mainstream slang in some parts of
        England.

:buried treasure: n.

        A surprising piece of code found in some program. While usually not
        wrong, it tends to vary from {crufty} to {bletcherous}, and has lain
        undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however
        horrible it is. Used sarcastically, because what is found is
        anything but treasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug
        up and removed. "I just found that the scheduler sorts its queue
        using {bubble sort}! Buried treasure!"

:burn a CD: v.

        To write a software or document distribution on a CDR. Coined from
        the fact that a laser is used to inscribe the information by burning
        small pits in the medium, and from the fact that disk comes out of
        the drive warm to the touch. Writable CDs can be done on a normal
        desk-top machine with a suitable drive (so there is no protracted
        release cycle associated with making them) but each one takes a long
        time to make, so they are not appropriate for volume production.
        Writable CDs are suitable for software backups and for
        short-turnaround-time low-volume software distribution, such as
        sending a beta release version to a few selected field test sites.
        Compare {cut a tape}.

:burn-in period: n.

        1. A factory test designed to catch systems with {marginal}
        components before they get out the door; the theory is that burn-in
        will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the
        {bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality}).

        2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person using a
        computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets
        basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning: Excessive
        burn-in can lead to burn-out. See {hack mode}, {larval stage}.

        Historical note: the origin of "burn-in" (sense 1) is apparently the
        practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes on fire, then
        extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold better. This was
        done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane, the U-2.

:burst page: n.

        Syn. {banner}, sense 3.

:busy-wait: vi.

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

        Technically, busy-wait means to wait on an event by {spin}ning
        through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each
        pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing
        execution on another part of the task. In applications this is a
        wasteful technique, and best avoided on timesharing systems where a
        busy-waiting program may {hog} the processor. However, it is often
        unavoidable in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel
        busy-waits are usually referred to as spinlocks.

:buzz: vi.

        1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps
        without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought
        to be executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing
        appears to be {catatonic}, but never gets out of catatonia, while a
        buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "The program
        buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into
        order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}.

        2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for
        continuity, esp. by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire
        faults will pass DC tests but fail an AC buzz test.

        3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to
        each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a
        terminator type."

:buzzword-compliant:

        [also buzzword-enabled] Used (disparagingly) of products that seem
        to have been specified to incorporate all of this month's trendy
        technologies. Key buzzwords that often show up in buzzword-compliant
        specifications as of 2001 include `XML', `Java', `peer-to-peer',
        `distributed', and `open'.

:BWQ: /BWQ/, n.

        [IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of
        buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to
        {bogosity}. See {TLA}.

:by hand: adv.

        1. [common] Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial,
        and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the
        computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through.
        "My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message
        I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand." This does not
        necessarily mean the speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it
        might refer to, say, dropping into a subshell from the mailer,
        making a copy of one's mailbox file, reading that into an editor,
        locating the top and bottom of the message in question, deleting the
        rest of the file, inserting `>' characters on each line, writing the
        file, leaving the editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file
        in, and later remembering to delete the file. Compare {eyeball
        search}.

        2. [common] By extension, writing code which does something in an
        explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine
        ought to have been available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't
        supply a decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."

:byte: /bi:t/, n.

        [techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to
        represent one character; on modern architectures this is invariably
        8 bits. Some older architectures used byte for quantities of 6, 7,
        or (especially) 9 bits, and the PDP-10 supported bytes that were
        actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete,
        killed off by universal adoption of power-of-2 word sizes.

        Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956
        during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer;
        originally it was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of
        the period used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit
        byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and
        promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The word was coined by
        mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally misspelled
        as {bit}. See also {nybble}.

:byte sex: n.

        [common] The byte sex of hardware is {big-endian} or
        {little-endian}; see those entries.

:bytesexual: /bi:t`sek'shu@l/, adj.

        [rare] Said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data
        in either {big-endian} or {little-endian} format (depending,
        presumably, on a {mode bit} somewhere). See also {NUXI problem}.

:Bzzzt! Wrong.: /bzt rong/, excl.

        [common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] From a Robin Williams
        routine in the movie Dead Poets Society spoofing radio or TV quiz
        programs, such as Truth or Consequences, where an incorrect answer
        earns one a blast from the buzzer and condolences from the
        interlocutor. A way of expressing mock-rude disagreement, usually
        immediately following an included quote from another poster. The
        less abbreviated "*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but thank you for playing" is
        also common; capitalization and emphasis of the buzzer sound varies.

  C

   C

   C Programmer's Disease

   C&C

   C++

   calculator

   Camel Book

   camelCase

   camelCasing

   can't happen

   cancelbot

   Cancelmoose[tm]

   candygrammar

   canonical

   careware

   cargo cult programming

   cascade

   case and paste

   case mod

   casters-up mode

   casting the runes

   cat

   catatonic

   cathedral

   cd tilde

   CDA

   cdr

   chad

   chad box

   chain

   chainik

   channel

   channel hopping

   channel op

   chanop

   char

   charityware

   chase pointers

   chawmp

   check

   cheerfully

   chemist

   Chernobyl chicken

   Chernobyl packet

   chicken head

   chickenboner

   chiclet keyboard

   Chinese Army technique

   choad

   choke

   chomp

   chomper

   CHOP

   Christmas tree

   Christmas tree packet

   chrome

   chug

   Church of the SubGenius

   CI$

   Cinderella Book

   Classic C

   clean

   click of death

   CLM

   clobber

   clock

   clocks

   clone

   clone-and-hack coding

   clover key

   clue-by-four

   clustergeeking

   co-lo

   coaster

   coaster toaster

   COBOL

   COBOL fingers

   cobweb site

   code

   code grinder

   code monkey

   Code of the Geeks

   code police

   codes

   codewalker

   coefficient of X

   cokebottle

   cold boot

   COME FROM

   comm mode

   command key

   comment out

   Commonwealth Hackish

   compact

   compiler jock

   compo

   compress

   Compu$erve

   computer confetti

   computron

   con

   condition out

   condom

   confuser

   connector conspiracy

   cons

   considered harmful

   console

   console jockey

   content-free

   control-C

   control-O

   control-Q

   control-S

   Conway's Law

   cookbook

   cooked mode

   cookie

   cookie bear

   cookie file

   cookie jar

   cookie monster

   copious free time

   copper

   copy protection

   copybroke

   copycenter

   copyleft

   copyparty

   copywronged

   core

   core cancer

   core dump

   core leak

   Core Wars

   cosmic rays

   cough and die

   courier

   cow orker

   cowboy

   CP/M

   CPU Wars

   crack

   crack root

   cracker

   cracking

   crank

   crapplet

   CrApTeX

   crash

   crash and burn

   crawling horror

   CRC handbook

   creationism

   creep

   creeping elegance

   creeping featurism

   creeping featuritis

   cretin

   cretinous

   crippleware

   critical mass

   crlf

   crock

   cross-post

   crossload

   crudware

   cruft

   cruft together

   cruftsmanship

   crufty

   crumb

   crunch

   cryppie

   cthulhic

   CTSS

   cube

   cup holder

   cursor dipped in X

   cuspy

   cut a tape

   cybercrud

   cyberpunk

   cyberspace

   cycle

   cycle of reincarnation

   cycle server

   cypherpunk

   C|N>K

:C: n.

        1. The third letter of the English alphabet.

        2. ASCII 1000011.

        3. The name of a programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie
        during the early 1970s and immediately used to reimplement {Unix};
        so called because many features derived from an earlier compiler
        named `B' in commemoration of its parent, BCPL. (BCPL was in turn
        descended from an earlier Algol-derived language, CPL.) Before
        Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing {C++}, there was
        a humorous debate over whether C's successor should be named `D' or
        `P'. C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980
        and is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer
        applications programming. C is often described, with a mixture of
        fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as "a
        language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly
        language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly
        language" See also {languages of choice}, {indent style}.

        The Crunchly on the left sounds a little ANSI.

:C Programmer's Disease: n.

        The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but
        supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're
        lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble
        to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user
        later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the
        afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the
        table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future
        expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable
        feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's
        (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple
        opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences of {fandango on
        core}. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot
        comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further
        disgruntle the user.

:C&C: //

        [common, esp. on news.admin.net-abuse.email] Contraction of "Coffee
        & Cats". This frequently occurs as a warning label on USENET posts
        that are likely to cause you to {snarf} coffee onto your keyboard
        and startle the cat off your lap.

:C++: /C'pluhspluhs/, n.

        Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to
        {C}. Now one of the {languages of choice}, although many hackers
        still grumble that it is the successor to either Algol 68 or Ada
        (depending on generation), and a prime example of {second-system
        effect}. Almost anything that can be done in any language can be
        done in C++, but it requires a {language lawyer} to know what is and
        what is not legal -- the design is almost too large to hold in even
        hackers' heads. Much of the {cruft} results from C++'s attempt to be
        backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said in his
        retrospective book The Design and Evolution of C++ (p. 207), "Within
        C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get
        out." [Many hackers would now add "Yes, and it's called {Java}"
        --ESR]

        Nowadays we say this of C++.

:calculator: n.

        Syn. for {bitty box}.

:Camel Book: n.

        Universally recognized nickname for the book Programming Perl, by
        Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and Associates 1991,
        ISBN 0-937175-64-1 (second edition 1996, ISBN 1-56592-149-6; third
        edition 2000, 0-596-00027-8, adding as authors Tom Christiansen and
        Jon Orwant but dropping Randal Schwartz). The definitive reference
        on {Perl}.

:camelCase:

        A variable in a programming language is sait to be camelCased when
        all words but the first are capitalized. This practice contrasts
        with the C tradition of either running syllables together or marking
        syllable breaks with underscores; thus, where a C programmer would
        write thisverylongname or this_very_long_name, the camelCased
        version would be thisVeryLongName. This practice is common in
        certain language communities (formerly Pascal; today Java and Visual
        Basic) and tends to be associated with object-oriented programming.

        Compare {BiCapitalization}; but where that practice is primarily
        associated with marketing, camelCasing is not aimed at impressing
        anybody, and hackers consider it respectable.

:camelCasing:

        See {PascalCasing}.

:can't happen:

        The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition
        that should never be true, for example a file size computed as
        negative. Often, such a condition being true indicates data
        corruption or a faulty algorithm; it is almost always handled by
        emitting a fatal error message and terminating or crashing, since
        there is little else that can be done. Some case variant of "can't
        happen" is also often the text emitted if the `impossible' error
        actually happens! Although "can't happen" events are genuinely
        infrequent in production code, programmers wise enough to check for
        them habitually are often surprised at how frequently they are
        triggered during development and how many headaches checking for
        them turns out to head off. See also {firewall code} (sense 2).

:cancelbot: /kan'selbot/

        [Usenet: compound, cancel + robot]

        1. Mythically, a {robocanceller}

        2. In reality, most cancelbots are manually operated by being fed
        lists of spam message IDs.

:Cancelmoose[tm]: /kan'selmoos/

        [Usenet] The archetype and model of all good {spam}-fighters. Once
        upon a time, the 'Moose would send out spam-cancels and then post
        notice anonymously to news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and
        alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose stepped to the fore on its
        own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when spam-cancels were
        irregular and disorganized, and behaved altogether admirably --
        fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and criticism,
        all without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm]
        quickly gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all
        three above-mentioned groups.

        Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even
        any good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address
        (<moose@cm.org>) and a web site (http://www.cm.org/.) By early 1995,
        others had stepped into the spam-cancel business, and appeared to be
        comporting themselves well, after the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose
        has now gotten out of the business, and is more interested in ending
        spam (and cancels) entirely.

:candygrammar: n.

        A programming-language grammar that is mostly {syntactic sugar}; the
        term is also a play on `candygram'. {COBOL}, Apple's Hypertalk
        language, and a lot of the so-called `4GL' database languages share
        this property. The usual intent of such designs is that they be as
        English-like as possible, on the theory that they will then be
        easier for unskilled people to program. This intention comes to
        grief on the reality that syntax isn't what makes programming hard;
        it's the mental effort and organization required to specify an
        algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the invariable result is that
        `candygrammar' languages are just as difficult to program in as
        terser ones, and far more painful for the experienced hacker.

        [The overtones from the old Chevy Chase skit on Saturday Night Live
        should not be overlooked. This was a Jaws parody. Someone lurking
        outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus ways to get the
        occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the background.
        The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When the door is
        opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. [There is a
        similar gag in "Blazing Saddles" --ESR] There is a moral here for
        those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty
        much the same ones who remember Monty Python sketches, all it takes
        is the word "Candygram!", suitably timed, to get people rolling on
        the floor. -- GLS]

:canonical: adj.

        [very common; historically, `according to religious law'] The usual
        or standard state or manner of something. This word has a somewhat
        more technical meaning in mathematics. Two formulas such as 9 + x
        and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same
        thing, but the second one is in canonical form because it is written
        in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there
        are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in
        canonical form. The jargon meaning, a relaxation of the technical
        meaning, acquired its present loading in computer-science culture
        largely through its prominence in Alonzo Church's work in
        computation theory and mathematical logic (see {Knights of the
        Lambda Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}.

        Non-technical academics do not use the adjective `canonical' in any
        of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use
        the nouns canon and canonicity (not **canonicalness or
        **canonicality). The canon of a given author is the complete body of
        authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock
        Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). `The canon' is the
        body of works in a given field (e.g., works of literature, or of
        art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for
        scholars to investigate.

        The word `canon' has an interesting history. It derives ultimately
        from the Greek kanon (akin to the English `cane') referring to a
        reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek
        the word `canon' meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a
        canon of scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a
        standard or a rule for the religion. The above non-techspeak
        academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted
        body of work. Alongside this usage was the promulgation of `canons'
        (`rules') for the government of the Catholic Church. The techspeak
        usages ("according to religious law") derive from this use of the
        Latin `canon'.

        Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic
        contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg,
        new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use
        of jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of
        using as much of it as possible in his presence, and eventually it
        began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word
        canonical in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha!
        We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he
        say?" Steele: "Bob just used `canonical' in the canonical way."

        Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly
        defined as the way hackers normally expect things to be. Thus, a
        hacker may claim with a straight face that `according to religious
        law' is not the canonical meaning of canonical.

:careware: /keir'weir/, n.

        A variety of {shareware} for which either the author suggests that
        some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy directed to
        charity is included on top of the distribution charge. Syn.:
        {charityware}; compare {crippleware}, sense 2.

:cargo cult programming: n.

        A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion
        of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo
        cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of
        working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither
        the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever
        fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}, {voodoo
        programming}).

        The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that
        grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of
        these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and
        military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of
        the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the
        war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's
        characterization of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his
        book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W. W. Norton & Co, New York
        1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).

:cascade: n.

        1. A huge volume of spurious error-message output produced by a
        compiler with poor error recovery. Too frequently, one trivial
        syntax error (such as a missing `)' or `}') throws the parser out of
        synch so that much of the remaining program text is interpreted as
        garbaged or ill-formed.

        2. A chain of Usenet followups, each adding some trivial variation
        or riposte to the text of the previous one, all of which is
        reproduced in the new message; an {include war} in which the object
        is to create a sort of communal graffito.

:case and paste: n.

        [from `cut and paste']

        The addition of a new {feature} to an existing system by selecting
        the code from an existing feature and pasting it in with minor
        changes. Common in telephony circles because most operations in a
        telephone switch are selected using case statements. Leads to
        {software bloat}.

        In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by
        Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of
        text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. The
        term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting
        mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to
        integrate the code for two similar cases.

        At {DEC} (now HP), this is sometimes called clone-and-hack coding.

:case mod:

        [from `case modification']

        1. Originally a kind of hardware hack on a PC intended to support
        {overclocking} (e.g. with cutouts for oversized fans, or a
        freon-based or water-cooling system).

        2. Nowadays, similar drastic surgery that's done just to make a
        machine look nifty. The commonest case mods combine acrylic case
        windows with LEDs to give the machine an eerie interior glow like a
        B-movie flying saucer. More advanced forms of case modding involve
        building machines into weird and unlikely shapes. The effect can be
        quite artistic, but one of the unwritten rules is that the machine
        must continue to function as a computer.

:casters-up mode: n.

        [IBM, prob. fr. slang belly up] Yet another synonym for `broken' or
        `down'. Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or
        software) which is down may be already being restarted before the
        failure is noticed, whereas one which is casters up is usually a
        good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not
        responsible for fixing it).

:casting the runes: n.

        What a {guru} does when you ask him or her to run a particular
        program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp.
        used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from
        what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes},
        {examining the entrails}; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in
        Some AI Koans (in Appendix A).

        A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most
        talented systems designers used to be called out occasionally to
        service machines which the {field circus} had given up on. Since he
        knew the design inside out, he could often find faults simply by
        listening to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on
        this by going to some site where the field circus had just spent the
        last two weeks solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram
        of the system out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones
        and cast them over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a
        minute, and then tell them that a certain module needed replacing.
        The system would start working again immediately upon the
        replacement.

:cat: vt.

        [from catenate via {Unix} cat(1)]

        1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
        output sink without pause (syn. {blast}).

        2. By extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared
        target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage:
        considered silly. Rare outside Unix sites. See also {dd}, {BLT}.

        Among Unix fans, cat(1) is considered an excellent example of
        user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without
        such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because
        it does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works
        with any sort of data.

        Among Unix haters, cat(1) is considered the {canonical} example of
        bad user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name.
        It is far more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than
        to concatenate two files. The name cat for the former operation is
        just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}.

        Of such oppositions are {holy wars} made.... See also {UUOC}.

:catatonic: adj.

        Describes a condition of suspended animation in which something is
        so {wedged} or {hung} that it makes no response. If you are typing
        on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the
        letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're
        asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia
        (possibly because it has crashed). "There I was in the middle of a
        winning game of {nethack} and it went catatonic on me! Aaargh!"
        Compare {buzz}.

:cathedral: n.,adj.

        [see {bazaar} for derivation] The `classical' mode of software
        engineering long thought to be necessarily implied by {Brooks's
        Law}. Features small teams, tight project control, and long release
        intervals. This term came into use after analysis of the Linux
        experience suggested there might be something wrong (or at least
        incomplete) in the classical assumptions.

:cd tilde: /CD tild@/, vi.

        To go home. From the Unix C-shell and Korn-shell command cd ~, which
        takes one to one's $HOME (cd with no arguments happens to do the
        same thing). By extension, may be used with other arguments; thus,
        over an electronic chat link, cd ~coffee would mean "I'm going to
        the coffee machine."

:CDA: /CDA/

        The "Communications Decency Act", passed as section 502 of a major
        telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 ("Black
        Thursday"). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a
        communication which is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or
        indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another
        person." It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who "knowingly"
        makes accessible to minors any message that "describes, in terms
        patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards,
        sexual or excretory activities or organs".

        While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the
        putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the
        bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw
        discussion of abortion on the Internet.

        To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights
        was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A
        firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass
        demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their {home page}s
        black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and
        computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional
        challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision
        handed down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed
        by the U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 ("White Thursday"). See
        also {Exon}.

:cdr: /ku'dr/, /kuhdr/, vt.

        [from LISP] To skip past the first item from a list of things
        (generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures,
        which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its
        argument). In the form cdr down, to trace down a list of elements:
        "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also {loop
        through}.

        Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 704 that hosted
        the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called
        the address and decrement parts. The term cdr was originally
        Contents of Decrement part of Register. Similarly, car stood for
        Contents of Address part of Register.

        The cdr and car operations have since become bases for formation of
        compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls, for example, a
        programming project in which strings were represented as linked
        lists; the get-character and skip-character operations were of
        course called CHAR and CHDR.

:chad: /chad/, n.

        1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they
        have been separated from the printed portion. Also called {selvage},
        {perf}, and {ripoff}.

        2. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape;
        this has also been called chaff, computer confetti, and keypunch
        droppings. It's reported that this was very old Army slang
        (associated with teletypewriters before the computer era), and has
        been occasionally sighted in directions for punched-card vote
        tabulators long after it passed out of live use among computer
        programmers in the late 1970s. This sense of `chad' returned to the
        mainstream during the finale of the hotly disputed U.S. presidential
        election in 2000 via stories about the Florida vote recounts. Note
        however that in the revived mainstream usage chad is not a mass noun
        and `a chad' is a single piece of the stuff.

        There is an urban legend that chad (sense 2) derives from the
        Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little
        u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded back,
        rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if
        the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other
        keypunches made had to be `chad'. However, serious attempts to track
        down "Chadless" as a personal name or U.S. trademark have failed,
        casting doubt on this etymology -- and the U.S. Patent
        Classification System uses "chadless" (small c) as an adjective,
        suggesting that "chadless" derives from "chad" and not the other way
        around. There is another legend that the word was originally
        acronymic, standing for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris", but this has
        all the earmarks of a {backronym}. It has also been noted that the
        word "chad" is Scots dialect for gravel, but nobody has proposed any
        plausible reason that card chaff should be thought of as gravel.
        None of these etymologies is really plausible.

        This is one way to be {chad}less.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 75-10-04. The previous
        cartoon was 74-12-29.)

:chad box: n.

        A metal box about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large
        wastebasket), for collecting the {chad} (sense 2) that accumulated
        in {Iron Age} card punches. You had to open the covers of the card
        punch periodically and empty the chad box. The {bit bucket} was
        notionally the equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was
        typically across the room in another great gray-and-blue box.

:chain:

        1. vi. [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] To hand off execution to
        a child or successor without going through the {OS} command
        interpreter that invoked it. The state of the parent program is lost
        and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be
        common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for
        backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in
        particular, most Unix programmers will think of this as an {exec}.
        Oppose the more modern subshell.

        2. n. A series of linked data areas within an operating system or
        application. Chain rattling is the process of repeatedly running
        through the linked data areas searching for one which is of interest
        to the executing program. The implication is that there is a very
        large number of links on the chain.

:chainik: /chi:'nik/

        [Russian, literally "teapot"] Almost synonymous with {muggle}.
        Implies both ignorance and a certain amount of willingness to learn,
        but does not necessarily imply as little experience or short
        exposure time as {newbie} and is not as derogatory as {luser}. Both
        a novice user and someone using a system for a long time without any
        understanding of the internals can be referred to as chainiks. Very
        widespread term in Russian hackish, often used in an English context
        by Russian-speaking hackers esp. in Israel (e.g. "Our new colleague
        is a complete chainik"). FidoNet discussion groups often had a
        "chainik" subsection for newbies and, well, old chainiks (eg.
        su.asm.chainik, ru.linux.chainik, ru.html.chainik). Public projects
        often have a chainik mailing list to keep the chainiks off the
        developers' and experienced users' discussions. Today, the word is
        slowly slipping into mainstream Russian due to the Russian
        translation of the popular yellow-black covered "foobar for dummies"
        series, which (correctly) uses "chainik" for "dummy", but its
        frequent (though not excessive) use is still characteristic
        hacker-speak.

:channel: n.

        [IRC] The basic unit of discussion on {IRC}. Once one joins a
        channel, everything one types is read by others on that channel.
        Channels are named with strings that begin with a `#' sign and can
        have topic descriptions (which are generally irrelevant to the
        actual subject of discussion). Some notable channels are #initgame,
        #hottub, callahans, and #report. At times of international crisis,
        #report has hundreds of members, some of whom take turns listening
        to various news services and typing in summaries of the news, or in
        some cases, giving first-hand accounts of the action (e.g., Scud
        missile attacks in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991).

:channel hopping: n.

        [common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on {IRC}, or a GEnie
        chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to
        another at a party. This term may derive from the TV watcher's
        idiom, channel surfing.

:channel op: /chan'l op/, n.

        [IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular {IRC}
        channel; commonly abbreviated chanop or CHOP or just op (as of 2000
        these short forms have almost crowded out the parent usage). These
        privileges include the right to {kick} users, to change various
        status bits, and to make others into CHOPs.

:chanop: /chan'op/, n.

        [IRC] See {channel op}.

:char: /keir/, /char/, /kar/, n.

        Shorthand for `character'. Esp.: used by C programmers, as char is
        C's typename for character data.

:charityware: /cha'riteeweir`/, n.

        Syn. {careware}.

:chase pointers:

        1. vi. To go through multiple levels of indirection, as in
        traversing a linked list or graph structure. Used esp. by
        programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common data
        type. This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when used of human
        networks. "I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you could tell me who to
        talk to about...." See {dangling pointer} and {snap}.

        2. [Cambridge] pointer chase or pointer hunt: The process of going
        through a {core dump} (sense 1), interactively or on a large piece
        of paper printed with hex {runes}, following dynamic
        data-structures. Used only in a debugging context.

:chawmp: n.

        [University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This
        term was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it
        is said to have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was
        coined in revolt against the promiscuous use of `word' for anything
        between 16 and 32 bits; `word' has an additional special meaning for
        FORTH hacks that made the overloading intolerable. For similar
        reasons, /gaw'bl/ (spelled `gawble' or possibly `gawbul') was in use
        as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full machine word, but our
        sources are unclear on this). These terms are more easily understood
        if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of `chomp' and
        `gobble' pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For
        general discussion of similar terms, see {nybble}.

:check: n.

        A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to refer to
        actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. E.g., a
        parity check is the result of a hardware-detected parity error.
        Recorded here because the word often humorously extended to
        non-technical problems. For example, the term child check has been
        used to refer to the problems caused by a small child who is curious
        to know what happens when s/he presses all the cute buttons on a
        computer's console (of course, this particular problem could have
        been prevented with {molly-guard}s).

:cheerfully: adv.

        See {happily}.

:chemist: n.

        [Cambridge] Someone who wastes computer time on {number-crunching}
        when you'd far rather the machine were doing something more
        productive, such as working out anagrams of your name or printing
        Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns. May or may not refer to
        someone who actually studies chemistry.

:Chernobyl chicken: n.

        See {laser chicken}.

:Chernobyl packet: /chernoh'b@l pak'@t/, n.

        A network packet that induces a {broadcast storm} and/or {network
        meltdown}, in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl
        in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram
        that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ether
        and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the
        subnetworks being gated between. Compare {Christmas tree packet}.

:chicken head: n.

        [Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly
        resembles a poultry part (within Commodore itself the logo was
        always called chicken lips). Rendered in ASCII as `C='. With the
        arguable exception of the {Amiga}, Commodore's machines were
        notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es, albeit people have written
        multitasking Unix-like operating systems with TCP/IP networking for
        them. Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip K. Dick's novel
        Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the movie Blade
        Runner; the novel is now sold under that title), in which a
        `chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average intelligence.

:chickenboner: n.

        [spamfighters] Derogatory term for a spammer. The image that goes
        with it is of an overweight redneck with bad teeth living in a
        trailer, hunched in semi-darkness over his computer and surrounded
        by rotting chicken bones in half-eaten KFC buckets and empty beer
        cans. See http://www.spamfaq.net/terminology.shtml#chickenboner for
        discussion.

:chiclet keyboard: n.

        A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber
        or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum. (Chiclets is
        the brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does in fact
        resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards.) Used esp. to describe the
        original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because
        they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop products got
        launched using them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal
        unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a
        digital watch any more.

:Chinese Army technique: n.

        Syn. {Mongolian Hordes technique}.

:choad: /chohd/, n.

        Synonym for `penis' used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the
        denizens thereof. They say: "We think maybe it's from Middle English
        but we're all too damned lazy to check the OED." [I'm not. It isn't.
        --ESR] This term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s
        underground comics, and to have been recently sighted in the Beavis
        and Butthead cartoons. Speakers of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati
        languages have confirmed that `choad' is in fact an Indian
        vernacular word equivalent to `fuck'; it is therefore likely to have
        entered English slang via the British Raj.

:choke: v.

        [common] To reject input, often ungracefully. "NULs make System V's
        lpr(1) choke." "I tried building an {EMACS} binary to use {X}, but
        cpp(1) choked on all those #defines." See {barf}, {vi}.

:chomp: vi.

        1. To {lose}; specifically, to chew on something of which more was
        bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth.

        2. To bite the bag; See {bagbiter}.

        A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold the
        four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. Now
        open and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much
        like what Pac-Man does in the classic video game, though this
        pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means `chomp
        chomp' (see Verb Doubling in the Jargon Construction section of the
        Prependices). The hand may be pointed at the object of complaint,
        and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. Doing this to
        a person is equivalent to saying "You chomper!" If you point the
        gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some
        failure. You might do this if someone told you that a program you
        had written had failed in some surprising way and you felt dumb for
        not having anticipated it.

:chomper: n.

        Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See {loser},
        {bagbiter}, {chomp}.

:CHOP: /chop/, n.

        [IRC] See {channel op}.

:Christmas tree: n.

        A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring rows of
        blinking red and green LEDs suggestive of Christmas lights.

:Christmas tree packet: n.

        A packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is in
        use. See {kamikaze packet}, {Chernobyl packet}. (The term doubtless
        derives from a fanciful image of each little option bit being
        represented by a different-colored light bulb, all turned on.)
        Compare {Godzillagram}.

:chrome: n.

        [from automotive slang via wargaming] Showy features added to
        attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a
        system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they certainly
        are pretty chrome!" Distinguished from {bells and whistles} by the
        fact that the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own
        desires for featurefulness. Often used as a term of contempt.

:chug: vi.

        To run slowly; to {grind} or {grovel}. "The disk is chugging like
        crazy."

:Church of the SubGenius: n.

        A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism} launched in 1981 as a spoof of
        fundamentalist Christianity by the `Reverend' Ivan Stang, a
        brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers
        as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as "Bob" the
        divine drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and
        the Stark Fist of Removal. Much SubGenius theory is concerned with
        the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of {slack}.
        There is a home page at http://www.subgenius.com/.

:CI$: //, n.

        Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service. The dollar sign
        refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often used in {sig
        block}s just before a CompuServe address. Syn. {Compu$erve}.

:Cinderella Book: n.

        [CMU] Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation,
        by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, (Addison-Wesley, 1979). So
        called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella)
        sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope coming
        out of it. On the back cover, the device is in shambles after she
        has (inevitably) pulled on the rope. See also {book titles}.

:Classic C: /klas'ik C/, n.

        [a play on `Coke Classic'] The C programming language as defined in
        the first edition of {K&R}, with some small additions. It is also
        known as `K&R C'. The name came into use while C was being
        standardized by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also `C Classic'.

        An analogous construction is sometimes applied elsewhere: thus, `X
        Classic', where X = Star Trek (referring to the original TV series)
        or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus machines as opposed to the
        PS/2 series). This construction is especially used of product series
        in which the newer versions are considered serious losers relative
        to the older ones.

:clean:

        1. adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies `elegance in
        the small', that is, a design or implementation that may not hold
        any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive
        and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is
        `grungy' or {crufty}.

        2. v. To remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce
        clutter: "I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and
        now have 100 Meg free on that partition."

:click of death: n.

        A syndrome of certain Iomega ZIP drives, named for the clicking
        noise that is caused by the malady. An affected drive will, after
        accepting a disk, start making a clicking noise and refuse to eject
        the disk. A common solution for retrieving the disk is to insert the
        bent end of a paper clip into a small hole adjacent to the slot.
        "Clicked" disks are generally unusable after being retrieved from
        the drive.

        The clicking noise is caused by the drive's read/write head bumping
        against its movement stops when it fails to find track 0 on the
        disk, causing the head to become misaligned. This can happen when
        the drive has been subjected to a physical shock, or when the disk
        is exposed to an electromagnetic field, such as that of the CRT.
        Another common cause is when a package of disks is armed with an
        anti-theft strip at a store. When the clerk scans the product to
        disarm the strip, it can demagnetize the disks, wiping out track 0.

        There is evidence that the click of death is a communicable disease;
        a "clicked" disk can cause the read/write head of a "clean" drive to
        become misaligned. Iomega at first denied the existence of the click
        of death, but eventually offered to replace free of charge any
        drives affected by the condition.

:CLM: /CLM/

        [Sun: `Career Limiting Move']

        1. n. An action endangering one's future prospects of getting plum
        projects and raises, and possibly one's job: "His Halloween costume
        was a parody of his manager. He won the prize for `best CLM'."

        2. adj. Denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a customer
        and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing: "That's a CLM
        bug!"

:clobber: vt.

        To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end of the
        array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash},
        and {smash the stack}.

:clock:

        n.,v.

        1. [techspeak] The master oscillator that steps a CPU or other
        digital circuit through its paces. This has nothing to do with the
        time of day, although the software counter that keeps track of the
        latter may be derived from the former.

        2. vt. To run a CPU or other digital circuit at a particular rate.
        "If you clock it at 1000MHz, it gets warm.". See {overclock}.

        3. vt. To force a digital circuit from one state to the next by
        applying a single clock pulse. "The data must be stable 10ns before
        you clock the latch."

:clocks: n.

        Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally corresponds
        to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The relative execution
        times of instructions on a machine are usually discussed in clocks
        rather than absolute fractions of a second; one good reason for this
        is that clock speeds for various models of the machine may increase
        as technology improves, and it is usually the relative times one is
        interested in when discussing the instruction set. Compare {cycle},
        {jiffy}.

:clone: n.

        1. An exact duplicate: "Our product is a clone of their product."
        Implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or by
        reverse-engineering. Also connotes lower price.

        2. A shoddy, spurious copy: "Their product is a clone of our
        product."

        3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or
        trade secret protections: "Your product is a clone of my product."
        This use implies legal action is pending.

        4. [obs] PC clone: a PC-BUS/ISA/EISA/PCI-compatible 80x86-based
        microcomputer (this use is sometimes spelled klone or PClone). These
        invariably have much more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes
        they resemble. This term fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of
        machines it describes are now simply PCs or Intel machines.

        5. [obs.] In the construction Unix clone: An OS designed to deliver
        a Unix-lookalike environment without Unix license fees, or with
        additional `mission-critical' features such as support for real-time
        programming. {Linux} and the free BSDs killed off this product
        category and the term with it.

        6. v. To make an exact copy of something. "Let me clone that" might
        mean "I want to borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let
        me get a copy of that file before you {mung} it".

:clone-and-hack coding: n.

        [DEC] Syn. {case and paste}.

:clover key: n.

        [Mac users] See {feature key}.

:clue-by-four:

        [Usenet: portmanteau, clue + two-by-four] The notional stick with
        which one whacks an aggressively clueless person. This term derives
        from a western American folk saying about training a mule "First,
        you got to hit him with a two-by-four. That's to get his attention."
        The clue-by-four is a close relative of the {LART}. Syn. clue stick.
        This metaphor is commonly elaborated; your editor once heard a
        hacker say "I smite you with the great sword Cluebringer!"

:clustergeeking: /kluh'st@rgee`king/, n.

        [CMU] Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework
        than most people spend breathing.

:co-lo: /koh'loh`/, n.

        [very common; first heard c.1995] Short for `co-location', used of a
        machine you own that is physically sited on the premises of an ISP
        in order to take advantage of the ISP's direct access to lots of
        network bandwidth. Often in the phrases co-lo box or co-lo machines.
        Co-lo boxes are typically web and FTP servers remote-administered by
        their owners, who may seldom or never visit the actual site.

:coaster: n.

        1. Unuseable CD produced during failed attempt at writing to
        writeable or re-writeable CD media. Certainly related to the
        coaster-like shape of a CD, and the relative value of these
        failures. "I made a lot of coasters before I got a good CD."

        2. Useless CDs received in the mail from the likes of AOL, MSN, CI$,
        Prodigy, ad nauseam.

        In the U.K., beermat is often used in these senses.

:coaster toaster:

        A writer for recordable CD-Rs, especially cheap IDE models that tend
        to produce a high proportion of {coaster}s.

:COBOL: /koh'bol/, n.

        [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with {evil}.) A
        weak, verbose, and flabby language used by {code grinder}s to do
        boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes. Hackers believe
        that all COBOL programmers are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no
        self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the
        language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions
        of disgust or horror. One popular one is Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous
        observation that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching
        should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." (from
        Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective) See also
        {fear and loathing}, {software rot}.

:COBOL fingers: /koh'bol finggrz/, n.

        Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from
        coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all
        reason (see {candygrammar}); thus it is alleged that programming too
        much in COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the
        endless typing. "I refuse to type in all that source code again; it
        would give me COBOL fingers!"

:cobweb site: n.

        A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated so long it has
        figuratively grown cobwebs.

:code:

        1. n. The stuff that software writers write, either in source form
        or after translation by a compiler or assembler. Often used in
        opposition to "data", which is the stuff that code operates on.
        Among hackers this is a mass noun, as in "How much code does it take
        to do a {bubble sort}?", or "The code is loaded at the high end of
        RAM." Among scientific programmers it is sometimes a count noun
        equilvalent to "program"; thus they may speak of "codes" in the
        plural. Anyone referring to software as "the software codes" is
        probably a {newbie} or a {suit}.

        2. v. To write code. In this sense, always refers to source code
        rather than compiled. "I coded an Emacs clone in two hours!" This
        verb is a bit of a cultural marker associated with the Unix and
        minicomputer traditions (and lately Linux); people within that
        culture prefer v. `code' to v. `program' whereas outside it the
        reverse is normally true.

:code grinder: n.

        1. A {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength by
        banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in RPG
        and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, the code
        grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage
        consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In
        times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the
        tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The {code
        grinder}'s milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get and
        still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See {Real World},
        {suit}.

        2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's
        creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive
        technique, rule-boundedness, {brute force}, and utter lack of
        imagination.

        Contrast {hacker}, {Real Programmer}.

:code monkey: n

        1. A person only capable of grinding out code, but unable to perform
        the higher-primate tasks of software architecture, analysis, and
        design. Mildly insulting. Often applied to the most junior people on
        a programming team.

        2. Anyone who writes code for a living; a programmer.

        3. A self-deprecating way of denying responsibility for a
        {management} decision, or of complaining about having to live with
        such decisions. As in "Don't ask me why we need to write a compiler
        in COBOL, I'm just a code monkey."

:Code of the Geeks: n.

        see {geek code}.

:code police: n.

        [by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] A mythical team
        of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office
        and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used
        either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style
        violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice
        under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive {weenie}s.
        "Dike out that goto or the code police will get you!" The ironic
        usage is perhaps more common.

:codes: n.

        [scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who
        hack supercomputers and heavy-duty {number-crunching}, rare to
        unknown elsewhere (if you say "codes" to hackers outside scientific
        computing, their first association is likely to be "and cyphers").

:codewalker: n.

        A program component that traverses other programs for a living.
        Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do
        cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other
        utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn
        into codewalkers. As in "This new vgrind feature would require a
        codewalker to implement."

:coefficient of X: n.

        Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors.
        Four particularly important ones involve the terms coefficient,
        factor, index of X, and quotient. They are often loosely applied to
        things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle
        distinctions among them that convey information about the way the
        speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. Foo factor
        and foo quotient tend to describe something for which the issue is
        one of presence or absence. The canonical example is {fudge factor}.
        It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply
        acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of liking a
        movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the
        property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would have won
        except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I would have won
        except for the luck factor", but using quotient emphasizes that it
        was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck
        overpowering your own). Foo index and coefficient of foo both tend
        to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something
        that can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or
        person as having a high bogosity index, whereas you would be less
        likely to speak of a high bogosity factor. Foo index suggests that
        foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane
        cost-of-living index; coefficient of foo suggests that foo is a
        fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice
        between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some
        people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus
        say coefficient of bogosity, whereas others might feel it is a
        combination of factors and thus say bogosity index.

:cokebottle: /kohk'botl/, n.

        Any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type because
        it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to complain about the
        `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL people
        complained right back about the `escape-escape-cokebottle' commands
        at MIT. After the demise of the {space-cadet keyboard}, cokebottle
        faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to
        describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command.
        It may be due for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif window
        manager, mwm(1), has a reserved keystroke for switching to the
        default set of keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe
        it or not) `control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). Since the exclamation
        point looks a lot like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif hackers
        have begun referring to this keystroke as cokebottle. See also
        {quadruple bucky}.

:cold boot: n.

        See {boot}.

:COME FROM: n.

        A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to'; COME FROM
        <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of
        trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would
        quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement
        following the COME FROM. COME FROM was first proposed in R. Lawrence
        Clark's A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming, which
        appeared in a 1973 {Datamation} issue (and was reprinted in the
        April 1984 issue of Communications of the ACM). This parodied the
        then-raging `structured programming' {holy wars} (see {considered
        harmful}). Mythically, some variants are the assigned COME FROM and
        the computed COME FROM (parodying some nasty control constructs in
        FORTRAN and some extended BASICs). Of course, multi-tasking (or
        non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than one COME
        FROM statement coming from the same label.

        In some ways the FORTRAN DO looks like a COME FROM statement. After
        the terminating statement number/CONTINUE is reached, control
        continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs
        would allow arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the
        statement, leading to examples like:

              DO 10 I=1,LIMIT
        C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the
        C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti...
              WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)
         10   FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)

        in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10. (This
        is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have
        anything to do with the flow of control at all!) While sufficiently
        astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of COME FROM
        statement isn't completely general. After all, control will
        eventually pass to the following statement. The implementation of
        the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN, ca. 1975 (though a
        roughly similar feature existed on the IBM 7040 ten years earlier).
        The statement AT 100 would perform a COME FROM 100. It was intended
        strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to
        anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible
        things had already been perpetrated in production languages,
        however; doubters need only contemplate the ALTER verb in {COBOL}.
        COME FROM was supported under its own name for the first time 15
        years later, in C-INTERCAL (see {INTERCAL}, {retrocomputing});
        knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock.

:comm mode: /kom mohd/, n.

        [ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the first word may
        be spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for {talk mode}.

:command key: n.

        [Mac users] Syn. {feature key}.

:comment out: vt.

        To surround a section of code with comment delimiters or to prefix
        every line in the section with a comment marker; this prevents it
        from being compiled or interpreted. Often done when the code is
        redundant or obsolete, but is being left in the source to make the
        intent of the active code clearer; also when the code in that
        section is broken and you want to bypass it in order to debug some
        other part of the code. Compare {condition out}, usually the
        preferred technique in languages (such as {C}) that make it
        possible.

:Commonwealth Hackish: n.

        Hacker jargon as spoken in English outside the U.S., esp. in the
        British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are
        more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and `soc', etc., as
        spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/.
        Dots in {newsgroup} names (especially two-component names) tend to
        be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather
        than /sohsh wibl/).

        Preferred {metasyntactic variable}s include {blurgle}, eek, ook,
        frodo, and bilbo; {wibble}, wobble, and in emergencies wubble; flob,
        banana, tom, dick, harry, wombat, frog, {fish}, {womble} and so on
        and on (see {foo}, sense 4). Alternatives to verb doubling include
        suffixes -o-rama, frenzy (as in feeding frenzy), and city (examples:
        "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!").

        All the generic differences within the anglophone world inevitably
        show themselves in the associated hackish dialects. The Greek
        letters beta and zeta are usually pronounced /bee't@/ and /zeet@/;
        meta may also be pronounced /mee't@/. Various punctuators (and even
        letters - Z is called `zed', not `zee') are named differently: most
        crucially, for hackish, where Americans use `parens', `brackets' and
        `braces' for (), [] and {}, Commonwealth English uses `brackets',
        `square brackets' and `curly brackets', though `parentheses' may be
        used for the first; the exclamation mark, `!', is called pling
        rather than bang and the pound sign, `#', is called hash;
        furthermore, the term `the pound sign' is understood to mean the 
        (of course). Canadian hacker slang, as with mainstream language,
        mixes American and British usages about evenly.

        See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey},
        {fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal},
        {leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger},
        {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {raster blaster}, {RTBM}, {seggie},
        {spod}, {sun lounge}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features},
        {weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad
        Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays},
        {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily},
        {mess-dos}, {nybble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak}, {womble},
        and {xyzzy}.

:compact: adj.

        Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be
        apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing
        created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer
        errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does
        not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and
        FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become
        non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't
        merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans of
        {Classic C} maintain that ANSI C is no longer compact).

:compiler jock: n.

        See {jock} (sense 2).

:compo: n.

        [{demoscene}] Finnish-originated slang for `competition'. Demo
        compos are held at a {demoparty}. The usual protocol is that several
        groups make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big screen, and
        then the party participants vote for the best one. Prizes (from
        sponsors and party entrance fees) are given. Standard compo formats
        include {intro} compos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, graphics
        compos, quick {demo} compos (build a demo within 4 hours for
        example), etc.

:compress: vt.

        [Unix] When used without a qualifier, generally refers to
        {crunch}ing of a file using a particular C implementation of
        compression by Joseph M. Orost et al.: and widely circulated via
        {Usenet}; use of {crunch} itself in this sense is rare among Unix
        hackers. Specifically, compress is built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch
        algorithm as described in "A Technique for High Performance Data
        Compression", Terry A. Welch, IEEE Computer, vol. 17, no. 6 (June
        1984), pp. 8--19.

:Compu$erve: n.

        See {CI$}. Synonyms CompuSpend and Compu$pend are also reported.

:computer confetti: n.

        Syn. {chad}. [obs.] Though this term was common at one time, this
        use of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are stiff
        and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS reports that
        he once attended a wedding at MIT during which he and a few other
        guests enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. The groom later
        grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the evening trying
        to get the stuff out of their hair.

        [2001 update: this term has passed out of use for two reasons; (1)
        the stuff it describes is now quite rare, and (2) the term {chad},
        which was half-forgotten in 1990, has enjoyed a revival. --ESR]

:computron: /kom'pyootron`/, n.

        1. [common] A notional unit of computing power combining instruction
        speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in
        instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times
        megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU Emacs, it
        doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in
        metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good,
        like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a real
        computer!}, {toy}, {crank}.

        2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of
        computation or information, in much the same way that an electron
        bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). An elaborate
        pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based on
        the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object move more
        rapidly as it is heated. It is argued that an object melts because
        the molecules have lost their information about where they are
        supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). This
        explains why computers get so hot and require air conditioning; they
        use up computrons. Conversely, it should be possible to cool down an
        object by placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed
        that this may also explain why machines that work at the factory
        fail in the computer room: the computrons there have been all used
        up by the other hardware. (The popularity of this theory probably
        owes something to the Warlock stories by Larry Niven, the best known
        being What Good is a Glass Dagger?, in which magic is fueled by an
        exhaustible natural resource called mana.)

:con: n.

        [from SF fandom] A science-fiction convention. Not used of other
        sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings. This term,
        unlike many others imported from SF-fan slang, is widely recognized
        even by hackers who aren't {fan}s. "We'd been corresponding on the
        net for months, then we met face-to-face at a con."

:condition out: vt.

        To prevent a section of code from being compiled by surrounding it
        with a conditional-compilation directive whose condition is always
        false. The {canonical} examples of these directives are #if 0 (or
        #ifdef notdef, though some find the latter {bletcherous}) and #endif
        in C. Compare {comment out}.

:condom: n.

        1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch microfloppy
        diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk envelopes. Unlike the
        write protect tab, the condom (when left on) not only impedes the
        practice of {SEX} but has also been shown to have a high failure
        rate as drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk -- and can even
        fatally frustrate insertion.

        2. The protective cladding on a {light pipe}.

        3. keyboard condom: A flexible, transparent plastic cover for a
        keyboard, designed to provide some protection against dust and
        {programming fluid} without impeding typing.

        4. elephant condom: the plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard
        boxes to protect hardware in transit.

        5. n. obs. A dummy directory /usr/tmp/sh, created to foil the {Great
        Worm} by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So named
        in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during the
        Worm crisis, and again in the text of The Internet Worm Program: An
        Analysis, Purdue Technical Report CSD-TR-823.

:confuser: n.

        Common soundalike slang for `computer'. Usually encountered in
        compounds such as confuser room, personal confuser, confuser guru.
        Usage: silly.

:connector conspiracy: n.

        [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one
        model of the {PDP-10}), none of whose connectors matched anything
        else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers
        or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products that don't
        fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all
        new stuff or expensive interface devices.

        (A closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different intent, is
        the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw heads so that
        only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can
        remove covers and make repairs or install options. A good 1990s
        example is the use of Torx screws for cable-TV set-top boxes. Older
        Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a
        long Torx screwdriver but a specialized case-cracking tool to open
        the box.)

        In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen
        somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that
        "Standards are great! There are so many of them to choose from!"
        Compare {backward combatability}.

:cons: /konz/, /kons/

        [from LISP]

        1. vt. To add a new element to a specified list, esp. at the top.
        "OK, cons picking a replacement for the console TTY onto the
        agenda."

        2. cons up: vt. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an
        example".

        In LISP itself, cons is the most fundamental operation for building
        structures. It takes any two objects and returns a dot-pair or
        two-branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. Because
        the result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build binary
        trees of any shape and complexity. Hackers think of it as a sort of
        universal constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring
        from.

:considered harmful: adj.

        [very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968
        Communications of the ACM, Goto Statement Considered Harmful, fired
        the first salvo in the structured programming wars (text at
        http://www.acm.org/classics/). As it turns out, the title under
        which the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM's editor,
        Niklaus Wirth. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony
        sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an
        article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice.
        (Years afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter
        called, inevitably, `Goto considered harmful' considered harmful''.
        In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and
        parodies have borne titles of the form X considered Y. The
        structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the
        realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has
        remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found
        at various places in this lexicon is related).

:console: n.

        1. The operator's station of a {mainframe}. In times past, this was
        a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with
        fingers on its keys. Under Unix and other modern timesharing OSes,
        such privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the console is
        just the {tty} the system was booted from. Some of the mystique
        remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent
        messages to all users from the console (on Unix, /dev/console).

        2. On microcomputer Unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as
        opposed to character-only terminals talking to a serial port).
        Typically only the console can do real graphics or run {X}.

:console jockey: n.

        See {terminal junkie}.

:content-free: adj.

        [by analogy with techspeak context-free] Used of a message that adds
        nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this adjective is
        sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually connotes derision
        for communication styles that exalt form over substance or are
        centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand.
        Perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company presidents
        and other professional manipulators. "Content-free? Uh... that's
        anything printed on glossy paper." (See also {four-color glossies}.)
        "He gave a talk on the implications of electronic networks for
        postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle aesthetic. It was content-free."

:control-C: vi.

        1. "Stop whatever you are doing." From the interrupt character used
        on many operating systems to abort a running program. Considered
        silly.

        2. interj. Among BSD Unix hackers, the canonical humorous response
        to "Give me a break!"

:control-O: vi.

        "Stop talking." From the character used on some operating systems to
        abort output but allow the program to keep on running. Generally
        means that you are not interested in hearing anything more from that
        person, at least on that topic; a standard response to someone who
        is flaming. Considered silly. Compare {control-S}.

:control-Q: vi.

        "Resume." From the ASCII DC1 or {XON} character (the pronunciation
        /X-on/ is therefore also used), used to undo a previous {control-S}.

:control-S: vi.

        "Stop talking for a second." From the ASCII DC3 or XOFF character
        (the pronunciation /X-of/ is therefore also used). Control-S differs
        from {control-O} in that the person is asked to stop talking
        (perhaps because you are on the phone) but will be allowed to
        continue when you're ready to listen to him -- as opposed to
        control-O, which has more of the meaning of "Shut up." Considered
        silly.

:Conway's Law: prov.

        The rule that the organization of the software and the organization
        of the software team will be congruent; commonly stated as "If you
        have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass
        compiler". The original statement was more general, "Organizations
        which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are
        copies of the communication structures of these organizations." This
        first appeared in the April 1968 issue of {Datamation}. Compare
        {SNAFU principle}.

        The law was named after Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker who
        wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. (The name
        `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer
        card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on them.)
        There is also Tom Cheatham's amendment of Conway's Law: "If a group
        of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes.
        Someone in the group has to be the manager."

:cookbook: n.

        [from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments
        that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs.
        Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo
        programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up} small
        programs in unknown languages. This function is analogous to the
        role of phrasebooks in human languages.

:cooked mode: n.

        [Unix, by opposition from {raw mode}] The normal character-input
        mode, with interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other
        special-character interpretations performed directly by the tty
        driver. Oppose {raw mode}, {rare mode}. This term is techspeak under
        Unix but jargon elsewhere; other operating systems often have
        similar mode distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of describing
        them has spread widely along with the C language and other Unix
        exports. Most generally, cooked mode may refer to any mode of a
        system that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to a
        program.

:cookie: n.

        A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement between
        cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me back a
        cookie." The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a
        perfect mundane example of a cookie; the only thing it's useful for
        is to relate a later transaction to this one (so you get the same
        clothes back). Syn. {magic cookie}; see also {fortune cookie}. Now
        mainstream in the specific sense of web-browser cookies.

:cookie bear: n. obs.

        Original term, pre-Sesame-Street, for what is now universally called
        a {cookie monster}. A correspondent observes "In those days, hackers
        were actually getting their yucks from...sit down now...Andy
        Williams. Yes, that Andy Williams. Seems he had a rather hip (by the
        standards of the day) TV variety show. One of the best parts of the
        show was the recurring `cookie bear' sketch. In these sketches, a
        guy in a bear suit tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of
        Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking (and
        I don't mean figuratively), `No cookies! Not now, not
        ever...NEVER!!!' And the bear would fall down. Great stuff."

:cookie file: n.

        A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format that facilitates
        retrieval by a fortune program. There are several different cookie
        files in public distribution, and site admins often assemble their
        own from various sources including this lexicon.

:cookie jar: n.

        An area of memory set aside for storing {cookie}s. Most commonly
        heard in the Atari ST community; many useful ST programs record
        their presence by storing a distinctive {magic number} in the jar.
        Programs can inquire after the presence or otherwise of other
        programs by searching the contents of the jar.

:cookie monster: n.

        [from the children's TV program Sesame Street] Any of a family of
        early (1970s) hacks reported on {TOPS-10}, {ITS}, {Multics}, and
        elsewhere that would lock up either the victim's terminal (on a
        timesharing machine) or the {console} (on a batch {mainframe}),
        repeatedly demanding "I WANT A COOKIE". The required responses
        ranged in complexity from "COOKIE" through "HAVE A COOKIE" and
        upward. Folklorist Jan Brunvand (see {FOAF}) has described these
        programs as urban legends (implying they probably never existed) but
        they existed, all right, in several different versions. See also
        {wabbit}. Interestingly, the term cookie monster appears to be a
        {retcon}; the original term was {cookie bear}.

:copious free time: n.

        [Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's song It Makes A Fellow
        Proud To Be A Soldier]

        1. [used ironically to indicate the speaker's lack of the quantity
        in question] A mythical schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held
        to be unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the
        speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that
        the opportunity will not arise. "I'll implement the automatic layout
        stuff in my copious free time."

        2. [Archly] Time reserved for bogus or otherwise idiotic tasks, such
        as implementation of {chrome}, or the stroking of {suit}s. "I'll get
        back to him on that feature in my copious free time."

:copper: n.

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

:copy protection: n.

        A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing
        software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.

:copybroke: /kop'eebrohk/, adj.

        1. [play on copyright] Used to describe an instance of a
        copy-protected program that has been `broken'; that is, a copy with
        the copy-protection scheme disabled. Syn. {copywronged}.

        2. Copy-protected software which is unusable because of some bit-rot
        or bug that has confused the anti-piracy check. See also {copy
        protection}.

:copycenter: n.

        [play on `copyright' and `copyleft']

        1. The copyright notice carried by the various flavors of freeware
        BSD. According to Kirk McKusick at BSDCon 1999: "The way it was
        characterized politically, you had copyright, which is what the big
        companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free
        software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then
        Berkeley had what we called `copycenter', which is `take it down to
        the copy center and make as many copies as you want'".

:copyleft: /kop'eeleft/, n.

        [play on copyright]

        1. The copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}
        {EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse
        and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {General Public
        Virus}).

        2. By extension, any copyright notice intended to achieve similar
        aims.

:copyparty: n.

        [C64/amiga {demoscene}] A computer party organized so demosceners
        can meet other in real life, and to facilitate software copying
        (mostly pirated software). The copyparty has become less common as
        the Internet makes communication easier. The demoscene has gradually
        evolved the {demoparty} to replace it.

:copywronged: /kop'eerongd/, adj.

        [play on copyright] Syn. for {copybroke}.

:core: n.

        Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now
        archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in
        the Unix community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound
        like them. Some derived idioms are quite current; in core, for
        example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core
        dump} and the core image or core file produced by one are terms in
        favor. Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer {store}.

:core cancer: n.

        [rare] A process that exhibits a slow but inexorable resource {leak}
        -- like a cancer, it kills by crowding out productive tissue.

:core dump: n.

        [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by Unix]

        1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a
        process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error.

        2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or
        registering extreme shock. "He dumped core. All over the floor. What
        a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core."

        3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great
        length; esp. in apology: "Sorry, I dumped core on you".

        4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare {bits}, sense 1). Hence,
        spewing all one knows about a topic (syn. {brain dump}), esp. in a
        lecture or answer to an exam question. "Short, concise answers are
        better than core dumps" (from the instructions to an exam at
        Columbia). See {core}.

        A {core dump} lands our hero in hot water.

        (This is the last cartoon in the Crunchly saga. The previous cartoon
        was 76-05-01.)

:core leak: n.

        Syn. {memory leak}.

:Core Wars: n.

        A game between assembler programs in a machine or machine simulator,
        where the objective is to kill your opponent's program by
        overwriting it. Popularized in the 1980s by A. K. Dewdney's column
        in Scientific American magazine, but described in Software Practice
        And Experience a decade earlier. The game was actually devised and
        played by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris Sr., and Doug McIlroy in
        the early 1960s (Dennis Ritchie is sometimes incorrectly cited as a
        co-author, but was not involved). Their original game was called
        `Darwin' and ran on a IBM 7090 at Bell Labs. See {core}. For
        information on the modern game, do a web search for the
        `rec.games.corewar FAQ' or surf to the King Of The Hill site.

:cosmic rays: n.

        Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a
        semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to
        {handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the
        bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric -- I just got a burst of garbage
        on my {tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess."
        Compare {sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer
        the usage cosmic showers; alpha particles is also heard, because
        stray alpha particles passing through a memory chip can cause
        single-bit errors (this becomes increasingly more likely as memory
        sizes and densities increase).

        Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not
        (except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not
        explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis
        was cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe,
        using 25 tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for
        testing. One was placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was
        that if cosmic rays were causing the bit drops, they should see a
        statistically significant difference between the error rates on the
        two boards. They did not observe such a difference. Further
        investigation demonstrated conclusively that the bit drops were due
        to alpha particle emissions from thorium (and to a much lesser
        degree uranium) in the encapsulation material. Since it is
        impossible to eliminate these radioactives (they are uniformly
        distributed through the earth's crust, with the statistically
        insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it became obvious that one
        has to design memories to withstand these hits.

:cough and die: v.

        Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by
        design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a
        control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it
        coughed and died." Compare {die}, {die horribly}, {scream and die}.

:courier:

        [BBS & cracker cultures] A person who distributes newly cracked
        {warez}, as opposed to a {server} who makes them available for
        download or a {leech} who merely downloads them. Hackers recognize
        this term but don't use it themselves, as the act is not part of
        their culture. See also {warez d00dz}, {cracker}, {elite}.

:cow orker: n.

        [Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in Usenet,
        with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This term was
        popularized by Scott Adams (the creator of {Dilbert}) but already
        appears in the January 1996 version of the {scary devil monastery}
        FAQ, and has been traced back to a 1989 {sig block}. Compare {hing},
        {grilf}, {filk}, {newsfroup}.

:cowboy: n.

        [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] Synonym for {hacker}. It
        is reported that at Sun this word is often said with reverence.

:CP/M: /CPM/, n.

        [Control Program/Monitor; later {retcon}ned to Control Program for
        Microcomputers] An early microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary
        Kildall for 8080- and Z80-based machines, very popular in the late
        1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM
        PC in 1981. Legend has it that Kildall's company blew its chance to
        write the OS for the IBM PC because Kildall decided to spend a day
        IBM's reps wanted to meet with him enjoying the perfect flying
        weather in his private plane (another variant has it that Gary's
        wife was much more interested in packing her suitcases for an
        upcoming vacation than in clinching a deal with IBM). Many of CP/M's
        features and conventions strongly resemble those of early {DEC}
        operating systems such as {TOPS-10}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See
        {MS-DOS}, {operating system}.

:CPU Wars: /CPU worz/, n.

        A 1979 large-format comic by Chas Andres chronicling the attempts of
        the brainwashed androids of IPM (Impossible to Program Machines) to
        conquer and destroy the peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered
        Computers). This rather transparent allegory featured many
        references to {ADVENT} and the immortal line "Eat flaming death,
        minicomputer mongrels!" (uttered, of course, by an IPM
        stormtrooper). The whole shebang is now available on the Web.

        It is alleged that the author subsequently received a letter of
        appreciation on IBM company stationery from the head of IBM's Thomas
        J. Watson Research Laboratories (at that time one of the few islands
        of true hackerdom in the IBM archipelago). The lower loop of the B
        in the IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out. See {eat
        flaming death}.

:crack:

        [warez d00dz]

        1. v. To break into a system (compare {cracker}).

        2. v. Action of removing the copy protection from a commercial
        program. People who write cracks consider themselves challenged by
        the copy protection measures. They will often do it as much to show
        that they are smarter than the developer who designed the copy
        protection scheme than to actually copy the program.

        3. n. A program, instructions or patch used to remove the copy
        protection of a program or to uncripple features from a demo/time
        limited program.

        4. An {exploit}.

:crack root: v.

        [very common] To defeat the security system of a Unix machine and
        gain {root} privileges thereby; see {cracking}.

:cracker: n.

        One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in
        defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense 8). An
        earlier attempt to establish worm in this sense around 1981--82 on
        Usenet was largely a failure.

        Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the
        theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism
        "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the
        term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in
        Middle English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is
        this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous
        breath?" -- Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern
        colloquial American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for
        "white trash".

        While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
        playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past
        {larval stage} is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so
        except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if
        it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work
        done).

        Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom
        than the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism
        might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very
        secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open
        poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to
        describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a
        separate and lower form of life. An easy way for outsiders to spot
        the difference is that crackers use grandiose screen names that
        conceal their identities. Hackers never do this; they only rarely
        use noms de guerre at all, and when they do it is for display rather
        than concealment.

        Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't
        imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than
        breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. Some other
        reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on
        {cracking} and {phreaking}. See also {samurai}, {dark-side hacker},
        and {hacker ethic}. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker,
        see {warez d00dz}.

:cracking: n.

        [very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what a
        {cracker} does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually
        involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather
        persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly
        well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of
        target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are incompetent as
        hackers. This entry used to say 'mediocre', but the spread of
        {rootkit} and other automated cracking has depressed the average
        level of skill among crackers.

:crank: vt.

        [from automotive slang] Verb used to describe the performance of a
        machine, especially sustained performance. "This box cranks (or,
        cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of twice that on
        vectorized operations."

:crapplet: n.

        [portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget
        attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes your
        browser. Also spelled `craplet'.

:CrApTeX: /krap'tekh/, n.

        [University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe TeX and
        LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or all the
        time (by everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts generally dislike
        it because it is more verbose than other formatters (e.g. {troff})
        and because (particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are
        used) it generates vast output files. See {religious issues}, {TeX}.

:crash:

        1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the
        {system} (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term
        originally described what happens when the air gap of a hard disk
        collapses). "Three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk
        crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping
        onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be
        referred to as a head crash, whereas the term system crash usually,
        though not always, implies that the operating system or other
        software was at fault.

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

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

:crash and burn: vi.,n.

        A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase
        scene in the movie Bullitt and many subsequent imitators (compare
        {die horribly}). The construction crash-and-burn machine is reported
        for a computer used exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or
        reproducing bugs (i.e., not for development). The implication is
        that it wouldn't be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since
        only the testers would be inconvenienced.

:crawling horror: n.

        Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive
        by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like {dusty
        deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes that the thing described is not
        just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity.
        "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big
        FORTRAN II application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling
        horror...." Compare {WOMBAT}.

        This usage is almost certainly derived from the fiction of H.P.
        Lovecraft. Lovecraft may never have used the exact phrase "crawling
        horror" in his writings, but one of the fearsome Elder Gods that he
        wrote extensively about was Nyarlethotep, who had as an epithet "The
        Crawling Chaos". Certainly the extreme, even melodramatic horror of
        his characters at the weird monsters they encounter, even to the
        point of going insane with fear, is what hackers are referring to
        with this phrase when they use it for horribly bad code. Compare
        {cthulhic}.

:CRC handbook:

        Any of the editions of the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of
        Chemistry and Physics; there are other CRC handbooks, such as the
        CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, but "the" CRC
        handbook is the chemistry and physics reference. It is massive tome
        full of mathematical tables, physical constants of thousands of
        alloys and chemical compounds, dielectric strengths, vapor pressure,
        resistivity, and the like. Hackers have remarkably little actual use
        for these sorts of arcana, but are such information junkies that a
        large percentage of them acquire copies anyway and would feel
        vaguely bereft if they couldn't look up the magnetic susceptibility
        of potassium permanganate at a moment's notice. On hackers'
        bookshelves, the CRC handbook is rather likely to keep company with
        an unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and a good atlas.

:creationism: n.

        The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can be
        completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of
        the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented
        programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good
        designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction
        between one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able
        designer(s) and an active user population -- and that the first try
        at a big new idea is always wrong. Unfortunately, because these
        truths don't fit the planning models beloved of {management}, they
        are generally ignored.

:creep: v.

        To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage this verb
        has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the creeping horrors
        of low-budget monster movies.

:creeping elegance: n.

        Describes a tendency for parts of a design to become {elegant} past
        the point of diminishing return, something which often happens at
        the expense of the less interesting parts of the design, the
        schedule, and other things deemed important in the {Real World}. See
        also {creeping featurism}, {second-system effect}, {tense}.

:creeping featurism: /kree'ping feechrizm/, n.

        [common]

        1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and
        {feature}s onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may
        have possessed when originally designed. See also {feeping
        creaturism}. "You know, the main problem with {BSD} Unix has always
        been creeping featurism."

        2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become
        even more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be
        even better if it had this feature too". (See {feature}.) The result
        is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time,
        rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy
        to add just one extra little feature to help someone ... and then
        another ... and another.... When creeping featurism gets out of
        hand, it's like a cancer. The GNU hello program, intended to
        illustrate {GNU} command-line switch and coding conventions, is also
        a wonderful parody of creeping featurism; the distribution changelog
        is particularly funny. Usually this term is used to describe
        computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal
        government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon
        sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see {second-system effect}.
        See also {creeping elegance}.

:creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'chri:`t@s/, n.

        Variant of {creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization:
        feeping creaturitis. Some people like to reserve this form for the
        disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as opposed
        to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds. (After all,
        -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis usually means
        `inflammation of'.)

:cretin: /kret'in/, /kreetn/, n.

        Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious person; someone who can't do
        anything right. It has been observed that many American hackers tend
        to favor the British pronunciation /kret'in/ over standard American
        /kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic
        influence of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

:cretinous: /kret'n@s/, /kreetn@s/, adj.

        Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used
        pejoratively of people. See {dread high-bit disease} for an example.
        Approximate synonyms: {bletcherous}, {bagbiting}, {losing},
        {brain-damaged}.

:crippleware: n.

        1. [common] Software that has some important functionality
        deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
        working version.

        2. [Cambridge] Variety of {guiltware} that exhorts you to donate to
        some charity (compare {careware}, {nagware}).

        3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more
        expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper).

        An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX chip,
        which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor diked out (in
        some early versions it was present but disabled). To upgrade, you
        buy a complete 486DX chip with working co-processor (its identity
        thinly veiled by a different pinout) and plug it into the board's
        expansion socket. It then disables the SX, which becomes a fancy
        power sink. Don't you love Intel?

:critical mass: n.

        In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to
        sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a
        condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one
        plus {epsilon} bugs. (This malady has many causes: {creeping
        featurism}, ports to too many disparate environments, poor initial
        design, etc.) When software achieves critical mass, it can never be
        fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten.

:crlf: /ker'l@f/, /krul@f/, /CRLF/, n.

        (often capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR, ASCII 0001101)
        followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010). More loosely, whatever
        it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the
        beginning of the next line. See {newline}. Under {Unix} influence
        this usage has become less common (Unix uses a bare line feed as its
        `CRLF').

:crock: n.

        [from the American scatologism crock of shit]

        1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made
        cleaner. For example, using small integers to represent error codes
        without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for
        example, Unix make(1), which returns code 139 for a process that
        dies due to {segfault}).

        2. A technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to
        failure if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever
        programmer might write an assembler which mapped instruction
        mnemonics to numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends
        far too intimately on the particular bit patterns of the opcodes.
        (For another example of programming with a dependence on actual
        opcode values, see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A.) Many crocks
        have a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. See
        {kluge}, {brittle}. The adjectives crockish and crocky, and the
        nouns crockishness and crockitude, are also used.

:cross-post: vi.

        [Usenet; very common] To post a single article simultaneously to
        several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article
        repeatedly, once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it
        multiple times (which is very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting
        without a Followup-To line directing responses to a single followup
        group is frowned upon, as it tends to cause {followup} articles to
        go to inappropriate newsgroups when people respond to various parts
        of the original posting.

:crossload: v.,n.

        [proposed, by analogy with {upload} and {download}] To move files
        between machines on a peer-to-peer network of nodes that act as both
        servers and clients for a distributed file store. Esp. appropriate
        for anonymized networks like Gnutella and Freenet.

:crudware: /kruhd'weir/, n.

        Pejorative term for the hundreds of megabytes of low-quality
        {freeware} circulated by user's groups and BBS systems in the
        micro-hobbyist world. "Yet another set of disk catalog utilities for
        {MS-DOS}? What crudware!"

:cruft: /kruhft/

        [very common; back-formation from {crufty}]

        1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed
        is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with
        a broom only produces more.

        2. n. The results of shoddy construction.

        3. vt. [from hand cruft, pun on `hand craft'] To write assembler
        code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see
        {hand-hacking}).

        4. n. Excess; superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded
        code.

        5. [University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to
        geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".

:cruft together: vt.

        (also cruft up) To throw together something ugly but temporarily
        workable. Like vt. {kluge up}, but more pejorative. "There isn't any
        program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably
        cruft one together in about 10 minutes." See {hack together}, {hack
        up}, {kluge up}, {crufty}.

:cruftsmanship: /kruhfts'm@nship /, n.

        [from {cruft}] The antithesis of craftsmanship.

:crufty: /kruhf'tee/, adj.

        [very common; origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy']

        1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The {canonical} example is
        "This is standard old crufty {DEC} software". In fact, one fanciful
        theory of the origin of crufty holds that was originally a mutation
        of `crusty' applied to DEC software so old that the `s' characters
        were tall and skinny, looking more like `f' characters.

        2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk.
        Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup.

        3. Generally unpleasant.

        4. (sometimes spelled cruftie) n. A small crufty object (see
        {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the scheme of things.
        "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or,
        collectively, {random} cruft)."

        This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of
        its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at
        Harvard University which is part of the old physics building; it's
        said to have been the physics department's radar lab during WWII. To
        this day (early 1993) the windows appear to be full of random
        techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the
        term as a knock on the competition.

:crumb: n.

        Two binary digits; a {quad}. Larger than a {bit}, smaller than a
        {nybble}. Considered silly. Syn. {tayste}. General discussion of
        such terms is under {nybble}.

:crunch:

        1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way.
        Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless
        painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being
        embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "FORTRAN programs do
        mostly {number-crunching}."

        2. vt. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that
        produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original
        data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking something
        like a paper document would if somebody crunched the paper into a
        wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations than
        simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly
        appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction file
        crunch(ing) to distinguish it from {number-crunching}.) See
        {compress}.

        3. n. The character #. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places.
        See {ASCII}.

        4. vt. To squeeze program source into a minimum-size representation
        that will still compile or execute. The term came into being
        specifically for a famous program on the BBC micro that crunched
        BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a wholly
        interpretive BASIC, so the number of characters mattered).
        {Obfuscated C Contest} entries are often crunched; see the first
        example under that entry.

:cryppie: /krip'ee/, n.

        A cryptographer. One who hacks or implements cryptographic software
        or hardware.

:cthulhic: /kthool'hik/, adj.

        Having the nature of a Cthulhu, the horrific tentacled green
        monstrosity from H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror fiction. Cthulhu
        sends dreams that drive men mad, feeds on the flesh of screaming
        victims rent limb from limb, and is served by a cult of degenerates.
        Hackers think this describes large {proprietary} systems such as
        traditional {mainframe}s, installations of SAP and Oracle, or rooms
        full of Windows servers remarkably well, and the adjective is used
        casually. Compare {Shub-Internet} and {crawling horror}.

:CTSS: /CTSS/, n.

        Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the
        design of interactive timesharing operating systems, ancestral to
        {Multics}, {Unix}, and {ITS}. The name {ITS} (Incompatible
        Time-sharing System) was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and to
        express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O
        services should be presented to user programs. See {timesharing}

:cube: n.

        1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan offices used at
        many programming shops. "I've got the manuals in my cube."

        2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).

:cup holder: n.

        The tray of a CD-ROM drive, or by extension the CD drive itself. So
        called because of a common tech support legend about the idiot who
        called to complain that the cup holder on his computer broke. A joke
        program was once distributed around the net called "cupholder.exe",
        which when run simply extended the CD drive tray. The humor of this
        was of course lost on people whose drive had a slot or a caddy
        instead.

:cursor dipped in X: n.

        There are a couple of metaphors in English of the form `pen dipped
        in X' (perhaps the most common values of X are `acid', `bile', and
        `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor
        being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing
        on-line). "Talk about a {nastygram}! He must've had his cursor
        dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"

:cuspy: /kuhs'pee/, adj.

        [WPI: from the {DEC} abbreviation CUSP, for `Commonly Used System
        Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people. Now rare.]

        1. (of a program) Well-written.

        2. Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and
        interfaces well to users is cuspy. Oppose {rude}.

        3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one regarded as
        available. Implies a certain curvaceousness.

:cut a tape: vi.

        To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for
        shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium!
        Early versions of this lexicon claimed that one never analogously
        speaks of `cutting a disk', but this has since been reported as live
        usage. Related slang usages are mainstream business's `cut a check',
        the recording industry's `cut a record', and the military's `cut an
        order'.

        All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete recording
        and duplication technologies. The first stage in manufacturing an
        old-style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die
        with a precision lathe. More mundanely, the dominant technology for
        mass duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days
        involved "cutting a stencil", punching away portions of the wax
        overlay on a silk screen. More directly, paper tape with holes
        punched in it was an important early storage medium. See also {burn
        a CD}.

:cybercrud: /si:'berkruhd/, n.

        1. [coined by Ted Nelson] Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with a
        high {MEGO} factor. The computer equivalent of bureaucratese.

        2. Incomprehensible stuff embedded in email. First there were the
        "Received" headers that show how mail flows through systems, then
        MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions) headers and part
        boundaries, and now huge blocks of radix-64 for PEM (Privacy
        Enhanced Mail) or PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) digital signatures and
        certificates of authenticity. This stuff all serves a purpose and
        good user interfaces should hide it, but all too often users are
        forced to wade through it.

:cyberpunk: /si:'berpuhnk/, n.,adj.

        [orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois] A
        subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making
        novel Neuromancer (though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's
        True Names (see the Bibliography in Appendix C) to John Brunner's
        1975 novel The Shockwave Rider). Gibson's near-total ignorance of
        computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to
        speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in
        ways hackers have since found both irritatingly nave and
        tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in
        particular by the short-lived but innovative Max Headroom TV series.
        See {cyberspace}, {ice}, {jack in}, {go flatline}.

        Since 1990 or so, popular culture has included a movement or fashion
        trend that calls itself `cyberpunk', associated especially with the
        rave/techno subculture. Hackers have mixed feelings about this. On
        the one hand, self-described cyberpunks too often seem to be shallow
        trendoids in black leather who have substituted enthusiastic
        blathering about technology for actually learning and doing it.
        Attitude is no substitute for competence. On the other hand, at
        least cyberpunks are excited about the right things and properly
        respectful of hacking talent in those who have it. The general
        consensus is to tolerate them politely in hopes that they'll attract
        people who grow into being true hackers.

:cyberspace: /si:'brspays`/, n.

        1. Notional `information-space' loaded with visual cues and
        navigable with brain-computer interfaces called cyberspace decks; a
        characteristic prop of {cyberpunk} SF. Serious efforts to construct
        {virtual reality} interfaces modeled explicitly on Gibsonian
        cyberspace are under way, using more conventional devices such as
        glove sensors and binocular TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to
        deny outright the possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out
        of the network (see {the network}).

        2. The Internet or {Matrix} (sense #2) as a whole, considered as a
        crude cyberspace (sense 1). Although this usage became widely
        popular in the mainstream press during 1994 when the Internet
        exploded into public awareness, it is strongly deprecated among
        hackers because the Internet does not meet the high, SF-inspired
        standards they have for true cyberspace technology. Thus, this use
        of the term usually tags a {wannabee} or outsider. Oppose
        {meatspace}.

        3. Occasionally, the metaphoric location of the mind of a person in
        {hack mode}. Some hackers report experiencing strong synesthetic
        imagery when in hack mode; interestingly, independent reports from
        multiple sources suggest that there are common features to the
        experience. In particular, the dominant colors of this subjective
        cyberspace are often gray and silver, and the imagery often involves
        constellations of marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of
        lines and angles, or moire patterns.

:cycle:

        1. n. The basic unit of computation. What every hacker wants more of
        (noted hacker Bill Gosper described himself as a "cycle junkie").
        One can describe an instruction as taking so many clock cycles.
        Often the computer can access its memory once on every clock cycle,
        and so one speaks also of memory cycles. These are technical
        meanings of {cycle}. The jargon meaning comes from the observation
        that there are only so many cycles per second, and when you are
        sharing a computer the cycles get divided up among the users. The
        more cycles the computer spends working on your program rather than
        someone else's, the faster your program will run. That's why every
        hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the
        computer to respond.

        2. By extension, a notional unit of human thought power, emphasizing
        that lots of things compete for the typical hacker's think time. "I
        refused to get involved with the Rubik's Cube back when it was big.
        Knew I'd burn too many cycles on it if I let myself."

        3. vt. Syn. {bounce} (sense 4), from the phrase `cycle power'.
        "Cycle the machine again, that serial port's still hung."

:cycle of reincarnation: n.

        See {wheel of reincarnation}.

:cycle server: n.

        A powerful machine that exists primarily for running large compute-,
        disk-, or memory-intensive jobs (more formally called a compute
        server). Implies that interactive tasks such as editing are done on
        other machines on the network, such as workstations.

:cypherpunk: n.

        [from {cyberpunk}] Someone interested in the uses of encryption via
        electronic ciphers for enhancing personal privacy and guarding
        against tyranny by centralized, authoritarian power structures,
        especially government. There is an active cypherpunks mailing list
        at <cypherpunks-request@toad.com> coordinating work on public-key
        encryption freeware, privacy, and digital cash. See also {tentacle}.

:C|N>K: n.

        [Usenet] Coffee through Nose to Keyboard; that is, "I laughed so
        hard I {snarf}ed my coffee onto my keyboard.". Common on
        alt.fan.pratchett and {scary devil monastery}; recognized elsewhere.
        The Acronymphomania FAQ on alt.fan.pratchett recognizes variants
        such as T|N>K = `Tea through Nose to Keyboard' and C|N>S = `Coffee
        through Nose to Screen'. (The sound of this happening is,
        canonically, {splork!})

  D

   daemon

   daemon book

   dahmum

   dancing frog

   dangling pointer

   dark-side hacker

   Datamation

   DAU

   Dave the Resurrector

   day mode

   dd

   DDT

   de-rezz

   dead

   dead beef attack

   dead code

   dead-tree version

   DEADBEEF

   deadlock

   deadly embrace

   death code

   Death Square

   Death Star

   Death, X of

   DEC

   DEC Wars

   decay

   deckle

   DED

   deep hack mode

   deep magic

   deep space

   defenestration

   defined as

   deflicted

   dehose

   Dejagoo

   deletia

   deliminator

   delint

   delta

   demented

   demigod

   demo

   demo mode

   demoeffect

   demogroup

   demon

   demon dialer

   demoparty

   demoscene

   dentro

   depeditate

   deprecated

   derf

   deserves to lose

   despew

   dickless workstation

   dictionary flame

   diddle

   die

   die horribly

   diff

   dike

   Dilbert

   ding

   dink

   dinosaur

   dinosaur pen

   dinosaurs mating

   dirtball

   dirty power

   disclaimer

   Discordianism

   disemvowel

   disk farm

   display hack

   dispress

   Dissociated Press

   distribution

   distro

   disusered

   DMZ

   do protocol

   doc

   documentation

   dodgy

   dogcow

   dogfood

   dogpile

   dogwash

   Don't do that then!

   dongle

   dongle-disk

   Doom, X of

   doorstop

   DoS attack

   dot file

   double bucky

   doubled sig

   down

   download

   DP

   DPer

   Dr. Fred Mbogo

   dragon

   Dragon Book

   drain

   dread high-bit disease

   dread questionmark disease

   DRECNET

   driver

   droid

   drone

   drool-proof paper

   drop on the floor

   drop-ins

   drop-outs

   drugged

   drum

   drunk mouse syndrome

   DSW

   dub dub dub

   Duff's device

   dumb terminal

   dumbass attack

   dumbed down

   dump

   dumpster diving

   dusty deck

   DWIM

   dynner

:daemon: /day'mn/, /deemn/, n.

        [from Maxwell's Demon, later incorrectly retronymed as `Disk And
        Execution MONitor'] A program that is not invoked explicitly, but
        lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is
        that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a
        daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only
        because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For
        example, under {ITS}, writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory
        would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file.
        The advantage is that programs wanting (in this example) files
        printed need neither compete for access to nor understand any
        idiosyncrasies of the LPT. They simply enter their implicit requests
        and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually
        spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or
        be regenerated at intervals.

        Daemon and {demon} are often used interchangeably, but seem to have
        distinct connotations. The term daemon was introduced to computing
        by {CTSS} people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and used it to refer
        to what ITS called a {dragon}; the prototype was a program called
        DAEMON that automatically made tape backups of the file system.
        Although the meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think
        this glossary reflects current (2003) usage.

:daemon book: n.

        The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System,
        by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and
        John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989, ISBN
        0-201-06196-1); or The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD
        Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J.
        Karels and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Longman, 1996, ISBN
        0-201-54979-4) Either of the standard reference books on the
        internals of {BSD} Unix. So called because the covers have a picture
        depicting a little demon (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers,
        holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features
        of Unix, the fork(2) system call).

:dahmum: /dah'mum/, n.

        [Usenet] The material of which protracted {flame war}s, especially
        those about operating systems, is composed. Homeomorphic to {spam}.
        The term dahmum is derived from the name of a militant {OS/2}
        advocate, and originated when an extensively cross-posted
        OS/2-versus-{Linux} debate was fed through {Dissociated Press}.

:dancing frog: n.

        [Vancouver area] A problem that occurs on a computer that will not
        reappear while anyone else is watching. From the classic Warner
        Brothers cartoon One Froggy Evening, featuring a dancing and singing
        Michigan J. Frog that just croaks when anyone else is around (now
        the WB network mascot).

:dangling pointer: n.

        [common] A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere (in C and
        some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at
        anything valid). Usually this happens because it formerly pointed to
        something that has moved or disappeared. Used as jargon in a
        generalization of its techspeak meaning; for example, a local phone
        number for a person who has since moved to the other coast is a
        dangling pointer.

:dark-side hacker: n.

        A criminal or malicious hacker; a {cracker}. From George Lucas's
        Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The
        implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi
        Knights is intended. Oppose {samurai}.

:Datamation: /day`t@may'sh@n/, n.

        A magazine that many hackers assume all {suit}s read. Used to
        question an unbelieved quote, as in "Did you read that in
        Datamation?". It used to publish something hackishly funny every
        once in a while, like the original paper on {COME FROM} in 1973, and
        Ed Post's Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal ten years later, but for
        a long time after that it was much more exclusively {suit}-oriented
        and boring. Following a change of editorship in 1994, Datamation
        briefly tried for more the technical content and irreverent humor
        that marked its early days, but this did not last.

:DAU: /dow/, n.

        [German FidoNet] German acronym for Dmmster Anzunehmender User
        (stupidest imaginable user). From the engineering-slang GAU for
        Grsster Anzunehmender Unfall, worst assumable accident, esp. of a
        LNG tank farm plant or something with similarly disastrous
        consequences. In popular German, GAU is used only to refer to
        worst-case nuclear accidents such as a core meltdown. See {cretin},
        {fool}, {loser} and {weasel}.

:Dave the Resurrector: n.

        [Usenet; also abbreviated DtR] A {cancelbot} that cancels cancels.
        Dave the Resurrector originated when some {spam}-spewers decided to
        try to impede spam-fighting by wholesale cancellation of anti-spam
        coordination messages in the news.admin.net-abuse.usenet newsgroup.

:day mode: n.

        See {phase} (sense 1). Used of people only.

:dd: /deedee/, vt.

        [Unix: from IBM {JCL}] Equivalent to {cat} or {BLT}. Originally the
        name of a Unix copy command with special options suitable for
        block-oriented devices; it was often used in heavy-handed system
        maintenance, as in "Let's dd the root partition onto a tape, then
        use the boot PROM to load it back on to a new disk". The Unix dd(1)
        was designed with a weird, distinctly non-Unixy keyword option
        syntax reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD
        `Dataset Definition' specification for I/O devices); though the
        command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. The
        jargon usage is now very rare outside Unix sites and now nearly
        obsolete even there, as dd(1) has been {deprecated} for a long time
        (though it has no exact replacement). The term has been displaced by
        {BLT} or simple English `copy'.

:DDT: /DDT/, n.

        [from the insecticide para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethene]

        1. Generic term for a program that assists in debugging other
        programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable
        symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the
        term DDT is now archaic, having been widely displaced by debugger or
        names of individual programs like adb, sdb, dbx, or gdb.

        2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled {ITS} operating system, DDT (running
        under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for `Hack Translator') was
        also used as the {shell} or top level command language used to
        execute other programs.

        3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early
        {DEC} hardware and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969)
        contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT
        that illuminates the origin of the term:

          Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1
          computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging Tape".
          Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has
          propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now
          available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are
          now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging
          Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation.
          Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide,
          dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane C[14]H[9]Cl[5] should be minimal
          since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive,
          class of bugs.

        (The `tape' referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.)
        Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the
        handbook after the {suit}s took over and {DEC} became much more
        `businesslike'.

        The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
        more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original {TMRC} lexicon, reports
        that he named DDT after a similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the
        direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957. The
        debugger on that ground-breaking machine rejoiced in the name FLIT
        (FLexowriter Interrogation Tape). Flit was for many years the
        trade-name of a popular insecticide.

:de-rezz: /deerez'/

        [from `de-resolve' via the movie Tron] (also derez)

        1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; the image that goes with it is of
        an object breaking up into raster lines and static and then
        dissolving. Occasionally used of a person who seems to have suddenly
        `fuzzed out' mentally rather than physically. Usage: extremely
        silly, also rare. This verb was actually invented as fictional
        hacker jargon, and adopted in a spirit of irony by real hackers
        years after the fact.

        2. vt. The Macintosh resource decompiler. On a Macintosh, many
        program structures (including the code itself) are managed in small
        segments of the program file known as resources; Rez and DeRez are a
        pair of utilities for compiling and decompiling resource files.
        Thus, decompiling a resource is derezzing. Usage: very common.

:dead: adj.

        1. Non-functional; {down}; {crash}ed. Especially used of hardware.

        2. At XEROX PARC, software that is working but not undergoing
        continued development and support.

        3. Useless; inaccessible. Antonym: live. Compare {dead code}.

:dead beef attack: n.

        [cypherpunks list, 1996] An attack on a public-key cryptosystem
        consisting of publishing a key having the same ID as another key
        (thus making it possible to spoof a user's identity if recipients
        aren't careful about verifying keys). In PGP and GPG the key ID is
        the last eight hex digits of (for RSA keys) the product of two
        primes. The attack was demonstrated by creating a key whose ID was
        0xdeadbeef (see {DEADBEEF}).

:dead code: n.

        Routines that can never be accessed because all calls to them have
        been removed, or code that cannot be reached because it is guarded
        by a control structure that provably must always transfer control
        somewhere else. The presence of dead code may reveal either logical
        errors due to alterations in the program or significant changes in
        the assumptions and environment of the program (see also {software
        rot}); a good compiler should report dead code so a maintainer can
        think about what it means. (Sometimes it simply means that an
        extremely defensive programmer has inserted {can't happen} tests
        which really can't happen -- yet.) Syn. {grunge}. See also {dead},
        and The Story of Mel'.

:dead-tree version:

        [common] A paper version of an on-line document; one printed on dead
        trees. In this context, "dead trees" always refers to paper. See
        also {tree-killer}.

:DEADBEEF: /dedbeef/, n.

        The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory under
        a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000. Some modern
        debugging tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a
        way of converting {heisenbug}s into {Bohr bug}s. As in "Your program
        is DEADBEEF" (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you
        start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD.
        See also the anecdote under {fool} and {dead beef attack}.

:deadlock: n.

        1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more processes are unable
        to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do
        something. A common example is a program communicating to a server,
        which may find itself waiting for output from the server before
        sending anything more to it, while the server is similarly waiting
        for more input from the controlling program before outputting
        anything. (It is reported that this particular flavor of deadlock is
        sometimes called a starvation deadlock, though the term starvation
        is more properly used for situations where a program can never run
        simply because it never gets high enough priority. Another common
        flavor is constipation, in which each process is trying to send
        stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is
        reading anything.) See {deadly embrace}.

        2. Also used of deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when
        two people meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by
        moving aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from
        side to side without making any progress because they always move
        the same way at the same time.

:deadly embrace: n.

        Same as {deadlock}, though usually used only when exactly two
        processes are involved. This is the more popular term in Europe,
        while {deadlock} predominates in the United States.

:death code: n.

        A routine whose job is to set everything in the computer --
        registers, memory, flags, everything -- to zero, including that
        portion of memory where it is running; its last act is to {stomp on}
        its own "store zero" instruction. Death code isn't very useful, but
        writing it is an interesting hacking challenge on architectures
        where the instruction set makes it possible, such as the PDP-8 (it
        has also been done on the DG Nova).

        Perhaps the ultimate death code is on the TI 990 series, where all
        registers are actually in RAM, and the instruction "store immediate
        0" has the opcode "0". The PC will immediately wrap around core as
        many times as it can until a user hits HALT. Any empty memory
        location is death code. Worse, the manufacturer recommended use of
        this instruction in startup code (which would be in ROM and
        therefore survive).

:Death Square: n.

        The corporate logo of Novell, the people who acquired USL after AT&T
        let go of it (Novell eventually sold the Unix group to SCO). Coined
        by analogy with {Death Star}, because many people believed Novell
        was bungling the lead in Unix systems exactly as AT&T did for many
        years.

        [They were right --ESR]

:Death Star: n.

        [from the movie Star Wars]

        1. The AT&T corporate logo, which bears an uncanny resemblance to
        the Death Star in the Star Wars movies. This usage was particularly
        common among partisans of {BSD} Unix in the 1980s, who tended to
        regard the AT&T versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy. Copies
        still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape
        with a space fighter labeled 4.2 BSD streaking away from a broken
        AT&T logo wreathed in flames.

        2. AT&T's internal magazine, Focus, uses death star to describe an
        incorrectly done AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top left
        is dark instead of light -- a frequent result of dark-on-light logo
        images.

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

:Death, X of:

        [common] A construction used to imbue the subject with campy menace,
        usually with intent to ridicule. The ancestor of this term is a
        famous Far Side cartoon from the 1980s in which a balloon with a
        fierce face painted on it is passed off as the "Floating Head of
        Death". Hackers and SF fans have been using the suffix "of Death"
        ever since to label things which appear to be vastly threatening but
        will actually pop like a balloon if you prick them. Such
        constructions are properly spoken in a tone of over-exagerrated
        portentiousness: "Behold! The Spinning - Pizza - of - Death!" See
        {Blue Screen of Death}, {Ping O' Death}, {Spinning Pizza of Death},
        {click of death}. Compare {Doom, X of}.

:DEC: /dek/, n.

        n. Commonly used abbreviation for Digital Equipment Corporation,
        later deprecated by DEC itself in favor of "Digital" and now
        entirely obsolete following the buyout by Compaq. Before the {killer
        micro} revolution of the late 1980s, hackerdom was closely symbiotic
        with DEC's pioneering timesharing machines. The first of the group
        of cultures described by this lexicon nucleated around the PDP-1
        (see {TMRC}). Subsequently, the PDP-6, {PDP-10}, {PDP-20}, {PDP-11}
        and {VAX} were all foci of large and important hackerdoms, and DEC
        machines long dominated the ARPANET and Internet machine population.
        DEC was the technological leader of the minicomputer era (roughly
        1967 to 1987), but its failure to embrace microcomputers and Unix
        early cost it heavily in profits and prestige after {silicon} got
        cheap. Nevertheless, the microprocessor design tradition owes a
        major debt to the {PDP-11} instruction set, and every one of the
        major general-purpose microcomputer OSs so far (CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix,
        OS/2, Windows NT) was either genetically descended from a DEC OS, or
        incubated on DEC hardware, or both. Accordingly, DEC was for many
        years still regarded with a certain wry affection even among many
        hackers too young to have grown up on DEC machines.

:DEC Wars: n.

        A 1983 {Usenet} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr spoofing the
        Star Wars movies in hackish terms. Some years later, ESR
        (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to exploit a great
        premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite
        called Unix WARS; the two are often confused.

:decay: n.,vi

        [from nuclear physics] An automatic conversion which is applied to
        most array-valued expressions in {C}; they `decay into'
        pointer-valued expressions pointing to the array's first element.
        This term is borderline techspeak, but is not used in the official
        standard for the language.

:deckle: /dek'l/, n.

        [from dec- and {nybble}; the original spelling seems to have been
        decle] Two {nickle}s; 10 bits. Reported among developers for
        Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with
        16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See {nybble} for other such
        terms.

:DED: /DED/, n.

        Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare {SED},
        {LER}, {write-only memory}. In the early 1970s both Signetics and
        Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as {AFJ}s (suggested uses
        included "as a power-off indicator").

:deep hack mode: n.

        See {hack mode}.

:deep magic: n.

        [poss. from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books] An awesomely arcane
        technique central to a program or system, esp. one neither generally
        published nor available to hackers at large (compare {black art});
        one that could only have been composed by a true {wizard}. Compiler
        optimization techniques and many aspects of {OS} design used to be
        {deep magic}; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing,
        graphics, and AI still are. Compare {heavy wizardry}. Esp.: found in
        comments of the form "Deep magic begins here...". Compare {voodoo
        programming}.

:deep space: n.

        1. Describes the notional location of any program that has gone {off
        the trolley}. Esp.: used of programs that just sit there silently
        grinding long after either failure or some output is expected. "Uh
        oh. I should have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. The program's in
        deep space somewhere." Compare {buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}.

        2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or
        caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no
        longer responds coherently to normal communication. Compare {page
        out}.

:defenestration: n.

        [mythically from a traditional Bohemian assassination method, via SF
        fandom]

        1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod,
        that was awful!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!"

        2. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in
        favor of a better OS (typically Linux).

        3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it will
        improve matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well, why
        don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?"

        4. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto
        the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon."

        5. [obs.] The act of exiting a window system in order to get better
        response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the
        dictionary meaning of defenestrate, which is to throw something out
        a window.

:defined as: adj.

        In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete is
        currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare {logical}.

:deflicted:

        [portmanteau of "defective" and "afflicted"; common among PC repair
        technicians, and probably originated among hardware techs outside
        the hacker community proper] Term used of hardware that is broken
        due to poor design or shoddy manufacturing or (especially) both;
        less frequently used of software and rarely of people. This term is
        normally employed in a tone of weary contempt by technicians who
        have seen the specific failure in the trouble report before and are
        cynically confident they'll see it again. Ultimately this may derive
        from Frank Zappa's 1974 album Apostrophe, on which the Fur Trapper
        infamously rubs his deflicted eyes...

:dehose: /deehohz/, vt.

        To clear a {hosed} condition.

:Dejagoo:

        [Portmanteau of Dejanews and Google] Google newsgroups. Became
        common in 2001 after Google acquired Dejanews, and with it the
        largest on-line archive of Usenet postings.

:deletia: n., /d@lee'sha/

        [USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the quote
        of the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often appears
        as a pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as "[deletia]"
        or "<deletia>" or "<snip>".

:deliminator: /delim'inayt@r/, n.

        [portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to
        delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the
        resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among
        Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split() function; however,
        it has been sighted in live use among Java and even Visual Basic
        programmers.

:delint: /deelint/, v. obs.

        To modify code to remove problems detected when {lint}ing.
        Confusingly, this process is also referred to as linting code. This
        term is no longer in general use because ANSI C compilers typically
        issue compile-time warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.

:delta: n.

        1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or
        incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I
        just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on
        program size?" "About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his
        program, but increased its size by only 30 percent.)

        2. [Unix] A {diff}, especially a {diff} stored under the set of
        version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or
        RCS (Revision Control System).

        3. n. A small quantity, but not as small as {epsilon}. The jargon
        usage of {delta} and {epsilon} stems from the traditional use of
        these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities,
        particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the
        differential calculus). The term {delta} is often used, once
        {epsilon} has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly
        bigger than {epsilon} but still very small. "The cost isn't epsilon,
        but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it
        is nevertheless very small. Common constructions include within
        delta of --, within epsilon of --: that is, `close to' and `even
        closer to'.

:demented: adj.

        Yet another term of disgust used to describe a malfunctioning
        program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as
        designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program
        that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying
        that it is on the brink of imminent collapse. Compare {wonky},
        {brain-damaged}, {bozotic}.

:demigod: n.

        A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a
        major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game
        used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To
        qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify
        with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods
        include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of {Unix} and
        {C}), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of {EMACS}), Larry Wall
        (inventor of {Perl}), Linus Torvalds (inventor of {Linux}), and most
        recently James Gosling (inventor of Java, {NeWS}, and {GOSMACS}) and
        Guido van Rossum (inventor of {Python}). In their hearts of hearts,
        most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more
        than one major software project has been driven to completion by the
        author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also {net.god},
        {true-hacker}, {ubergeek}. Since 1995 or so this term has been
        gradually displaced by {ubergeek}.

:demo: /de'moh/

        [short for `demonstration']

        1. v. To demonstrate a product or prototype. A far more effective
        way of inducing bugs to manifest than any number of {test} runs,
        especially when important people are watching.

        2. n. The act of demoing. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof
        interface; how does it work again?"

        3. n. Esp. as demo version, can refer either to an early,
        barely-functional version of a program which can be used for
        demonstration purposes as long as the operator uses exactly the
        right commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and
        unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program
        (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at
        little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes.

        4. [{demoscene}] A sequence of {demoeffect}s (usually) combined with
        self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These
        days (1997) usually built to attend a {compo}. Often called
        eurodemos outside Europe, as most of the {demoscene} activity seems
        to have gathered in northern Europe and especially Scandinavia. See
        also {intro}, {dentro}.

:demo mode: n.

        1. [Sun] The state of being {heads down} in order to finish code in
        time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday.

        2. A mode in which video games sit by themselves running through a
        portion of the game, also known as attract mode. Some serious {app}s
        have a demo mode they use as a screen saver, or may go through a
        demo mode on startup (for example, the Microsoft Windows opening
        screen -- which lets you impress your neighbors without actually
        having to put up with {Microsloth Windows}).

:demoeffect: n.

        [{demoscene}]

        1. What among hackers is called a {display hack}. Classical effects
        include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales" (x*x+y*y and other
        similar patterns, usually combined with color-cycling), realtime
        fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc. Historically, demo effects have
        cheated as much as possible to gain more speed and more complexity,
        using low-precision math and masses of assembler code and building
        animation realtime are three common tricks, but use of special
        hardware to fake effects is a {Good Thing} on the demoscene (though
        this is becoming less common as platforms like the Amiga fade away).

        2. [Finland] Opposite of {dancing frog}. The crash that happens when
        you demonstrate a perfectly good prototype to a client. Plagues most
        often CS students and small businesses, but there is a well-known
        case involving Bill Gates demonstrating a brand new version of a
        major operating system.

:demogroup: n.

        [{demoscene}] A group of {demo} (sense 4) composers. Job titles
        within a group include coders (the ones who write programs),
        graphicians (the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art),
        musicians (the music composers), {sysop}s, traders/swappers (the
        ones who do the trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger
        groups). It is not uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but
        it has been observed that good coders are rarely good composers and
        vice versa. [How odd. Musical talent seems common among
        Internet/Unix hackers --ESR]

:demon: n.

        1. Often used equivalently to {daemon} -- especially in the {Unix}
        world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered
        mildly archaic.

        2. [MIT; now probably obsolete] A portion of a program that is not
        invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some
        condition(s) to occur. See {daemon}. The distinction is that demons
        are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually
        programs running on an operating system.

        Demons in sense 2 are particularly common in AI programs. For
        example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference
        rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added,
        various demons would activate (which demons depends on the
        particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of
        knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the
        original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons
        as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile,
        the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was.

:demon dialer: n.

        A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number. Demon
        dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications programs
        contend for legitimate access to a {BBS} line) or malign (that is,
        used as a prank or denial-of-service attack). This term dates from
        the {blue box} days of the 1970s and early 1980s and is now
        semi-obsolescent among {phreaker}s; see {war dialer} for its
        contemporary progeny.

:demoparty: n.

        [{demoscene}] Aboveground descendant of the {copyparty}, with
        emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards {compo}s.
        Smaller demoparties, for 100 persons or less, are held quite often,
        sometimes even once a month, and usually last for one to two days.
        On the other end of the scale, huge demo parties are held once a
        year (and four of these have grown very large and occur annually --
        Assembly in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway,
        and NAID somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for
        three to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party
        network with connection to the internet.

:demoscene: /dem'ohseen/

        [also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located
        primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore
        recounts that when old-time {warez d00dz} cracked some piece of
        software they often added an advertisement in the beginning, usually
        containing colorful {display hack}s with greetings to other cracking
        groups. The demoscene was born among people who decided building
        these display hacks is more interesting than hacking -- or anyway
        safer. Around 1990 there began to be very serious police pressure on
        cracking groups, including raids with SWAT teams crashing into
        bedrooms to confiscate computers. Whether in response to this or for
        esthetic reasons, crackers of that period began to build
        self-contained display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty
        (within the culture such a hack is called a {demo}). As more of
        these {demogroup}s emerged, they started to have {compo}s at copying
        parties (see {copyparty}), which later evolved to standalone events
        (see {demoparty}). The demoscene has retained some traits from the
        {warez d00dz}, including their style of handles and group names and
        some of their jargon.

        Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of
        smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the
        like. Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a
        couple of years after that, they also started using Java.

        Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its
        original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under
        DOS) die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the
        Internet. While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying
        to get into the mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of
        this is the commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older
        demosceners frown at this, but the majority think it's a good
        direction. Many demosceners end up working in the computer game
        industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at
        http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and http://www.scene.org/.

:dentro: /den'troh/

        [{demoscene}] Combination of {demo} (sense 4) and {intro}. Other
        name mixings include intmo, dentmo etc. and are used usually when
        the authors are not quite sure whether the program is a {demo} or an
        {intro}. Special-purpose coinages like wedtro (some member of a
        group got married), invtro (invitation intro) etc. have also been
        sighted.

:depeditate: /deeped'@tayt/, n.

        [by (faulty) analogy with decapitate] Humorously, to cut off the
        feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools,
        careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can
        result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters are said to
        have been depeditated.

:deprecated: adj.

        Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in
        the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified
        replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for
        many years. This term appears with distressing frequency in
        standards documents when the committees writing the documents
        realize that large amounts of extant (and presumably happily
        working) code depend on the feature(s) that have passed out of
        favor. See also {dusty deck}.

        [Usage note: don't confuse this word with `depreciated', or the verb
        form `deprecate' with `depreciate'. They are different words; see
        any dictionary for discussion.]

:derf: /derf/

        [PLATO]

        1. v. The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else has
        absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account,
        especially to post articles intended to make an ass of the victim
        you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term originated
        as a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most usually left
        himself vulnerable to it, who also happened to be the head of the
        department that handled PLATO at the University of Delaware. Compare
        {baggy pantsing}.

        2. n. The victim of an act of derfing, sense 1. The most typical
        posting from a derfed account read "I am a derf.".

:deserves to lose: adj.

        [common] Said of someone who willfully does the {Wrong Thing};
        humorously, if one uses a feature known to be {marginal}. What is
        meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's {losing}
        actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use {mess-dos} deserves to
        {lose}!" ({ITS} fans used to say the same thing of {Unix}; many
        still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}.

:despew: /d@spyoo'/, v.

        [Usenet] To automatically generate a large amount of garbage to the
        net, esp. from an automated posting program gone wild. See {ARMM}.

:dickless workstation: n.

        Extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a class
        of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other machines designed
        exclusively to network with an expensive central disk server. These
        combine all the disadvantages of timesharing with all the
        disadvantages of distributed personal computers; typically, they
        cannot even {boot} themselves without help (in the form of some kind
        of {breath-of-life packet}) from the server.

:dictionary flame: n.

        [Usenet] An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by
        insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired
        conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of
        people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about
        reality. Compare {spelling flame}.

:diddle:

        1. vt. To work with or modify in a not-particularly-serious manner.
        "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't double-space all the
        time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes
        away." See {tweak} and {twiddle}.

        2. n. The action or result of diddling.

        See also {tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}.

:die: v.

        Syn. {crash}. Unlike {crash}, which is used primarily of hardware,
        this verb is used of both hardware and software. See also {go
        flatline}, {casters-up mode}.

:die horribly: v.

        The software equivalent of {crash and burn}, and the preferred
        emphatic form of {die}. "The converter choked on an FF in its input
        and died horribly".

:diff: /dif/, n.

        1. A change listing, especially giving differences between (and
        additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in
        the plural diffs). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon File!" Compare
        {vdiff}.

        2. Specifically, such a listing produced by the diff(1) command,
        esp. when used as specification input to the patch(1) utility (which
        can actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a
        common method of distributing patches and source updates in the
        Unix/C world.

        3. v. To compare (whether or not by use of automated tools on
        machine-readable files); see also {vdiff}, {mod}.

:dike: vt.

        To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a
        computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When
        in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more
        effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by
        increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely used to mean `diagonal
        cutters', a kind of wire cutter. To `dike something out' means to
        use such cutters to remove something. Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary
        defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term has
        been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as
        sections of code.

:Dilbert:

        n. Name and title character of a comic strip nationally syndicated
        in the U.S. and enormously popular among hackers. Dilbert is an
        archetypical engineer-nerd who works at an anonymous high-technology
        company; the strips present a lacerating satire of insane working
        conditions and idiotic {management} practices all too readily
        recognized by hackers. Adams, who spent nine years in {cube} 4S700R
        at Pacific Bell (not {DEC} as often reported), often remarks that he
        has never been able to come up with a fictional management blunder
        that his correspondents didn't quickly either report to have
        actually happened or top with a similar but even more bizarre
        incident. In 1996 Adams distilled his insights into the collective
        psychology of businesses into an even funnier book, The Dilbert
        Principle (HarperCollins, ISBN 0-887-30787-6). See also
        {pointy-haired}, {rat dance}.

:ding: n.,vi.

        1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among hackers, but more common in
        the {Real World}.

        2. dinged: What happens when someone in authority gives you a minor
        bitching about something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for
        having a messy desk."

:dink: /dink/, adj.

        Said of a machine that has the {bitty box} nature; a machine too
        small to be worth bothering with -- sometimes the system you're
        currently forced to work on. First heard from an MIT hacker working
        on a CP/M system with 64K, in reference to any 6502 system, then
        from fans of 32-bit architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS
        will never work on that dink machine." Probably derived from
        mainstream `dinky', which isn't sufficiently pejorative. See
        {macdink}.

:dinosaur: n.

        1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power. Used
        especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with newer
        microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the 1998 Unix
        EXPO, Bill Joy compared the liquid-cooled mainframe in the massive
        IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping
        its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare {big
        iron}; see also {mainframe}.

        2. [IBM] A very conservative user; a {zipperhead}.

:dinosaur pen: n.

        A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with raised
        flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air conditioning,
        and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See {boa}.

:dinosaurs mating: n.

        Said to occur when yet another {big iron} merger or buyout occurs;
        originally reflected a perception by hackers that these signal
        another stage in the long, slow dying of the {mainframe} industry.
        In the mainframe industry's glory days of the 1960s, it was `IBM and
        the Seven Dwarfs': Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric,
        Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out early, and it
        was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and
        Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs
        merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 -- this was when the
        phrase dinosaurs mating was coined); and in 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR
        (but spat it back out a few years later). Control Data still exists
        but is no longer in the mainframe business. In similar wave of
        dinosaur-matings as the PC business began to consolidate after 1995,
        Digital Equipment was bought by Compaq which was bought by
        Hewlett-Packard. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants
        seem inevitable.

:dirtball: n.

        [XEROX PARC] A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the major
        or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox is not a dirtball
        company".

        [Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional
        arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and
        scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such
        that this superior attitude is not much resented. --ESR]

:dirty power: n.

        Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards
        of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly
        higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause
        problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively
        known as {power hit}s).

:disclaimer: n.

        [Usenet] Statement ritually appended to many Usenet postings
        (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the
        fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the
        article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of
        the organization running the machine through which the article
        entered the network.

:Discordianism: /diskor'di@nism/, n.

        The veneration of {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among
        hackers. Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert
        Anton Wilson's novel Illuminatus! as a sort of self-subverting
        Dada-Zen for Westerners -- it should on no account be taken
        seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. Consider, for
        example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from Principia
        Discordia: "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads."
        Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy
        theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the
        anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian
        secret society called the Illuminati. See Religion in Appendix B,
        {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.

:disemvowel: v.

        [USENET: play on `disembowel'] Less common synonym for {splat out}.

:disk farm: n.

        A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. {washing
        machine}s). This term was well established by 1990, and generalized
        by about ten years later; see {farm}. It has become less common as
        disk strange densities reached livels where terabytes of storage can
        easily be fit in a single rack.

:display hack: n.

        A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to
        make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include {munching
        squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD Unix rain(6) program, worms(6)
        on miscellaneous Unixes, and the {X} kaleid(1) program. Display
        hacks can also be implemented by creating text files containing
        numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal;
        one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with
        twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack value}
        of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of the
        images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of
        the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.

:dispress: vt.

        [contraction of `Dissociated Press' due to eight-character MS-DOS
        filenames] To apply the {Dissociated Press} algorithm to a block of
        text. The resultant output is also referred to as a 'dispression'.

:Dissociated Press: n.

        [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a reference in the
        1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Up, Doc?] An algorithm for
        transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more
        efficiently than by passing it through a {marketroid}. The algorithm
        starts by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text.
        Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the
        original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and
        then prints the next word or letter. {EMACS} has a handy command for
        this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press
        applied to an earlier version of this Jargon File:

          wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an array (C
          has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to
          spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention
          to the medium in question.

        Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to
        the same source:

          window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't@/ prefer to use
          the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout
          getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a
          move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace
          logic or problem!

        A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to
        a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an
        interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window sysIWYG'
        and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of
        Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques
        called travesty generators have been employed with considerable
        satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see {pseudo}.

:distribution: n.

        1. A software source tree packaged for distribution; but see {kit}.
        Since about 1996 unqualified use of this term often implies `{Linux}
        distribution'. The short form {distro} is often used for this sense.

        2. A vague term encompassing mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups
        (but not {BBS} {fora}); any topic-oriented message channel with
        multiple recipients.

        3. An information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with
        geography) to which propagation of a Usenet message is restricted; a
        much-underutilized feature.

:distro: n.

        Synonym for {distribution}, sense 1.

:disusered: adj.

        [Usenet] Said of a person whose account on a computer has been
        removed, esp. for cause rather than through normal attrition. "He
        got disusered when they found out he'd been cracking through the
        school's Internet access." The verbal form disuser is live but less
        common. Both usages probably derive from the DISUSER account status
        flag on VMS; setting it disables the account. Compare {star out}.

:DMZ:

        [common] Literally, De-Militarized Zone. Figuratively, the portion
        of a private network that is visible through the network's firewalls
        (see {firewall machine}). Coined in the late 1990s as jargon, this
        term is now borderline techspeak.

:do protocol: vi.

        [from network protocol programming] To perform an interaction with
        somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. For
        example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to
        ask for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, collect
        money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the
        bill. See {protocol}.

:doc: /dok/, n.

        Common spoken and written shorthand for `documentation'. Often used
        in the plural docs and in the construction doc file (i.e.,
        documentation available on-line).

:documentation: n.

        The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and
        pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware
        products (see also {tree-killer}). Hackers seldom read paper
        documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer theirs
        to be terse and on-line. A common comment on this predilection is
        "You can't {grep} dead trees". See {drool-proof paper}, {verbiage},
        {treeware}.

:dodgy: adj.

        Syn. with {flaky}. Preferred outside the U.S.

:dogcow: /dog'kow/, n.

        See {Moof}. The dogcow is a semi-legendary creature that lurks in
        the depths of the Macintosh Technical Notes Hypercard stack V3.1.
        The full story of the dogcow is told in technical note #31 (the
        particular dogcow illustrated is properly named `Clarus').
        Option-shift-click will cause it to emit a characteristic "Moof!" or
        "!fooM" sound. Getting to tech note 31 is the hard part; to discover
        how to do that, one must needs examine the stack script with a
        hackerly eye. Clue: {rot13} is involved. A dogcow also appears if
        you choose `Page Setup...' with a LaserWriter selected and click on
        the `Options' button. It also lurks in other Mac printer drivers,
        notably those for the now-discontinued Style Writers. See
        http://developer.apple.com/products/techsupport/dogcow/tn31.html.

:dogfood: n.

        [Microsoft, Netscape] Interim software used internally for testing.
        "To eat one's own dogfood" (from which the slang noun derives) means
        to use the software one is developing, as part of one's everyday
        development environment (the phrase is used outside Microsoft and
        Netscape). The practice is normal in the Linux community and
        elsewhere, but the term `dogfood' is seldom used as open-source
        betas tend to be quite tasty and nourishing. The idea is that
        developers who are using their own software will quickly learn
        what's missing or broken. Dogfood is typically not even of {beta}
        quality.

:dogpile: v.

        [Usenet: prob. fr. mainstream "puppy pile"] When many people post
        unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting, they are
        sometimes said to "dogpile" or "dogpile on" the person to whom
        they're responding. For example, when a religious missionary posts a
        simplistic appeal to alt.atheism, he can expect to be dogpiled. It
        has been suggested that this derives from U.S. football slang for a
        tackle involving three or more people; among hackers, it seems at
        least as likely to derive from an `autobiographical' Bugs Bunny
        cartoon in which a gang of attacking canines actually yells "Dogpile
        on the rabbit!".

:dogwash: /dog'wosh/

        [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very optional software
        change request, ca.: 1982. It was something like "Urgency: Wash your
        dog first".]

        1. n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from
        more serious work.

        2. v. To engage in such a project. Many games and much {freeware}
        get written this way.

:Don't do that then!: imp.

        [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial
        complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I type
        control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds."
        "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't do that!"). Compare {RTFM}.

        Here's a classic example of "Don't do that then!" from Neal
        Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line. A friend of his
        built a network with a load of Macs and a few high-powered database
        servers. He found that from time to time the whole network would
        lock up for no apparent reason. The problem was eventually tracked
        down to MacOS's cooperative multitasking: when a user held down the
        mouse button for too long, the network stack wouldn't get a chance
        to run...

:dongle: /dong'gl/, n.

        1. [now obs.] A security or {copy protection} device for proprietary
        software consisting of a serialized EPROM and some drivers in a D-25
        connector shell, which must be connected to an I/O port of the
        computer while the program is run. Programs that use a dongle query
        the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter, and
        terminate if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed
        validation code. Thus, users can make as many copies of the program
        as they want but must pay for each dongle. The first sighting of a
        dongle was in 1984, associated with a software product called
        PaperClip. The idea was clever, but it was initially a failure, as
        users disliked tying up a serial port this way. By 1993, dongles
        would typically pass data through the port and monitor for {magic}
        codes (and combinations of status lines) with minimal if any
        interference with devices further down the line -- this innovation
        was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of
        software. These devices have become rare as the industry has moved
        away from copy-protection schemes in general.

        2. By extension, any physical electronic key or transferable ID
        required for a program to function. Common variations on this theme
        have used parallel or even joystick ports. See {dongle-disk}.

        3. An adaptor cable mating a special edge-type connector on a PCMCIA
        or on-board Ethernet card to a standard 8p8c Ethernet jack. This
        usage seems to have surfaced in 1999 and is now dominant. Laptop
        owners curse these things because they're notoriously easy to lose
        and the vendors commonly charge extortionate prices for
        replacements.

        [Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow Technologies (a
        manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived from
        "Don Gall", allegedly the inventor of the device. The company's
        receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth
        invented for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I expect it to haunt my life
        as a lexicographer for at least the next ten years. :-( --ESR]

:dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/, n.

        A special floppy disk that is required in order to perform some
        task. Some contain special coding that allows an application to
        identify it uniquely, others are special code that does something
        that normally-resident programs don't or can't. (For example, AT&T's
        "Unix PC" would only come up in {root mode} with a special boot
        disk.) Also called a key disk. See {dongle}.

:Doom, X of:

        [common] A construction similar to `{Death, X of}, but derived
        rather from the Cracks of Doom in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
        trilogy. The connotations are slightly different; a Foo of Death is
        mainly being held up to ridicule, but one would have to take a Foo
        of Doom a bit more seriously.

:doorstop: n.

        Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and halfway
        expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept around for
        political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. Compare {boat anchor}.

:DoS attack: //

        [Usenet,common; note that it's unrelated to DOS as name of an
        operating system] Abbreviation for Denial-Of-Service attack. This
        abbreviation is most often used of attempts to shut down newsgroups
        with floods of {spam}, or to flood network links with large amounts
        of traffic, or to flood network links with large amounts of traffic,
        often by abusing network broadcast addresses. Compare {slashdot
        effect}.

:dot file: n.

        A file that is not visible by default to normal directory-browsing
        tools (on Unix, files named with a leading dot are, by convention,
        not normally presented in directory listings). Many programs define
        one or more dot files in which startup or configuration information
        may be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's
        behavior by creating the appropriate file in the current or home
        directory. (Therefore, dot files tend to {creep} -- with every
        nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's home
        directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course without
        the user's really being aware of it.) See also {profile} (sense 1),
        {rc file}.

:double bucky: adj.

        Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is
        double bucky F."

        This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and
        was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at MIT. A
        typical MIT comment was that the Stanford {bucky bits} (control and
        meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you
        could type only 512 different characters on a Stanford keyboard. An
        obvious way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys,
        and this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that many shifting
        keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands
        away from the home position on the keyboard. It was half-seriously
        suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented as pedals;
        typing on such a keyboard would be very much like playing a full
        pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a parody of a very fine song
        by Jeffrey Moss called Rubber Duckie, which was published in The
        Sesame Street Songbook (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN
        0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in
        celebration of the Stanford keyboard:

        Double Bucky

        Double bucky, you're the one!
        You make my keyboard lots of fun.
            Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
        (Vo-vo-de-o!)
        Control and meta, side by side,
        Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
            Double bucky!  Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
        Oh,
        I sure wish that I
        Had a couple of
            Bits more!
        Perhaps a
        Set of pedals to
        Make the number of
            Bits four:
        Double double bucky!
        Double bucky, left and right
        OR'd together, outta sight!
            Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
            Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
            Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!

        -- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)

        [This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk} --ESR]
        See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}.

:doubled sig: n.

        A {sig block} that has been included twice in a {Usenet} article or,
        less commonly, in an electronic mail message. An article or message
        with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured software.
        More often, however, it reveals the author's lack of experience in
        electronic communication. See {B1FF}, {pseudo}.

:down:

        1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a
        humorous thing to say (unless of course you were expecting to use
        it), and "The elevator is down" always means "The elevator isn't
        working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on. With
        respect to computers, this term has passed into the mainstream; the
        extension to other kinds of machine is still confined to techies
        (e.g. boiler mechanics may speak of a boiler being down).

        2. go down vi. To stop functioning; usually said of the {system}.
        The message from the {console} that every hacker hates to hear from
        the operator is "System going down in 5 minutes".

        3. take down, bring down vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for
        repair work or {PM}. "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug
        in the tape drive." Occasionally one hears the word down by itself
        used as a verb in this vt. sense.

        See {crash}; oppose {up}.

:download: vt.

        To transfer data or (esp.) code from a far-away system (especially a
        larger host system) over a digital communications link to a nearby
        system (especially a smaller client system. Oppose {upload}.

        Historical use of these terms was at one time associated with
        transfers from large timesharing machines to PCs or peripherals
        (download) and vice-versa (upload). The modern usage relative to the
        speaker (rather than as an indicator of the size and role of the
        machines) evolved as machine categories lost most of their former
        functional importance.

:DP: /DP/, n.

        1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers, use
        of the term marks one immediately as a {suit}. See {DPer}.

        2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated Press}.

:DPer: /deepeeer/, n.

        Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that {suit}s use this
        term self-referentially. Computers process data, not people! See
        {DP}.

:Dr. Fred Mbogo: /@mboh'goh, doktr fred/, n.

        [Stanford] The archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem,
        esp. an incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye
        doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry Cleaning."
        The name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the original Dr.
        Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician on the old
        Addams Family TV show. Interestingly enough, it turns out that under
        the rules for Swahili noun classes, `m-' is the characteristic
        prefix of "nouns referring to human beings". As such, "mbogo" is
        quite plausible as a Swahili coinage for a person having the nature
        of a {bogon}. Actually, "mbogo" is indeed a Ki-Swahili word
        referring to the African Cape Buffalo, syncerus caffer. It is one of
        the "big five" dangerous African game animals, and many people with
        bush experience believe it to be the most dangerous of them. Compare
        {Bloggs Family} and {J. Random Hacker}; see also {Fred Foobar} and
        {fred}.

:dragon: n.

        [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it is not invoked
        at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various
        secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program,
        which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average
        statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of
        people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc.,
        along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the
        Enterprise), which was generated by the `name dragon'. Usage: rare
        outside MIT -- under Unix and most other OSes this would be called a
        background demon or {daemon}. The best-known Unix example of a
        dragon is cron(1). At SAIL, they called this sort of thing a
        phantom.

:Dragon Book: n.

        The classic text Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools, by
        Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-Wesley
        1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of the cover design
        featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of compiler design' and a
        knight bearing the lance `LALR parser generator' among his other
        trappings. This one is more specifically known as the `Red Dragon
        Book' (1986); an earlier edition, sans Sethi and titled Principles
        Of Compiler Design (Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman;
        Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN 0-201-00022-9), was the ``reen Dragon
        Book' (1977). (Also New Dragon Book, Old Dragon Book.) The horsed
        knight and the Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a
        distance; now the knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a
        terminal showing a video-game representation of the Red Dragon's
        head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See
        also {book titles}.

:drain: v.

        [IBM] Syn. for {flush} (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality
        about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.

:dread high-bit disease: n.

        A condition endemic to some now-obsolete computers and peripherals
        (including ASR-33 teletypes and PRIME minicomputers) that results in
        all characters having their high (0x80) bit forced on. This of
        course makes transporting files to other systems much more
        difficult, not to mention the problems these machines have talking
        with true 8-bit devices.

        This term was originally used specifically of PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME)
        minicomputers. Folklore has it that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit
        convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine;
        PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the
        disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility
        requirements and struggled heroically to cure it. Whoever was
        responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most {cretinous}
        design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}.

:dread questionmark disease:

        n. The result of saving HTML from Microsoft Word or some other
        program that uses the nonstandard Microsoft variant of Latin-1; the
        symptom is that various of those nonstandard characters in positions
        128-160 show up as questionmarks. The usual culprit is the misnamed
        `smart quotes' feature in Microsoft Word. For more details (and a
        program called demoroniser that cleans up the mess) see
        http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/.

:DRECNET: /drek'net/, n.

        [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning filth] Deliberate distortion
        of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the {VMS} community. So
        called because {DEC} helped write the Ethernet specification and
        then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic)
        violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it
        incompatible. See also {connector conspiracy}.

:driver: n.

        1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program; the code that
        gets commands and dispatches them for execution.

        2. [techspeak] In device driver, code designed to handle a
        particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape unit.

        3. In the TeX world and the computerized typesetting world in
        general, a program that translates some device-independent or other
        common format to something a real device can actually understand.

:droid: n.

        [from android, SF terminology for a humanoid robot of essentially
        biological (as opposed to mechanical/electronic) construction] A
        person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee)
        exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in
        the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a
        blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by
        authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality,
        one unwilling or unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in
        exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand
        or worse if Procedures are not followed No Matter What; and (e) no
        interest in doing anything above or beyond the call of a very
        narrowly-interpreted duty, or in particular in fixing that which is
        broken; an "It's not my job, man" attitude.

        Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and
        bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government
        employees. The implication is that the rules and official procedures
        constitute software that the droid is executing; problems arise when
        the software has not been properly debugged. The term droid
        mentality is also used to describe the mindset behind this behavior.
        Compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see {-oid}.

        In England there is equivalent mainstream slang; a `jobsworth' is an
        obstructive, rule-following bureaucrat, often of the uniformed or
        suited variety. Named for the habit of denying a reasonable request
        by sucking his teeth and saying "Oh no, guv, sorry I can't help you:
        that's more than my job's worth".

:drone: n.

        Ignorant sales or customer service personnel in computer or
        electronics superstores. Characterized by a lack of even superficial
        knowledge about the products they sell, yet possessed of the
        conviction that they are more competent than their hacker customers.
        Usage: "That video board probably sucks, it was recommended by a
        drone at Fry's" In the year 2000, their natural habitats include
        Fry's Electronics, Best Buy, and CompUSA.

:drool-proof paper: n.

        Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed down}, to the point
        where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is said to have
        succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to have been
        `written on drool-proof paper'. For example, this is an actual quote
        from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your LaserWriter to
        open fire or flame." The SGI Indy manual included the line "[Do not]
        dangle the mouse by the cord or throw it at coworkers."

:drop on the floor: vt.

        To react to an error condition by silently discarding messages or
        other valuable data. "The gateway ran out of memory, so it just
        started dropping packets on the floor." Also frequently used of
        faulty mail and netnews relay sites that lose messages. See also
        {black hole}, {bit bucket}.

:drop-ins: n.

        [prob.: by analogy with {drop-outs}] Spurious characters appearing
        on a terminal or console as a result of line noise or a system
        malfunction of some sort. Esp.: used when these are interspersed
        with one's own typed input. Compare {drop-outs}, sense 2.

:drop-outs: n.

        1. A variety of power glitch (see {glitch}); momentary 0 voltage on
        the electrical mains.

        2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or
        system saturation (one cause of such behavior under Unix when a bad
        connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
        interrupts; see {screaming tty}).

        3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when
        the mind just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See
        {glitch}, {fried}.

        A really serious case of {drop-outs}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-21. The previous one
        is 73-05-19.)

:drugged: adj.

        (also on drugs)

        1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward {brain-damaged}. Often
        accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint.

        2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance.

:drum: n.

        Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media
        that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under some versions
        of BSD Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called
        /dev/drum; this has led to considerable humor and not a few
        straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations' getting foisted on
        {newbie}s. See also " The Story of Mel'" in Appendix A.

:drunk mouse syndrome: n.

        (also mouse on drugs) A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing
        device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse
        cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync
        with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be corrected by
        unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again. Another recommended
        fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees.

        At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner
        (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the mouse
        had picked up enough {cruft} to be unreliable, the mouse was doused
        in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation
        left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so
        the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse was
        declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC
        ultrasonic bath.

:DSW: n.

        [alt.(sysadmin|tech-support).recovery; abbrev. for Dick Size War] A
        contest between two or more people boasting about who has the faster
        machine, keys on (either physical or cryptographic) keyring, greyer
        hair, or almost anything. Salvos in a DSW are typically humorous and
        playful, often self-mocking.

:dub dub dub:

        [common] Spoken-only shorthand for the "www" (double-u double-u
        double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the style of
        reggae music called `dub'.

:Duff's device: n.

        The most dramatic use yet seen of {fall through} in C, invented by
        Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm. Trying to optimize all the
        instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied data serially
        onto an output port, he decided to unroll it. He then realized that
        the unrolled version could be implemented by interlacing the
        structures of a switch and a loop:

           register n = (count + 7) / 8;      /* count > 0 assumed */

           switch (count % 8)
           {
           case 0:        do {  *to = *from++;
           case 7:              *to = *from++;
           case 6:              *to = *from++;
           case 5:              *to = *from++;
           case 4:              *to = *from++;
           case 3:              *to = *from++;
           case 2:              *to = *from++;
           case 1:              *to = *from++;
                              } while (--n > 0);
           }

        Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the first
        time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. C's default
        {fall through} in case statements has long been its most
        controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This code forms
        some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's
        for or against." Duff has discussed the device in detail at
        http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/duffs-device.html. Note that the
        omission of postfix ++ from *to was intentional (though confusing).
        Duff's device can be used to implement memory copy, but the original
        aim was to copy values serially into a magic IO register.

        [For maximal obscurity, the outermost pair of braces above could
        actually be removed -- GLS]

:dumb terminal: n.

        A terminal that is one step above a {glass tty}, having a minimally
        addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or other features
        normally supported by a {smart terminal}. Once upon a time, when
        glass ttys were common and addressable cursors were something
        special, what is now called a dumb terminal could pass for a smart
        terminal.

:dumbass attack: /duhm'as @tak/, n.

        [Purdue] Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the
        experienced, especially one made while running as {root} under Unix,
        e.g., typing rm -r * or mkfs on a mounted file system. Compare
        {adger}.

:dumbed down: adj.

        Simplified, with a strong connotation of oversimplified. Often, a
        {marketroid} will insist that the interfaces and documentation of
        software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons
        of midnight oil making it smart. This creates friction. See
        {user-friendly}.

:dump: n.

        1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem
        or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest
        available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially
        one consisting of hex or octal {runes} describing the byte-by-byte
        state of memory, mass storage, or some file. In {elder days},
        debugging was generally done by groveling over a dump (see
        {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages and interactive
        debuggers has made such tedium uncommon, and the term dump now has a
        faintly archaic flavor.

        2. A backup. This usage is typical only at large timesharing
        installations.

:dumpster diving: /dump'ster di:'ving/, n.

        1. The practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical
        installation to extract confidential data, especially
        security-compromising information (`dumpster' is an Americanism for
        what is elsewhere called a skip). Back in AT&T's monopoly days,
        before paper shredders became common office equipment, phone phreaks
        (see {phreaking}) used to organize regular dumpster runs against
        phone company plants and offices. Discarded and damaged copies of
        AT&T internal manuals taught them much. The technique is still
        rumored to be a favorite of crackers operating against careless
        targets.

        2. The practice of raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where
        producers and/or consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with
        the expectation (usually justified) of finding discarded but
        still-valuable equipment to be nursed back to health in some
        hacker's den. Experienced dumpster-divers not infrequently
        accumulate basements full of moldering (but still potentially
        useful) {cruft}.

:dusty deck: n.

        Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to
        remain compatible with, or to maintain ({DP} types call this legacy
        code, a term hackers consider smarmy and excessively reverent). The
        term implies that the software in question is a holdover from
        card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
        {number-crunching} software, much of which was written in FORTRAN
        and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to
        replace. See {fossil}; compare {crawling horror}.

:DWIM: /dwim/

        [acronym, `Do What I Mean']

        1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended
        when bogus input was provided.

        2. n. obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to
        accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors.
        See {hairy}.

        3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp.
        when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see
        {legalese}).

        4. Of a person, someone whose directions are incomprehensible and
        vague, but who nevertheless has the expectation that you will solve
        the problem using the specific method he/she has in mind.

        Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling
        errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would
        often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically
        different. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood
        for `Damn Warren's Infernal Machine!'.

        In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
        command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there
        typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named
        backup files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was
        trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing
        sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files,
        so DWIM helpfully reported *$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete
        *'. It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker
        managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half
        dozen or so files were lost.

        The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go
        to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his
        workstation, and then type delete *$ twice.

        DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex
        program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction
        the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program
        correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about DWIMC (Do
        What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb,
        is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see {Right Thing}.

:dynner: /din'r/, n.

        32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {byte}. Usage: rare and
        extremely silly. See also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}. General
        discussion of such terms is under {nybble}.

  E

   Easter egg

   Easter egging

   eat flaming death

   EBCDIC

   ECP

   ed

   egg

   egosurf

   eighty-column mind

   El Camino Bignum

   elder days

   elegant

   elephantine

   elevator controller

   elite

   ELIZA effect

   elvish

   EMACS

   email

   emoticon

   EMP

   empire

   engine

   English

   enhancement

   ENQ

   EOD

   EOF

   EOL

   EOU

   epoch

   epsilon

   epsilon squared

   era

   Eric Conspiracy

   Eris

   erotics

   error 33

   eurodemo

   evil

   evil and rude

   Evil Empire

   exa-

   examining the entrails

   EXCH

   excl

   EXE

   exec

   exercise, left as an

   Exon

   Exploder

   exploit

   external memory

   eye candy

   eyeball search

:Easter egg: n.

        [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and
        many parts of Europe]

        1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke,
        intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.

        2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on
        a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented set of commands
        or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One
        well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to
        respond to the command make love with not war?. Many personal
        computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including
        lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of
        music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development
        team.

:Easter egging: n.

        [IBM] The act of replacing unrelated components more or less at
        random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider
        this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not
        love them for it. See also the jokes under {field circus}. Compare
        {shotgun debugging}.

:eat flaming death: imp.

        A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars}
        comic; supposedly derived from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era
        anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan
        mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported
        that on the Firesign Theatre's 1975 album In The Next World, You're
        On Your Own a character won the right to scream "Eat flaming death,
        fascist media pigs" in the middle of Oscar night on a game show;
        this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown
        expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, {EBCDIC} users!"

        IPM tells us to {eat flaming death}.

:EBCDIC: /eb's@dik/, /ebsee`dik/, /ebk@dik/, n.

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

:ECP: /ECP/, n.

        See {spam} and {velveeta}.

:ed: n.

        "ed is the standard text editor." Line taken from the original
        {Unix} manual page on ed, an ancient line-oriented editor that is by
        now used only by a few {Real Programmer}s, and even then only for
        batch operations. The original line is sometimes uttered near the
        beginning of an emacs vs. vi holy war on {Usenet}, with the (vain)
        hope to quench the discussion before it really takes off. Often
        followed by a standard text describing the many virtues of ed (such
        as the small memory {footprint} on a Timex Sinclair, and the
        consistent (because nearly non-existent) user interface).

:egg: n.

        The binary code that is the payload for buffer overflow and format
        string attacks. Typically, an egg written in assembly and designed
        to enable remote access or escalate privileges from an ordinary user
        account to administrator level when it hatches. Also known as
        shellcode.

        The name comes from a particular buffer-overflow exploit that was
        co-written by a cracker named eggplant. The variable name `egg' was
        used to store the payload. The usage spread from people who saw and
        analyzed the code.

:egosurf: vi.

        To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps
        connected to long-established SF-fan slang egoscan, to search for
        one's name in a fanzine.

:eighty-column mind: n.

        [IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the
        transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody has
        dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people,
        including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be
        buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the
        card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card
        readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called The
        Last Bug, the climactic lines of which are as follows:

           He died at the console
           Of hunger and thirst.
           Next day he was buried,
           Face down, 9-edge first.

        The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
        customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the
        mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the
        {killer micro}. See {IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {code grinder}. A
        copy of The Last Bug lives on the the GNU site at
        http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.

:El Camino Bignum: /el' k@meenoh bignuhm/, n.

        The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San
        Francisco peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to
        Mexico City; many portions of the old road are still intact.
        Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative
        to El Camino Real, which defines {logical} north and south even
        though it isn't really north-south in many places. El Camino Real
        runs right past Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.

        The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /rayahl'/) means
        `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
        language, a real quantity is a number typically precise to seven
        significant digits, and a double precision quantity is a larger
        floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
        digits (other languages have similar real types).

        When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
        long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
        calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the hacker was
        told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `El
        Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)

        [GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was in
        fact himself --ESR]

        In the early 1990s, the synonym El Camino Virtual was been reported
        as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.

        Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard
        to refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as
        "El Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection
        is located near Moffett Field -- where they keep all those complex
        planes.

:elder days: n.

        The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the
        {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {ITS}, and the ARPANET. This term has been rather
        consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of
        the Rings. Compare {Iron Age}; see also {elvish} and {Great Worm}.

:elegant: adj.

        [common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a
        certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever',
        `winning', or even {cuspy}.

        The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exupry,
        probably best known for his classic children's book The Little
        Prince, was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best
        definition of engineering elegance when he said "A designer knows he
        has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but
        when there is nothing left to take away."

:elephantine: adj.

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

:elevator controller: n.

        An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like {toaster}
        (which superseded it). During one period (1983--84) in the
        deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this
        was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited
        computation environment. "You can't require printf(3) to be part of
        the default runtime library -- what if you're targeting an elevator
        controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical
        weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}.

:elite: adj.

        Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a general
        positive adjective. This term is not actually native hacker slang;
        it is used primarily by crackers and {warez d00dz}, for which reason
        hackers use it only with heavy irony. The term used to refer to the
        folks allowed in to the "hidden" or "privileged" sections of BBSes
        in the early 1980s (which, typically, contained pirated software).
        Frequently, early boards would only let you post, or even see, a
        certain subset of the sections (or `boards') on a BBS. Those who got
        to the frequently legendary `triple super secret' boards were elite.
        Misspellings of this term in warez d00dz style abound; the forms
        l337 eleet, and 31337 (among others) have been sighted.

        A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose
        {lamer}.

:ELIZA effect: /@li:'z@ @fekt/, n.

        [AI community] The tendency of humans to attach associations to
        terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing magic
        about the symbol + that makes it well-suited to indicate addition;
        it's just that people associate it with addition. Using + or `plus'
        to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the
        ELIZA effect.

        This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum,
        which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of the
        patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It
        worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words
        into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are
        many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in
        dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people's tendency to attach
        to words meanings which the computer never put there. The ELIZA
        effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a programming language, but it
        can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial
        Intelligence system. Compare {ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.
        Sources for a clone of the original Eliza are available at
        ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.

:elvish: n.

        1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the
        beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the Book of Kells. Invented and
        described by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of The Rings as an
        orthography for his fictional `elvish' languages, this system (which
        is both visually and phonetically {elegant}) has long fascinated
        hackers (who tend to be intrigued by artificial languages in
        general). It is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window
        systems, and the like to support a Feanorian typeface as one of
        their demo items. See also {elder days}.

        2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a
        graphics device.

        3. The typeface mundanely called `Bcklin', an art-Noveau display
        font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/, n.

        [from Editing MACroS] The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a
        programmable text editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It
        was originally written by Richard Stallman in {TECO} under {ITS} at
        the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced,
        self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display
        editor". It has since been reimplemented any number of times, by
        various hackers, and versions exist that run under most major
        operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used version, also
        written by Stallman and now called "{GNU} EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs
        principally under Unix. (Its close relative XEmacs is the second
        most popular version.) It includes facilities to run compilation
        subprocesses and send and receive mail or news; many hackers spend
        up to 80% of their {tube time} inside it. Other variants include
        {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove,
        epsilon, and MicroEMACS. (Though we use the original all-caps
        spelling here, it is nowadays very commonly `Emacs'.) Some EMACS
        versions running under window managers iconify as an overflowing
        kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor does not
        (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too {heavyweight} and
        {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as `Escape Meta Alt
        Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated
        with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions include `Eight Megabytes
        And Constantly Swapping' (from when that was a lot of {core}),
        `Eventually malloc()s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A
        Computer Slow' (see {recursive acronym}). See also {vi}.

:email: /ee'mayl/

        (also written `e-mail' and `E-mail')

        1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks
        and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast {snail-mail},
        {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network address}.

        2. vt. To send electronic mail.

        Oddly enough, the word emailed is actually listed in the OED; it
        means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a net
        or open work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is probably
        derived from French maill (enameled) and related to Old French
        emmaillere (network). A French correspondent tells us that in
        modern French, `email' is a hard enamel obtained by heating special
        paints in a furnace; an `emailleur' (no final e) is a craftsman who
        makes email (he generally paints some objects (like, say, jewelry)
        and cooks them in a furnace).

        There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet
        traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a
        not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant third
        and fourth.

:emoticon: /eemoh'tikon/, n.

        [common] An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email
        or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or
        some other explicit humor indication) are virtually required under
        certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums
        such as Usenet; the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise
        cause what were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or
        otherwise non-100%-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not
        always even by {newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

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

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        | :-) | `smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,          |
        |     | occasionally sarcasm)                                      |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | :-( | `frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)              |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | ;-) | `half-smiley' ( {ha ha only serious}); also known as       |
        |     | semi-smiley or winkey face.                                |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | :-/ | `wry face'                                                 |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

        The invention of the original smiley and frowney emoticons is
        generally credited to Scott Fahlman at CMU in 1982. He later wrote:
        "I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date
        for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
        would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." In
        September 2002 the original post was recovered.

        There is a rival claim by one Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have
        proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979. It
        seems likely these two inventions were independent. Users of the
        PLATO educational system report using emoticons composed from
        overlaid dot-matrix graphics in the 1970s.

        Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of loserhood!
        More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that you've gone
        over the line.

:EMP: /EMP/

        See {spam}.

:empire: n.

        Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written
        by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of multi-player variants
        of varying degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player
        version implemented for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even
        available as MS-DOS/Windows freeware. All are notoriously addictive.
        Of various commercial derivatives the best known is probably "Empire
        Deluxe" on PCs and Amigas.

        Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet by up
        to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple
        of months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get while playing
        is a function of the rate at which updates occur and the number of
        co-rulers of your country. Empire server software is available for
        Unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other platforms. A
        comprehensive history of the game is available at
        http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. The Empire resource
        site is at http://www.empire.cx/.

:engine: n.

        1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be
        used without some kind of {front end}. Today we have, especially,
        print engine: the guts of a laser printer.

        2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot
        of noisy crunching, such as a database engine.

        The hacker senses of engine are actually close to its original,
        pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
        instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had not
        been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
        power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
        explains why he named the stored-program computer that he designed
        in 1844 the Analytical Engine.

:English:

        1. n. obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any
        language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced
        from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real
        hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is at
        least as readable as English. Usage: mostly by old-time hackers,
        though recognizable in context. Today the preferred shorthand is
        simply {source}.

        2. The official name of the database language used by the old Pick
        Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with
        delusions of grandeur. The name permitted {marketroid}s to say "Yes,
        and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s
        without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: n.

        Common {marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse of language is
        a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased
        revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a
        {feature} -- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself
        to be a feature.

:ENQ: /enkw/, /enk/

        [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line convention
        for querying someone's availability. After opening a {talk mode}
        connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type
        SYN SYN ENQ? (the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes),
        and expect a return of {ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not
        the person felt interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the
        usage of FOO? listed under {talk mode}.

:EOD: n.

        [IRC, Usenet] Abbreviation: End of Discussion. Used when the speaker
        believes he has stated his case and will not respond to further
        arguments or attacks.

:EOF: /EOF/, n.

        [abbreviation, `End Of File']

        1. [techspeak] The {out-of-band} value returned by C's sequential
        character-input functions (and their equivalents in other
        environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is
        usually -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was originally
        0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few Amiga hackers think it's
        ^\.

        2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT
        (End Of Transmission) character) that is mapped by the terminal
        driver into an end-of-file condition.

        3. Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing
        something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go
        further. "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a
        joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a {JCL}
        manual." See also {EOL}.

:EOL: /EOL/, n.

        [End Of Line] Syn. for {newline}, derived perhaps from the original
        CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely recognized and occasionally
        used for brevity. Used in the example entry under {BNF}. See also
        {EOF}.

:EOU: /EOU/, n.

        The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User)
        that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This
        construction parodies the numerous obscure delimiter and control
        characters left in ASCII from the days when it was associated more
        with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g., FS, GS, RS, US,
        EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth remembering that ASR-33s
        were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of clattering parts;
        the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as ridiculous as
        it might seem to someone sitting in front of a {tube} or flatscreen
        today.

:epoch: n.

        [Unix: prob.: from astronomical timekeeping] The time and date
        corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp
        values. Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT, January
        1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858 (base date of
        the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the
        midnight beginning January 1 1904. System time is measured in
        seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the
        clock wraps around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a
        rare event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit
        count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second
        clock of Unix is good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least
        some software continues to consider it signed and that word lengths
        don't increase by then. See also {wall time}. Microsoft Windows, on
        the other hand, has an epoch problem every 49.7 days -- but this is
        seldom noticed as Windows is almost incapable of staying up
        continuously for that long.

:epsilon:

        [see {delta}]

        1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The cost is epsilon."

        2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than {marginal}. "We can get
        this feature for epsilon cost."

        3. within epsilon of: close enough to be indistinguishable for all
        practical purposes, even closer than being within delta of. "That's
        not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted."
        Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is
        required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of working."

:epsilon squared: n.

        A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as small in comparison to
        epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If
        you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the
        thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the cost of
        the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare
        {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}.

:era: n.

        Syn. {epoch}. Webster's Unabridged makes these words almost
        synonymous, but era more often connotes a span of time rather than a
        point in time, whereas the reverse is true for {epoch}. The {epoch}
        usage is recommended.

:Eric Conspiracy: n.

        A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed
        as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca.
        1987; this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in
        the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably
        more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these
        three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some
        arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the
        `Allman style' described under {indent style}) and Erik Fair
        (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from more than a hundred
        others by email, and the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret
        Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more than one site. See
        the Eric Conspiracy Web Page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/ for
        full details.

:Eris: /e'ris/, n.

        The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion, and Things You Know
        Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and she was worshiped by
        that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity in the Classical
        original, she was reinvented as a more benign personification of
        creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the adherents of
        {Discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious subject of
        veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including hackerdom. See
        {Discordianism}, {Church of the SubGenius}.

:erotics: /eero'tiks/, n.

        [Helsinki University of Technology, Finland] n. English-language
        university slang for electronics. Often used by hackers in Helsinki,
        maybe because good electronics excites them and makes them warm.

:error 33: n.

        1. [XEROX PARC] Predicating one research effort upon the success of
        another.

        2. Allowing your own research effort to be placed on the critical
        path of some other project (be it a research effort or not).

:eurodemo: /yoor'odem`o/

        a {demo}, sense 4

:evil: adj.

        As used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person, or
        institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the
        bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the
        {cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, evil does not imply
        incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design
        criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This usage is more
        an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral one in the
        mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a {Blue Glue} interface
        but decided it was too evil to deal with." "{TECO} is neat, but it
        can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." Often pronounced with
        the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/. Compare {evil and
        rude}.

:evil and rude: adj.

        Both {evil} and {rude}, but with the additional connotation that the
        rudeness was due to malice rather than incompetence. Thus, for
        example: Microsoft's Windows NT is evil because it's a competent
        implementation of a bad design; it's rude because it's gratuitously
        incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would have been
        as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the
        incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in
        Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the
        Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the mainstream
        sense of `evil'.

:Evil Empire: n.

        [from Ronald Reagan's famous characterization of the communist
        Soviet Union] Formerly {IBM}, now {Microsoft}. Functionally, the
        company most hackers love to hate at any given time. Hackers like to
        see themselves as romantic rebels against the Evil Empire, and
        frequently adopt this role to the point of ascribing rather more
        power and malice to the Empire than it actually has. See also {Borg}
        and search for `Evil Empire' pages on the Web.

:exa-: /ek's@/, pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:examining the entrails: n.

        The process of {grovel}ling through a {core dump} or hex image in an
        attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down.
        The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrificed
        animal. Compare {runes}, {incantation}, {black art}.

:EXCH: /eks'ch@/, /eksch/, vt.

        To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If you
        point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking
        them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the
        name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the contents of a
        register and a memory location. Many newer hackers are probably
        thinking instead of the {PostScript} exchange operator (which is
        usually written in lowercase).

:excl: /eks'kl/, n.

        Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See {bang}, {shriek}, {ASCII}.

:EXE: /eks'ee/, /eeksee/, /EXE/, n.

        An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS,
        VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This
        usage is also occasionally found among Unix programmers even though
        Unix executables don't have any required suffix.

:exec: /egzek'/, /eksek/, n.

        1. [Unix: from execute] Synonym for {chain}, derives from the
        exec(2) call.

        2. [from executive] obs. The command interpreter for an {OS} (see
        {shell}); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob.: derived from
        UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating systems.

        3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command file
        (among VM/CMS users).

        The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is
        not used. To a hacker, an `exec' is always a program, never a
        person.

:exercise, left as an: adj.

        [from technical books] Used to complete a proof when one doesn't
        mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is:
        "The proof [or `the rest'] is left as an exercise for the reader."
        This comment has occasionally been attached to unsolved research
        problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a
        vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.

:Exon: /eks'on/, excl.

        A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the Internet
        and Usenet after the passage of the Communications Decency Act. From
        the last name of Senator James Exon (Democrat-Nebraska), primary
        author of the {CDA}. This usage outlasted the CDA itself, which was
        quashed a little over a year later by one of the most acerbic
        pro-free-speech opinions ever uttered by the Supreme Court. The
        campaign against it was led by an alliance of hackers and civil
        libertarians, and was the first effective political mobilization of
        the hacker culture. Use of Exon's name as an expletive outlived the
        CDA controversy itself.

:Exploder: n.

        Used within Microsoft to refer to the Windows Explorer, the
        web-interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT 4. Our spies report
        that most of the heavy guns at MS came from a Unix background and
        use command line utilities; even they are scornful of the
        over-gingerbreaded {WIMP environment}s that they have been called
        upon to create.

:exploit: n.

        [originally cracker slang]

        1. A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking
        security or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network.
        The {Ping O' Death} is a famous exploit.

        2. More grammatically, a program that exploits an exploit in sense
        1.

:external memory: n.

        A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written notes. "Hold on while I
        write that to external memory". The analogy is with store or DRAM
        versus nonvolatile disk storage on computers.

:eye candy: /i:' kand`ee/, n.

        [from mainstream slang "ear candy"] A display of some sort that's
        presented to {luser}s to keep them distracted while the program
        performs necessary background tasks. "Give 'em some eye candy while
        the back-end {slurp}s that {BLOB} into core." Reported as mainstream
        usage among players of graphics-heavy computer games. We're also
        told this term is mainstream slang for soft pornography, but that
        sense does not appear to be live among hackers.

:eyeball search: n.,v.

        To look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own
        native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern
        matching software like {grep} or any other automated search tool.
        Also called a {vgrep}; compare {vdiff}.

  F

   face time

   factor

   fairings

   fall over

   fall through

   fan

   fandango on core

   FAQ

   FAQ list

   FAQL

   faradize

   farkled

   farm

   fascist

   fat electrons

   fat pipe

   fat-finger

   faulty

   fear and loathing

   feature

   feature creature

   feature creep

   feature key

   feature shock

   featurectomy

   feep

   feeper

   feeping creature

   feeping creaturism

   feetch feetch

   fence

   fencepost error

   fiber-seeking backhoe

   FidoNet

   field circus

   field servoid

   file signature

   filk

   film at 11

   filter

   Finagle's Law

   fine

   finger

   finger trouble

   finger-pointing syndrome

   finn

   firebottle

   firefighting

   firehose syndrome

   firewall code

   firewall machine

   fireworks mode

   firmware

   fish

   FISH queue

   fisking

   FITNR

   fix

   FIXME

   flag

   flag day

   flaky

   flamage

   flame

   flame bait

   flame on

   flame war

   flamer

   flap

   flarp

   flash crowd

   flat

   flat-ASCII

   flat-file

   flatten

   flavor

   flavorful

   flippy

   flood

   flowchart

   flower key

   flush

   flypage

   Flyspeck 3

   flytrap

   FM

   fnord

   FOAF

   FOD

   fold case

   followup

   fontology

   foo

   foobar

   fool

   fool file

   Foonly

   footprint

   for free

   for the rest of us

   for values of

   fora

   foreground

   fork

   fork bomb

   forked

   Formosa's Law

   Fortrash

   fortune cookie

   forum

   fossil

   four-color glossies

   frag

   fragile

   Frankenputer

   fred

   Fred Foobar

   frednet

   free software

   freeware

   freeze

   fried

   frink

   friode

   fritterware

   frob

   frobnicate

   frobnitz

   frog

   frogging

   front end

   frotz

   frotzed

   frowney

   FRS

   fry

   fscking

   FSF

   -fu

   FUBAR

   fuck me harder

   FUD

   FUD wars

   fudge

   fudge factor

   fuel up

   Full Monty

   fum

   functino

   funky

   funny money

   furrfu

:face time: n.

        [common] Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as
        opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face time
        with him at the last Usenix."

:factor: n.

        See {coefficient of X}.

:fairings: n., /fer'ingz/

        [FreeBSD; orig. a typo for fairness] A term thrown out in discussion
        whenever a completely and transparently nonsensical argument in
        one's favor(?) seems called for, e,g. at the end of a really long
        thread for which the outcome is no longer even cared about since
        everyone is now so sick of it; or in rebuttal to another nonsensical
        argument ("Change the loader to look for /kernel.pl? What about
        fairings?")

:fall over: vi.

        [IBM] Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}. `Fall over hard'
        equates to {crash and burn}.

:fall through: v.

        (n. fallthrough, var.: fall-through)

        1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit
        condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits
        from the middle of it. This usage appears to be really old, dating
        from the 1940s and 1950s.

        2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or
        some other distant portion of code.

        3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a
        switch statement reaches a case label other than by jumping there
        from the switch header, passing a point where one would normally
        expect to find a break. A trivial example:

        switch (color)
        {
        case GREEN:
           do_green();
           break;
        case PINK:
           do_pink();
           /* FALL THROUGH */
        case RED:
           do_red();
           break;
        default:
           do_blue();
           break;
        }

        The variant spelling /* FALL THRU */ is also common.

        The effect of the above code is to do_green() when color is GREEN,
        do_red() when color is RED, do_blue() on any other color other than
        PINK, and (and this is the important part) do_pink() and then
        do_red() when color is PINK. Fall-through is {considered harmful} by
        some, though there are contexts (such as the coding of state
        machines) in which it is natural; it is generally considered good
        practice to include a comment highlighting the fall-through where
        one would normally expect a break. See also {Duff's device}.

:fan: n.

        Without qualification, indicates a fan of science fiction,
        especially one who goes to {con}s and tends to hang out with other
        fans. Many hackers are fans, so this term has been imported from
        fannish slang; however, unlike much fannish slang it is recognized
        by most non-fannish hackers. Among SF fans the plural is correctly
        fen, but this usage is not automatic to hackers. "Laura reads the
        stuff occasionally but isn't really a fan."

:fandango on core: n.

        [Unix/C hackers, from the Iberian dance] In C, a wild pointer that
        runs out of bounds, causing a {core dump}, or corrupts the malloc(3)
        {arena} in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is
        sometimes said to have `done a fandango on core'. On low-end
        personal machines without an MMU (or Windows boxes, which have an
        MMU but use it incompetently), this can corrupt the OS itself,
        causing massive lossage. Other frenetic dances, such as the cha-cha
        or the watusi, may be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence
        lossage}, {smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun
        screw}, {core}.

:FAQ: /FAQ/, /fak/, n.

        [Usenet]

        1. A Frequently Asked Question.

        2. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to
        high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall such questions.
        Some people prefer the term `FAQ list' or `FAQL' /fa'kl/, reserving
        `FAQ' for sense 1.

        This lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one
        kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular FAQ posting.
        Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and "What's that funny
        name for the # character?" are both Frequently Asked Questions.
        Several FAQs refer readers to the Jargon File.

:FAQ list: /FAQ list/, /fak list/, n.

        [common; Usenet] Syn {FAQ}, sense 2.

:FAQL: /fa'kl/, n.

        Syn. {FAQ list}.

:faradize: /far'@di:z/, v.

        [US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or
        trend, or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one
        user about a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a faradizing
        act -- in two weeks you might find your entire department playing
        the faradic game.

:farkled: /far'kld/, adj.

        [DeVry Institute of Technology, Atlanta] Syn. {hosed}. Poss. owes
        something to Yiddish farblondjet and/or the `Farkle Family' skits on
        Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, a popular comedy show of the late
        1960s.

:farm: n.

        A group of machines, especially a large group of near-identical
        machines running load-balancing software, dedicated to a single
        task. Historically the term server farm, used especially for a group
        of web servers, seems to have been coined by analogy with earlier
        {disk farm} in the early 1990s; generalization began with render
        farm for a group of machines dedicated to rendering computer
        animations (this term appears to have been popularized by publicity
        about the pioneering "Linux render farm" used to produce the movie
        Titanic). By 2001 other combinations such as "compile farm" and
        "compute farm" were increasingly common, and arguably borderline
        techspeak. More jargon uses seem likely to arise (and be absorbed
        into techspeak over time) as new uses are discovered for networked
        machine clusters. Compare {link farm}.

:fascist: adj.

        1. [common] Said of a computer system with excessive or annoying
        security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The implication
        is that said policies are preventing hackers from getting
        interesting work done. The variant fascistic seems to have been
        preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with touristic (see {tourist} or
        under the influence of German/Yiddish faschistisch).

        2. In the design of languages and other software tools, the fascist
        alternative is the most restrictive and structured way of capturing
        a particular function; the implication is that this may be desirable
        in order to simplify the implementation or provide tighter error
        checking. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}, although that
        term is global rather than local.

        Fascist security strikes again.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-28. The previous one
        is 73-05-20.)

:fat electrons: n.

        Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation of computer
        glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line current out
        of the big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top
        of the dynamo. When the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them
        off line to clean them up, and use special auxiliary taps on the
        bottom of the coil. Now, this is a problem, because when they do
        that they get not ordinary or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy
        electrons that are heavier and so settle to the bottom of the
        generator. These flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when they
        have to turn a sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via),
        they're apt to get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches.
        [Fascinating. Obviously, fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon}
        absorption --ESR] Compare {bogon}, {magic smoke}.

:fat pipe:

        A high-bandwidth connection to the Internet. When the term gained
        currency in the mid-1990s, a T-1 (at 1.5 Mbits/second) was
        considered a fat pipe, but the standard has risen. Now it suggests
        multiple T3s.

:fat-finger: vt.

        1. To introduce a typo while editing in such a way that the
        resulting manglification of a configuration file does something
        useless, damaging, or wildly unexpected. "NSI fat-fingered their DNS
        zone file and took half the net down again."

        2. More generally, any typo that produces dramatically bad results.

:faulty: adj.

        Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as {bletcherous}, {losing},
        q.v., but the connotation is much milder.

:fear and loathing: n.

        [from Hunter S. Thompson] A state inspired by the prospect of
        dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are
        totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous -- Intel 8086s, or {COBOL},
        or {EBCDIC}, or any {IBM} machine bigger than a workstation. "Ack!
        They want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and
        loathing time!"

:feature: n.

        1. [common] A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether
        it was intended or not is immaterial.

        2. [common] An intended property or behavior (as of a program).
        Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a
        {misfeature}).

        3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is
        purposely inconsistent because it works better that way -- such an
        inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of
        feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry for a
        classic example.

        4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though
        perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of Common
        LISP's format function is the ability to print numbers in two
        different Roman-numeral formats (see {bells whistles and gongs}).

        5. A property or behavior that was put in to help someone else but
        that happens to be in your way.

        6. [common] A bug that has been documented. To call something a
        feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider
        the particular case, and that the program responded in a way that
        was unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a
        bug can be turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it (then
        theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the
        manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a
        bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. See also {feetch
        feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}.

        The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
        miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange
        between two hackers on an airliner:

        A: "This seat doesn't recline."

        B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency exit
        door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be
        kept clear."

        A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
        spacing between rows here."

        B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it
        would have been a wart -- they would've had to make
        nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced seats."

        A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout they'd
        lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So unequal
        spacing would actually be the Right Thing."

        B: "Indeed."

        Undocumented feature is a common, allegedly humorous euphemism for a
        {bug}. There's a related joke that is sometimes referred to as the
        "one-question geek test". You say to someone "I saw a Volkswagen
        Beetle today with a vanity license plate that read FEATURE". If
        he/she laughs, he/she is a {geek}.

:feature creature: n.

        [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie]

        1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at
        the expense of coherence, concision, or {taste}.

        2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces otherwise rational
        programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also {feeping
        creaturism}, {creeping featurism}.

:feature creep: n.

        [common] The result of {creeping featurism}, as in "Emacs has a bad
        case of feature creep".

:feature key: n.

        [common] The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its
        keytop; sometimes referred to as flower, pretzel, clover, propeller,
        beanie (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller
        beanie), {splat}, open-apple or (officially, in Mac documentation)
        the command key. In French, the term papillon (butterfly) has been
        reported. The proliferation of terms for this creature may
        illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.

        Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that
        appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St.
        Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative
        motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark
        sites of historical interest. Apple picked up the symbol from an
        early Mac developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple documentation
        gives the translation "interesting feature"!

        There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this
        symbol. It technically stands for the word sevrdhet (thing worth
        seeing); many of these are old churches. Some Swedes report as an
        idiom for the sign the word kyrka, cognate to English `church' and
        pronounced (roughly) /chur'ka/ in modern Swedish. Others say this is
        nonsense. Other idioms reported for the sign are runa (rune) or
        runsten /roon'stn/ (runestone), derived from the fact that many of
        the interesting features are Viking rune-stones. The term fornminne
        /foorn'min'@/ (relic of antiquity, ancient monument) is also
        reported, especially among those who think that the Mac itself is a
        relic of antiquity.

:feature shock: n.

        [from Alvin Toffler's book title Future Shock] A user's (or
        programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has too
        many features and poor introductory material.

:featurectomy: /fee`ch@rek't@mee/, n.

        The act of removing a feature from a program. Featurectomies come in
        two flavors, the righteous and the reluctant. Righteous
        featurectomies are performed because the remover believes the
        program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is
        already an equivalent and better way to achieve the same end. (Doing
        so is not quite the same thing as removing a {misfeature}.)
        Reluctant featurectomies are performed to satisfy some external
        constraint such as code size or execution speed.

:feep: /feep/

        1. n. The soft electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal (except
        for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to
        prefer {beep}).

        2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the
        original TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring.
        Alternate forms: {beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably
        onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip Shoe, uses the word
        `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is
        perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term `breedle'
        was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not
        particularly soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a
        raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the
        sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five seconds).
        The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52
        Chevy stripping its gears. See also {ding}.

:feeper: /fee'pr/, n.

        The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker of
        some kind) that makes the {feep} sound.

:feeping creature: n.

        [from {feeping creaturism}] An unnecessary feature; a bit of
        {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a
        whole horde of new features.

:feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch@rizm/, n.

        A deliberate spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply
        that the system or program in question has become a misshapen
        creature of hacks. This term isn't really well defined, but it
        sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is
        probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the
        dark making their customary noises.

:feetch feetch: /feech feech/, interj.

        If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you
        might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends
        critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something
        like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with
        obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more
        unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of resignation, it
        means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be
        done".

:fence:

        n.

        1. A sequence of one or more distinguished ({out-of-band})
        characters (or other data items), used to delimit a piece of data
        intended to be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature
        calls this a sentinel). The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character that
        terminates strings in C is a fence. Hex FF is also (though slightly
        less frequently) used this way. See {zigamorph}.

        2. An extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure
        in order to allow some normal test on the array's contents also to
        function as a termination test. For example, a highly optimized
        routine for finding a value in an array might artificially place a
        copy of the value to be searched for after the last slot of the
        array, thus allowing the main search loop to search for the value
        without having to check at each pass whether the end of the array
        had been reached.

        3. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any technique, usually
        exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that blocks certain
        optimizations. Used when explicit mechanisms are not available or
        are overkill. Typically a hack: "I call a dummy procedure there to
        force a flush of the optimizer's register-coloring info" can be
        expressed by the shorter "That's a fence procedure".

:fencepost error: n.

        1. [common] A problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary
        condition, often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the
        following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10
        feet apart, how many posts do you need?" (Either 9 or 11 is a better
        answer than the obvious 10.) For example, suppose you have a long
        list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how
        many items are there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off
        by one; the right answer is n - m + 1. A program that used the
        `obvious' formula would have a fencepost error in it. See also
        {zeroth} and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all off-by-one
        errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a
        catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N - 1
        chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from
        counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa,
        or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both
        ends of a row.

        2. [rare] An error induced by unexpected regularities in input
        values, which can (for instance) completely thwart a theoretically
        efficient binary tree or hash table implementation. (The error here
        involves the difference between expected and worst case behaviors of
        an algorithm.)

:fiber-seeking backhoe:

        [common among backbone ISP personnel] Any of a genus of large,
        disruptive machines which routinely cut critical backbone links,
        creating Internet outages and {packet over air} problems.

:FidoNet: n.

        A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which exchanges
        mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984 and originally
        consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet now includes
        such diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas, and Unix
        systems. For years FidoNet actually grew faster than Usenet, but the
        advent of cheap Internet access probably means its days are
        numbered. FidoNet's site count has dropped from 38K nodes in 1996
        through 15K nodes in 2001 to 10K nodes in late 2003, and most of
        those are probably single-user machines rather than the thriving
        BBSes of yore.

:field circus: n.

        [a derogatory pun on `field service'] The field service organization
        of any hardware manufacturer, but originally {DEC}. There is an
        entire genre of jokes about field circus engineers:

        Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
           with a flat tire?
        A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

        Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
           who is out of gas?
        A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

        Q: How can you tell it's your field circus engineer?
        A: The spare is flat, too.

        [See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.]

        There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the old {plan file} for
        DEC on MIT-AI):

        Maynard! Maynard!
        Don't mess with us!
        We're mean and we're tough!
        If you get us confused
        We'll screw up your stuff.

        (DEC's service HQ, still extant under the HP regime, is located in
        Maynard, Massachusetts.)

:field servoid: /fee'ld servoyd/, n.

        [play on `android'] Representative of a field service organization
        (see {field circus}). This has many of the implications of {droid}.

:file signature: n.

        A {magic number}, sense 3.

:filk: /filk/, n.,v.

        [from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new word]
        Originally, a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely
        new lyrics and/or music, intended for humorous effect when read,
        and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. More recently
        (especially since the late 1980s), filk has come to include a great
        deal of originally-composed music on SFnal or fantasy themes and a
        range of moods wider than simple parody or humor. Worthy of mention
        here because there is a flourishing subgenre of filks called
        computer filks, written by hackers and often containing rather
        sophisticated technical humor. See {double bucky} for an example.
        Compare {grilf}, {hing}, {pr0n}, and {newsfroup}.

:film at 11:

        [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters]

        1. Used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a
        sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{ITS}
        crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11."

        2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional
        information will be available at some future time, without the
        implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced
        event. For example, "The mail file server died this morning; we
        found garbage all over the root directory. Film at 11." would
        indicate that a major failure had occurred but that the people
        working on it have no additional information about it as yet; use of
        the phrase in this way suggests gently that the problem is liable to
        be fixed more quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time
        doing the fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to
        which will appear on the normal "11:00 news", if people will just be
        patient.

        The variant "MPEGs at 11" has recently been cited (MPEG is a
        digital-video format.)

:filter: n.

        [very common; orig. {Unix}] A program that processes an input data
        stream into an output data stream in some well-defined way, and does
        no I/O to anywhere else except possibly on error conditions; one
        designed to be used as a stage in a pipeline (see {plumbing}).
        Compare {sponge}.

:Finagle's Law: n.

        The generalized or `folk' version of {Murphy's Law}, fully named
        "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything
        that can go wrong, will". May have been first published by Francis
        P. Chisholm in his 1963 essay The Chisholm Effect, later reprinted
        in the classic anthology A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening
        Gown: And Other Essays For A Scientific Eye (Robert Baker ed,
        Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-852608-7).

        The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author Larry Niven
        in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners;
        this `Belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke
        involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet
        Murphy. Some technical and scientific cultures (e.g.,
        paleontologists) know it under the name Sod's Law; this usage may be
        more common in Great Britain. One variant favored among hackers is
        "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum"; Niven
        specifically referred to this as O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's
        Law. See also {Hanlon's Razor}.

:fine: adj.

        [WPI] Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. The word fine is used
        elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to the
        higher level implied by {cuspy}.

:finger:

        [WAITS, via BSD Unix]

        1. n. A program that displays information about a particular user or
        all users logged on the system, or a remote system. Typically shows
        full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal
        location (where applicable). May also display a {plan file} left by
        the user (see also {Hacking X for Y}).

        2. vt. To apply finger to a username.

        3. vt. By extension, to check a human's current state by any means.
        "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and see if she's idle."

        4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters) depicting `the
        finger', see {See figure 1}. Originally a humorous component of
        one's plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense 2), it has
        entered the arsenal of some {flamer}s.

:finger trouble: n.

        Mistyping, typos, or generalized keyboard incompetence (this is
        surprisingly common among hackers, given the amount of time they
        spend at keyboards). "I keep putting colons at the end of statements
        instead of semicolons", "Finger trouble again, eh?".

:finger-pointing syndrome: n.

        All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new or experimental
        configurations. The hardware vendor points a finger at the software.
        The software vendor points a finger at the hardware. All the poor
        users get is the finger.

:finn: v.

        [IRC] To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time one has
        spent on {IRC}. The term derives from the fact that IRC was
        originally written in Finland in 1987. There may be some influence
        from the `Finn' character in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk
        novel Count Zero, who at one point says to another (much younger)
        character "I have a pair of shoes older than you are, so shut up!"

:firebottle: n.obs.

        A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device, similar
        in function to a FET but constructed out of glass, metal, and
        vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low reliability,
        high-temperature operation, and high power dissipation. Sometimes
        mistakenly called a tube in the U.S. or a valve in England; another
        hackish term is {glassfet}.

:firefighting: n.

        1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems.
        An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new newsreader?" "No, a
        power glitch hosed the network and I spent the whole afternoon
        fighting fires."

        2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a
        project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also {gang bang},
        {Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term firefighting
        connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than
        adding features.

:firehose syndrome: n.

        In mainstream folklore it is observed that trying to drink from a
        firehose can be a good way to rip your lips off. On computer
        networks, the absence or failure of flow control mechanisms can lead
        to situations in which the sending system sprays a massive flood of
        packets at an unfortunate receiving system, more than it can handle.
        Compare {overrun}, {buffer overflow}.

:firewall code: n.

        1. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone switch) to make
        sure that the users can't do any damage. Since users always want to
        be able to do everything but never want to suffer for any mistakes,
        the construction of a firewall is a question not only of defensive
        coding but also of interface presentation, so that users don't even
        get curious about those corners of a system where they can burn
        themselves.

        2. Any sanity check inserted to catch a {can't happen} error. Wise
        programmers often change code to fix a bug twice: once to fix the
        bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have arrested the bug
        before it did quite as much damage.

:firewall machine: n.

        A dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions on it,
        used to service outside network connections and dial-in lines. The
        idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines
        hidden behind it from {cracker}s. The typical firewall is an
        inexpensive micro-based Unix box kept clean of critical data, with a
        bunch of modems and public network ports on it but just one
        carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster. The
        special precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and
        even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or
        activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}. See also {wild
        side}.

        [When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon. Now
        (1999) it is techspeak, and has been retained only as an example of
        uptake --ESR]

:fireworks mode: n.

        1. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is
        performing a {crash and burn} operation.

        2. There is (or was) a more specific meaning of this term in the
        Amiga community. The word fireworks described the effects of a
        particularly serious crash which prevented the video pointer(s) from
        getting reset at the start of the vertical blank. This caused the
        DAC to scroll through the entire contents of CHIP (video or
        video+CPU) memory. Since each bit plane would scroll separately this
        was quite a spectacular effect.

:firmware: /ferm'weir/, n.

        Embedded software contained in EPROM or flash memory. It isn't quite
        hardware, but at least doesn't have to be loaded from a disk like
        regular software. Hacker usage differs from straight techspeak in
        that hackers don't normally apply it to stuff that you can't
        possibly get at, such as the program that runs a pocket calculator.
        Instead, it implies that the firmware could be changed, even if
        doing so would mean opening a box and plugging in a new chip. A
        computer's BIOS is the classic example, although nowadays there is
        firmware in disk controllers, modems, video cards and even CD-ROM
        drives.

:fish: n.

        [Adelaide University, Australia]

        1. Another {metasyntactic variable}. See {foo}. Derived originally
        from the Monty Python skit in the middle of The Meaning of Life
        entitled Find the Fish.

        2. A pun for microfiche. A microfiche file cabinet may be referred
        to as a fish tank.

:FISH queue: n.

        [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] `First In,
        Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that processing of a
        particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead. Also
        FISH mode and FISHnet; the latter may be applied to any network that
        is running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness.

:fisking: n.

        [blogosphere; very common] A point-by-point refutation of a {blog}
        entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty,
        logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is
        considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist
        who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.
        See also {MiSTing}, {anti-idiotarianism}

:FITNR: //, adj.

        [Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In The Next Release. A written-only
        notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful thinking.

:fix: n.,v.

        What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be
        ignored.

:FIXME: imp.

        [common] A standard tag often put in C comments near a piece of code
        that needs work. The point of doing so is that a grep or a similar
        pattern-matching tool can find all such places quickly.

        /* FIXME: note this is common in {GNU} code. */

        Compare {XXX}.

:flag: n.

        [very common] A variable or quantity that can take on one of two
        values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two
        outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done.
        "This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing the
        message." "The program status word contains several flag bits." Used
        of humans analogously to {bit}. See also {hidden flag}, {mode bit}.

:flag day: n.

        A software change that is neither forward- nor backward-compatible,
        and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "Can we install
        that without causing a flag day for all users?" This term has
        nothing to do with the use of the word {flag} to mean a variable
        that has two values. It came into use when a change was made to the
        definition of the ASCII character set during the development of
        {Multics}. The change was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday),
        June 14, 1966.

        The change altered the Multics definition of ASCII from the
        short-lived 1965 version of the ASCII code to the 1967 version (in
        draft at the time); this moved code points for braces, vertical bar,
        and circumflex. See also {backward combatability}. The {Great
        Renaming} was a flag day.

        [Most of the changes were made to files stored on {CTSS}, the system
        used to support Multics development before it became self-hosting.]

        [As it happens, the first installation of a commercially-produced
        computer, a Univac I, took place on Flag Day of 1951 --ESR]

:flaky: adj.

        (var sp. flakey) Subject to frequent {lossage}. This use is of
        course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a
        person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is
        flaky is working, sort of -- enough that you are tempted to try to
        use it -- but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of
        finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers
        {dodgy} or {wonky}.

:flamage: /flay'm@j/, n.

        [very common] Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings
        to {Usenet} or other electronic {fora}. Often in the phrase the
        usual flamage. Flaming is the act itself; flamage the content; a
        flame is a single flaming message. See {flame}, also {dahmum}.

:flame:

        [at MIT, orig. from the phrase flaming asshole]

        1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke.

        2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively
        uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude.

        3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a
        particular person or people.

        4. n. An instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into
        useless controversy, one might tell the participants "Now you're
        just flaming" or "Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool
        down (so to speak).

        The term may have been independently invented at several different
        places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI
        (among many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the
        University of Virginia in the early 1960s.

        It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than
        that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in
        his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced
        computing device of the day. In Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida,
        Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular
        mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's
        called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been
        intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but
        was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of
        wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right
        at home on Usenet.

:flame bait: n.

        [common] A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that
        invites flames in reply. See also {troll}.

:flame on: interj.

        1. To begin to {flame}. The punning reference to Marvel Comics's
        Human Torch is no longer widely recognized.

        2. To continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.

:flame war: n.

        [common] (var.: flamewar) An acrimonious dispute, especially when
        conducted on a public electronic forum such as {Usenet}.

:flamer: n.

        [common] One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious
        {Usenet} personalities.

:flap: vt.

        1. [obs.] To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...).
        Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0
        and DEC microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0
        would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk.

        2. By extension, to unload any magnetic tape. Modern cartridge tapes
        no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could
        well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a
        spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping
        sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many
        tape-eating failure modes.)

:flarp: /flarp/, n.

        [Rutgers University] Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see
        {foo}). Among those who use it, it is associated with a legend that
        any program not containing the word flarp somewhere will not work.
        The legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs which
        do contain the magic word.

:flash crowd:

        Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story Flash Crowd predicted that one
        consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds
        materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news
        stories. Twenty years later the term passed into common use on the
        Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server usage
        when one passes a certain threshold of popular interest (what this
        does to the server may also be called {slashdot effect}). It has
        been pointed out that the effect was anticipated years earlier in
        Alfred Bester's 1956 The Stars My Destination.

:flat: adj.

        1. [common] Lacking any complex internal structure. "That {bitty
        box} has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb
        form is {flatten}.

        2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the {VAX} or 680x0)
        that is one big linear address space (typically with each possible
        value of a processor register corresponding to a unique core
        address), as opposed to a segmented architecture (like that of the
        80x86) in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset
        pair (segmented designs are generally considered {cretinous}).

        Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
        used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a {Good Thing}.

:flat-ASCII: adj.

        [common] Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII
        characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is,
        has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter markup
        language, or output device, and no {meta}-characters). Syn.
        {plain-ASCII}. Compare {flat-file}.

:flat-file: adj.

        A {flatten}ed representation of some database or tree or network
        structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly
        be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ASCII} form. See also {sharchive}.

:flatten: vt.

        [common] To remove structural information, esp. to filter something
        with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves;
        also tends to imply mapping to {flat-ASCII}. "This code flattens an
        expression with parentheses into an equivalent {canonical} form."

:flavor: n.

        1. [common] Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors."
        "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green
        ones." "Linux is a flavor of Unix" See {vanilla}.

        2. The attribute that causes something to be {flavorful}. Usually
        used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "This convention
        yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either
        right-side-up or upside-down." See {vanilla}. This usage was
        certainly reinforced by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics,
        in which quarks (the constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six
        flavors (up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors
        (red, blue, green) -- however, hackish use of flavor at MIT predated
        QCD.

        3. The term for class (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP
        Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been
        superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term
        flavor is still used as a general synonym for class by some LISP
        hackers.

:flavorful: adj.

        Full of {flavor} (sense 2); esthetically pleasing. See {random} and
        {losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for {taste} and
        {elegant}.

:flippy: /flip'ee/, n.

        A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition
        of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over
        for the second side to be accessible. No longer common.

:flood: v.

        [common]

        1. To overwhelm a network channel with mechanically-generated
        traffic; especially used of IP, TCP/IP, UDP, or ICMP
        denial-of-service attacks.

        2. To dump large amounts of text onto an {IRC} channel. This is
        especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other users
        are trying to carry on a serious conversation. Also used in a
        similar sense on Usenet.

        3. [Usenet] To post an unusually large number or volume of files on
        a related topic.

:flowchart: n.

        [techspeak] An archaic form of visual control-flow specification
        employing arrows and speech balloons of various shapes. Hackers
        never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate
        them with {COBOL} programmers, {code grinder}s, and other lower
        forms of life. This attitude follows from the observations that
        flowcharts (at least from a hacker's point of view) are no easier to
        read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with
        the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining
        it, or require extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the
        code).

:flower key: n.

        [Mac users] See {feature key}.

:flush: v.

        1. [common] To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an
        operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed."

        2. [Unix/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an fflush(3)
        call. This is not an abort or deletion as in sense 1, but a demand
        for early completion!

        3. To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a
        meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush."

        4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a person.

        `Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
        operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but
        was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term
        arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing
        down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before
        they could be printed. The Unix/C usage, on the other hand, was
        propagated by the fflush(3) call in C's standard I/O library (though
        it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers at {DEC}
        and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965). Unix/C
        hackers found the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.

        Crunchly gets {flush}ed.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-05-01. The previous
        cartoon was 76-02-20:2.)

:flypage: /fli:'payj/, n.

        (alt.: fly page) A {banner}, sense 1.

:Flyspeck 3: n.

        Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by
        analogy with names like Helvetica 10 for 10-point Helvetica). Legal
        boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.

:flytrap: n.

        [rare] See {firewall machine}.

:FM: /FM/, n.

        1. [common] Not `Frequency Modulation' but rather an abbreviation
        for `Fucking Manual', the back-formation from {RTFM}. Used to refer
        to the manual itself in the {RTFM}. "Have you seen the Networking FM
        lately?"

        2. Abbreviation for "Fucking Magic", used in the sense of {black
        magic}.

:fnord: n.

        [from the Illuminatus Trilogy]

        1. A word used in email and news postings to tag utterances as
        surrealist mind-play or humor, esp. in connection with
        {Discordianism} and elaborate conspiracy theories. "I heard that
        David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with Hitler.
        (Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the Principia Discordia from?"

        2. A {metasyntactic variable}, commonly used by hackers with ties to
        {Discordianism} or the {Church of the SubGenius}.

:FOAF: //, n.

        [Usenet; common] Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an
        unverified, possibly untrue story. This term was not originated by
        hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but
        is much better recognized on Usenet and elsewhere than in mainstream
        English.

:FOD: /fod/, v.

        [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name from
        fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with no
        regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the wizard command `FOD
        <player>' results in the immediate and total death of <player>,
        usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This usage migrated to
        other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is
        burning all the cycles."

        In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens
        when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in flight.
        Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of what this
        generally does to the engine.

:fold case: v.

        See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more by people who
        don't mind that their tools smash case. It also connotes that case
        is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in
        question aren't destroyed.

:followup: n.

        [common] On Usenet, a {posting} generated in response to another
        posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email rather than
        being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the {parent message}
        in their headers; smart news-readers can use this information to
        present Usenet news in `conversation' sequence rather than
        order-of-arrival. See {thread}.

:fontology: n.

        [XEROX PARC] The body of knowledge dealing with the construction and
        use of new fonts (e.g., for window systems and typesetting
        software). It has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny.

        [Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that
        "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the
        Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to
        compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole
        different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and
        `folders' --ESR]

:foo: /foo/

        1. interj. Term of disgust.

        2. [very common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely
        anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files).

        3. First on the standard list of {metasyntactic variable}s used in
        syntax examples. See also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {garply},
        {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}.

        When `foo' is used in connection with `bar' it has generally traced
        to the WWII-era Army slang acronym {FUBAR} (`Fucked Up Beyond All
        Repair' or `Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later modified to
        {foobar}. Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change
        as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that
        FUBAR was itself a derivative of `foo' perhaps influenced by German
        furchtbar (terrible) -- `foobar' may actually have been the original
        form.

        For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar history
        in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in
        the Smokey Stover comic strip published from about 1930 to about
        1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes
        and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as
        "Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix nix". The word "foo" frequently
        appeared on license plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the
        background of some frames (such as "He who foos last foos best" or
        "Many smoke but foo men chew"), and Holman had Smokey say "Where
        there's foo, there's fire".

        According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to
        have found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This
        is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions,
        and this one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word fu
        (sometimes transliterated foo), which can mean "happiness" or
        "prosperity" when spoken with the rising tone (the lion-dog
        guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are
        properly called "fu dogs"). English speakers' reception of Holman's
        `foo' nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish `feh' and
        English `fooey' and `fool'.

        Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode
        on two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in the late
        1930s, and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana even
        produced an operable version of Holman's Foomobile. According to the
        Encyclopedia of American Comics, `Foo' fever swept the U.S., finding
        its way into popular songs and generating over 500 `Foo Clubs.' The
        fad left `foo' references embedded in popular culture (including a
        couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39;
        notably in Robert Clampett's "Daffy Doc" of 1938, in which a very
        early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS
        FOO!") When the fad faded, the origin of "foo" was forgotten.

        One place "foo" is known to have remained live is in the U.S.
        military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term `foo fighters'
        was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious
        trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in
        popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better
        grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly
        to the Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to
        French "feu" (fire) can be gently dismissed.

        The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms
        during the war (see {kluge} and {kludge} for another important
        example) Period sources reported that `FOO' became a semi-legendary
        subject of WWII British-army graffiti more or less equivalent to the
        American Kilroy. Where British troops went, the graffito "FOO was
        here" or something similar showed up. Several slang dictionaries
        aver that FOO probably came from Forward Observation Officer, but
        this (like the contemporaneous "FUBAR") was probably a {backronym} .
        Forty years later, Paul Dickson's excellent book "Words" (Dell,
        1982, ISBN 0-440-52260-7) traced "Foo" to an unspecified British
        naval magazine in 1946, quoting as follows: "Mr. Foo is a mysterious
        Second World War product, gifted with bitter omniscience and
        sarcasm."

        Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker
        usage actually sprang from FOO, Lampoons and Parody, the title of a
        comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project of
        Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in his
        mid-teens) later became one of the most important and influential
        artists in underground comics, this venture was hardly a success;
        indeed, the brothers later burned most of the existing copies in
        disgust. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front
        cover. However, very few copies of this comic actually circulated,
        and students of Crumb's oeuvre have established that this title was
        a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics. The Crumbs may also
        have been influenced by a short-lived Canadian parody magazine named
        `Foo' published in 1951-52.

        An old-time member reports that in the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC
        Language, compiled at {TMRC}, there was an entry that went something
        like this:

          FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME
          HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.

        (For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}.) This
        definition used Bill Holman's nonsense word, then only two decades
        old and demonstrably still live in popular culture and slang, to a
        {ha ha only serious} analogy with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's
        hackers would find it difficult to resist elaborating a joke like
        that, and it is not likely 1959's were any less susceptible. Almost
        the entire staff of what later became the MIT AI Lab was involved
        with TMRC, and the word spread from there.

:foobar: n.

        [very common] Another widely used {metasyntactic variable}; see
        {foo} for etymology. Probably originally propagated through
        DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation ({DEC}) in 1960s
        and early 1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers
        do not generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in either the slang or
        jargon sense. See also {Fred Foobar}. In RFC1639, "FOOBAR" was made
        an abbreviation for "FTP Operation Over Big Address Records", but
        this was an obvious {backronym}. It has been plausibly suggested
        that "foobar" spread among early computer engineers partly because
        of FUBAR and partly because "foo bar" parses in electronics
        techspeak as an inverted foo signal; if a digital signal is active
        low (so a negative or zero-voltage condition represents a "1") then
        a horizontal bar is commonly placed over the signal label.

:fool: n.

        As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who habitually
        reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect premises and cannot
        be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is not generally used
        in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person with a native
        incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed, in hackish
        experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too effectively
        in executing their errors. See also {cretin}, {loser}, {fool file}.

        The Algol 68-R compiler used to initialize its storage to the
        character string "F00LF00LF00LF00L..." because as a pointer or as a
        floating point number it caused a crash, and as an integer or a
        character string it was very recognizable in a dump. Sadly, one day
        a very senior professor at Nottingham University wrote a program
        that called him a fool. He proceeded to demonstrate the correctness
        of this assertion by lobbying the university (not quite
        successfully) to forbid the use of Algol on its computers. See also
        {DEADBEEF}.

:fool file: n.

        [Usenet] A notional repository of all the most dramatically and
        abysmally stupid utterances ever. An entire subgenre of {sig block}s
        consists of the header "From the fool file:" followed by some quote
        the poster wishes to represent as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for
        this usage to be really effective, the quote has to be so obviously
        wrong as to be laughable. More than one Usenetter has achieved an
        unwanted notoriety by being quoted in this way.

:Foonly: n.

        1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the Super
        Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
        along with a new operating system. (The name itself came from FOO
        NLI, an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning
        "FOO is Not a Legal Identifier". The intention was to leapfrog from
        the old {DEC} timesharing system SAIL was then running to a new
        generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET
        standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the new
        operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to
        DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.

        2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the
        principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more
        colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on
        Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion.

        3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the
        F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used
        to create the graphics in the movie TRON. The F-1 was the fastest
        PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained
        Foonly of its financial resources, and the company turned towards
        building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines.
        Unfortunately, these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX
        variant called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also,
        the machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering
        prototypes requiring individual attention from more than usually
        competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability
        problems. Poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools
        gladly did not help matters. By the time DEC's "Jupiter Project"
        followon to the PDP-10 was cancelled in 1983, Foonly's proposal to
        build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and the company never
        quite recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the continuation and moral
        of this story.

:footprint: n.

        1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware.

        2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often
        in plural, footprints). See also {toeprint}.

        3. RAM footprint: The minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other
        program takes; this figure gives one an idea of how much will be
        left for other applications. How actively this RAM is used is
        another matter entirely. Recent tendencies to featuritis and
        software bloat can expand the RAM footprint of an OS to the point of
        making it nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is, thankfully,
        limited to operating systems so stupid that they don't do virtual
        memory -- ESR]

:for free: adj.

        [common] Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware
        that is available by its design without needing cleverness to
        implement: "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And
        owing to the way revisions are stored in this system, you get
        revision trees for free." The term usually refers to a serendipitous
        feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it
        may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.

:for the rest of us: adj.

        [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"]

        1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames
        other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to
        describe {spiffy} but very overpriced products.

        2. Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately
        limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose
        primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a
        naive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can go
        before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of
        helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which
        doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the
        poor lusers might not be able to handle them. Becomes `the rest of
        them' when used in third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an
        attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a
        program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the
        surface flash. See also {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash},
        {point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}.

:for values of:

        [MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the
        canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for variables. "The max
        function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42.:" "There
        are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50." This is especially
        likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realizes
        that it was not recognized as such, but even `non-random' numbers
        are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that p
        equals 3 -- for small values of p and large values of 3.

        Historical note: at MIT this usage has traditionally been traced to
        the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an
        Algol-58-like language that was the most common choice among
        mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-60s. It inherited
        from Algol-58 a control structure FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO ...
        that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the
        list (unlike the usual FOR that only works for arithmetic sequences
        of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still
        flourish (e.g., in Unix's shell languages).

:fora: pl.n.

        Plural of {forum}.

:foreground: vt.

        [Unix; common] To bring a task to the top of one's {stack} for
        immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for
        non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess
        I'd better foreground writing up the design document."

        Technically, on a timesharing system, a task executing in foreground
        is one able to accept input from and return output to the user;
        oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with
        {Unix}, but it appears first to have been used in this sense on
        OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or
        terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading
        the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.

:fork:

        In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or
        more) versions of a software package's source code are being
        developed in parallel which once shared a common code base, and
        these multiple versions of the source code have irreconcilable
        differences between them. This should not be confused with a
        development branch, which may later be folded back into the original
        source code base. Nor should it be confused with what happens when a
        new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is created,
        because that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in
        other distributions without conflict.

        Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual
        instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were
        the Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger)
        and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating
        systems.

:fork bomb: n.

        [Unix] A particular species of {wabbit} that can be written in one
        line of C (main() {for(;;)fork();}) or shell ($0 & $0 &) on any Unix
        system, or occasionally created by an egregious coding bug. A fork
        bomb process `explodes' by recursively spawning copies of itself
        (using the Unix system call fork(2)). Eventually it eats all the
        process table entries and effectively wedges the system.
        Fortunately, fork bombs are relatively easy to spot and kill, so
        creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to bring the
        just wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. Also called a fork
        bunny. See also {logic bomb}.

:forked: adj.,vi.

        1. [common after 1997, esp. in the Linux community] An open-source
        software project is said to have forked or be forked when the
        project group fissions into two or more parts pursuing separate
        lines of development (or, less commonly, when a third party
        unconnected to the project group begins its own line of
        development). Forking is considered a {Bad Thing} -- not merely
        because it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because
        forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and acrimony
        between the successor groups over issues of legitimacy, succession,
        and design direction. There is serious social pressure against
        forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs
        split, the fissionings of the 386BSD group into three daughter
        projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that
        they are remembered individually in hacker folklore.

        2. [Unix; uncommon; prob.: influenced by a mainstream expletive]
        Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a
        snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}.

:Formosa's Law: n.

        "The truly insane have enough on their plates without us adding to
        it." That is, flaming someone with an obvious mental problem can't
        make it any better. Most often cited on alt.usenet.kooks as a reason
        not to issue a Kook-of the-Month Award; often cited as a companion
        to {Godwin's Law}.

:Fortrash: /for'trash/, n.

        Hackerism for the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) language, referring
        to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control
        constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics.

:fortune cookie: n.

        [WAITS, via Unix; common] A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or
        maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at
        logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as fortune
        cookies. See {cookie file}.

:forum: n.

        [Usenet, GEnie, CI$; pl. fora or forums] Any discussion group
        accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a {mailing list}, or a
        {newsgroup} (see {the network}). A forum functions much like a
        bulletin board; users submit {posting}s for all to read and
        discussion ensues. Contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or
        point-to-point personal {email}.

:fossil: n.

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

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

:four-color glossies: n.

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

        2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain
        enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the
        expected or desired output.

:frag: n.,v.

        [from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake]

        1. To kill another player's {avatar} in a multiuser game. "I hold
        the office Quake record with 40 frags."

        2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the
        lightning strike fragged it." See also {gib}.

:fragile: adj.

        Syn {brittle}.

:Frankenputer: n.

        1. A mostly-working computer thrown together from the spare parts of
        several machines out of which the {magic smoke} had been let. Most
        shops have a closet full of nonworking machines. When a new machine
        is needed immediately (for testing, for example) and there is no
        time (or budget) to requisition a new box, someone (often an intern)
        is tasked with building a Frankenputer.

        2. Also used in referring to a machine that once was a name-brand
        computer, but has been upgraded long beyond its useful life, to the
        point at which the nameplate violates truth-in-advertising laws
        (e.g., a Pentium III-class machine inexplicably living in a case
        marked "Gateway 486/66").

:fred: n.

        1. The personal name most frequently used as a {metasyntactic
        variable} (see {foo}). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a
        non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. In Great
        Britain, `fred', `jim' and `sheila' are common metasyntactic
        variables because their uppercase versions were official names given
        to the 3 memory areas that held I/O status registers on the
        lovingly-remembered BBC Microcomputer! (It is reported that SHEILA
        was poked the most often.) Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or J. Random
        Loser, the name `fred' has no positive or negative loading (but see
        {Dr. Fred Mbogo}). See also {barney}.

        2. An acronym for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other
        F-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'.

:Fred Foobar: n.

        {J. Random Hacker}'s cousin. Any typical human being, more or less
        synonymous with `someone' except that Fred Foobar can be
        {backreference}d by name later on. "So Fred Foobar will enter his
        phone number into the database, and it'll be archived with the
        others. Months later, when Fred searches..." See also {Bloggs
        Family} and {Dr. Fred Mbogo}

:frednet: /fred'net/, n.

        Used to refer to some {random} and uncommon protocol encountered on
        a network. "We're implementing bridging in our router to solve the
        frednet problem."

:free software: n.

        As defined by Richard M. Stallman and used by the Free Software
        movement, this means software that gives users enough freedom to be
        used by the free software community. Specifically, users must be
        free to modify the software for their private use, and free to
        redistribute it either with or without modifications, either
        commercially or noncommercially, either gratis or charging a
        distribution fee. Free software has existed since the dawn of
        computing; Free Software as a movement began in 1984 with the GNU
        Project.

        RMS observes that the English word "free" can refer either to
        liberty (where it means the same as the Spanish or French "libre")
        or to price (where it means the same as the Spanish "gratis" or
        French "gratuit"). RMS and other people associated with the FSF like
        to explain the word "free" in "free software" by saying "Free as in
        speech, not as in beer."

        See also {open source}. Hard-core proponents of the term "free
        software" sometimes reject this newer term, claiming that the style
        of argument associated with it ignores or downplays the moral
        imperative at the heart of free software.

:freeware: n.

        [common] Freely-redistributable software, often written by
        enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic
        mail, local bulletin boards, {Usenet}, or other electronic media. As
        the culture of the Internet has displaced the older BBS world, this
        term has lost ground to both {open source} and {free software}; it
        has increasingly tended to be restricted to software distributed in
        binary rather than source-code form. At one time, freeware was a
        trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS
        comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious
        disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See {shareware}, {FRS}.

:freeze: v.

        To lock an evolving software distribution or document against
        changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries
        the strong implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at
        some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll freeze for release."
        There are more specific constructions on this term. A feature
        freeze, for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce
        new features but still allows bugfixes and completion of existing
        features; a code freeze connotes no more changes at all. At Sun
        Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear references to code
        slush -- that is, an almost-but-not-quite frozen state.

:fried: adj.

        1. [common] Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out.
        Especially used of hardware brought down by a power glitch (see
        {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical event.
        (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits! In
        particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt down,
        emitting noxious smoke -- see {friode}, {SED} and {LER}. However,
        this term is also used metaphorically.) Compare {frotzed}.

        2. [common] Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who
        continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or
        excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was
        fried when I put it in." Esp.: common in conjunction with brain: "My
        brain is fried today, I'm very short on sleep."

:frink: /frink/, v.

        The unknown ur-verb, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the
        Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.lemurs, where it is said that the lemurs
        know what `frink' means, but they aren't telling. Compare {gorets}.

:friode: /fri:'ohd/, n.

        [TMRC] A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare
        {fried}; see also {SED}, {LER}.

:fritterware: n.

        An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical
        example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink}); the
        term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite
        marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway.
        See also {window shopping}.

:frob: /frob/

        1. n. [MIT; very common] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a
        protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a frob is any
        random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one
        hand; something you can frob (sense 2). See {frobnitz}.

        2. vt. Abbreviated form of {frobnicate}.

        3. [from the {MUD} world] A command on some MUDs that changes a
        player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also,
        to request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy'
        grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. The command is actually
        `frobnicate' but is universally abbreviated to the shorter form.

:frobnicate: /frob'nikayt/, vt.

        [Poss. derived from {frobnitz}, and usually abbreviated to {frob},
        but frobnicate is recognized as the official full form.:] To
        manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or other
        2-state devices. Thus: "Please frob the light switch" (that is, flip
        it), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it". One also
        sees the construction to frob a frob. See {tweak} and {twiddle}.

        Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a
        continuum. `Frob' connotes aimless manipulation; twiddle connotes
        gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting;
        tweak connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an
        oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he is probably
        tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen, he
        is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning
        a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant frobnosticate has been
        recently reported.

:frobnitz: /frob'nits/, pl., frobnitzem, /frobnitzm/, frobni, /frob'ni:/,
n.

        [TMRC] An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
        electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
        frotz, or more commonly to {frob}. Also used are frobnule
        (/frob'n[y]ool/) and frobule (/frobyool/). Starting perhaps in
        1979, frobozz /fr@-boz'/ (plural: frobbotzim /fr@-botzm/) has also
        become very popular, largely through its exposure as a name via
        {Zork}. These variants can also be applied to nonphysical objects,
        such as data structures. For related amusement, see the Encyclopedia
        Frobozzica.

        Pete Samson, compiler of the original {TMRC} lexicon, adds, "Under
        the TMRC [railroad] layout were many storage boxes, managed (in
        1958) by David R. Sawyer. Several had fanciful designations written
        on them, such as `Frobnitz Coil Oil'. Perhaps DRS intended Frobnitz
        to be a proper name, but the name was quickly taken for the thing".
        This was almost certainly the origin of the term.

:frog: phrog

        1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them).

        2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}.

        3. n. Of things, a crock.

        4. n. Of people, somewhere in between a turkey and a toad.

        5. froggy: adj. Similar to {bagbiting}, but milder. "This froggy
        program is taking forever to run!"

:frogging: v.

        1. Partial corruption of a text file or input stream by some bug or
        consistent glitch, as opposed to random events like line noise or
        media failures. Might occur, for example, if one bit of each
        incoming character on a tty were stuck, so that some characters were
        correct and others were not. See {dread high-bit disease}.

        2. By extension, accidental display of text in a mode where the
        output device emits special symbols or mnemonics rather than
        conventional ASCII. This often happens, for example, when using a
        terminal or comm program on a device like an IBM PC with a special
        `high-half' character set and with the bit-parity assumption wrong.
        A hacker sufficiently familiar with ASCII bit patterns might be able
        to read the display anyway.

:front end: n.

        1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for
        another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a back
        end).

        2. What you're talking to when you have a conversation with someone
        who is making replies without paying attention. "Look at the dancing
        elephants!" "Uh-huh." "Do you know what I just said?" "Sorry, you
        were talking to the front end."

        3. Software that provides an interface to another program `behind'
        it, which may not be as user-friendly. Probably from analogy with
        hardware front-ends (see sense 1) that interfaced with mainframes.

:frotz: /frots/

        1. n. See {frobnitz}.

        2. mumble frotz: An interjection of mildest disgust. The word
        `frotzen' is live in this sense in some eastern German dialects; the
        safe bet is that it came to hackers via Yiddish.

:frotzed: /frotst/, adj.

        To be {down} because of hardware problems. Compare {fried}. A
        machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing
        parts, but a fried machine is more seriously damaged.

:frowney: n.

        (alt.: frowney face) See {emoticon}.

:FRS: //, n.,obs.

        [obs.] Abbreviation for "Freely Redistributable Software" which
        entered general use on the Internet in 1995 after years of low-level
        confusion over what exactly to call software written to be passed
        around and shared (contending terms including {freeware},
        {shareware}, and sourceware were never universally felt to be
        satisfactory for various subtle reasons). The first formal
        conference on freely redistributable software was held in Cambridge,
        Massachussetts, in February 1996 (sponsored by the Free Software
        Foundation). The conference organizers used the FRS abbreviation
        heavily in its calls for papers and other literature during 1995.
        The term was in steady though not common use until 1998 and the
        invention of {open source}, after which it became swiftly obsolete.

:fry:

        1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware
        failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never said
        of software, only of hardware and humans. See {fried}, {magic
        smoke}.

        2. vt. To cause to fail; to {roach}, {toast}, or {hose} a piece of
        hardware. Never used of software or humans, but compare {fried}.

:fscking: /fus'king/, /eff'seeking/, adj.

        [Usenet; very common] Fucking, in the expletive sense (it refers to
        the Unix filesystem-repair command fsck(8), of which it can be said
        that if you have to use it at all you are having a bad day).
        Originated on {scary devil monastery} and the bofh.net newsgroups,
        but became much more widespread following the passage of {CDA}. Also
        occasionally seen in the variant "What the fsck?"

:FSF: /FSF/, abbrev.

        Common abbreviation (both spoken and written) for the name of the
        Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit educational association formed
        to support the {GNU} project.

:-fu:

        [common; generalized from kung-fu] Combining form denoting expert
        practice of a skill. "That's going to take some serious code-fu."
        First sighted in connection with the GIMP's remote-scripting
        facility, script-fu, in 1998.

:FUBAR: n.

        The Failed UniBus Address Register in a {VAX}. A good example of how
        jargon can occasionally be snuck past the {suit}s; see {foobar}, and
        {foo} for a fuller etymology.

:fuck me harder: excl.

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

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

:FUD: /fuhd/, n.

        Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company:
        "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people
        instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering
        [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go
        with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This
        implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that
        Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark
        Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or
        software. See {IBM}. After 1990 the term FUD was associated
        increasingly frequently with {Microsoft}, and has become generalized
        to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

        [In 2003, SCO sued IBM in an action which, among other things,
        alleged SCO's proprietary control of {Linux}. The SCO suit rapidly
        became infamous for the number and magnitude of falsehoods alleged
        in SCO's filings. In October 2003, SCO's lawyers filed a memorandum
        in which they actually had the temerity to link to the web version
        of this entry in furtherance of their claims. Whilst we appreciate
        the compliment of being treated as an authority, we can return it
        only by observing that SCO has become a nest of liars and thieves
        compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively
        angelic. Any judge or law clerk reading this should surf through to
        my collected resources on this topic for the appalling
        details.--ESR]

:FUD wars: /fuhd worz/, n.

        1, [from {FUD}] Historically, political posturing engaged in by
        hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to
        standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to
        protect their own shares. The Unix International vs.: OSF conflict
        about Unix standards was one outstanding example; Microsoft vs.
        Netscape vs. W3C about HTML standards is another.

        2. Since about 2000 the FUD wars have a different character; the
        battle over open standards has been partly replaced and partly
        subsumed by the argument between closed- and {open source}
        proponents. Nowadays, accordingly, the term is most likely to be
        used of anti-open-source propaganda emitted by Microsoft. Compare
        {astroturfing}.

:fudge:

        1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way,
        particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't
        feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it --
        I'll fix it later."

        2. n. The resulting code.

:fudge factor: n.

        [common] A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to
        produce the desired result. The terms tolerance and {slop} are also
        used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a
        buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure
        exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little
        space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor,
        on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction.
        A good example is the fuzz typically allowed in floating-point
        calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be
        allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a
        computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results
        will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are frequently adjusted
        incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import.
        See also {coefficient of X}.

:fuel up: vi.

        To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?"
        "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a {great-wall}!" See also {oriental
        food}.

:Full Monty: n.

        See {monty}, sense 2.

:fum: n.

        [XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard {metasyntactic
        variable}s (after {foo} and {bar}). Competes with {baz}, which is
        more common outside PARC.

:functino: n.

        [uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A pointer
        to a function in C and C++. By association with sub-atomic particles
        such as the neutrino, it accurately conveys an impression of
        smallness (one pointer is four bytes on most systems) and speed
        (hackers can and do use arrays of functinos to replace a switch()
        statement).

:funky: adj.

        Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey
        way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its
        obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe
        interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has bothered to
        fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. {TECO} and
        UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is
        extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they age.
        "The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky; if it
        bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it." "This UART is
        pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in interrupt mode
        and active-low in DMA mode."

:funny money: n.

        1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed
        to students at the beginning of a computer course; also called play
        money or purple money (in implicit opposition to real or green
        money). In New Zealand and Germany the odd usage paper money has
        been recorded; in Germany, the particularly amusing synonym transfer
        ruble commemorates the funny money used for trade between COMECON
        countries back when the Soviet Bloc still existed. When your funny
        money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a
        professor to get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing
        cycles has made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost
        invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide
        by with minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to
        small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts.

        2. By extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used
        as a resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: real money.

:furrfu: excl.

        [Usenet; written, only rarely spoken] Written-only equivalent of
        "Sheesh!"; it is, in fact, "sheesh" modified by {rot13}. Evolved in
        mid-1992 as a response to notably silly postings repeating urban
        myths on the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, after some posters
        complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to {newbie}s was being
        overused. See also {FOAF}.

  G

   G

   gang bang

   Gang of Four

   garbage collect

   garply

   gas

   Gates's Law

   gawble

   GC

   GCOS

   GECOS

   gedanken

   geef

   geek

   geek code

   geek out

   geekasm

   gen

   gender mender

   General Public Virus

   generate

   Genius From Mars Technique

   gensym

   Get a life!

   Get a real computer!

   GandhiCon

   gib

   GIFs at 11

   gig

   giga-

   GIGO

   gilley

   gillion

   ginger

   GIPS

   GIYF

   glark

   glass

   glass tty

   glassfet

   glitch

   glob

   glork

   glue

   gnarly

   GNU

   gnubie

   GNUMACS

   go flatline

   go gold

   go root

   go-faster stripes

   GoAT

   goat file

   gobble

   Godwin's Law

   Godzillagram

   golden

   golf-ball printer

   gonk

   gonkulator

   gonzo

   Good Thing

   google

   google juice

   gopher

   gopher hole

   gorets

   gorilla arm

   gorp

   GOSMACS

   gotcha

   GPL

   GPV

   gray goo

   gray hat

   Great Internet Explosion

   Great Renaming

   Great Runes

   Great Worm

   great-wall

   green bytes

   green card

   green lightning

   green machine

   Green's Theorem

   greenbar

   grep

   gribble

   grilf

   grind

   grind crank

   gritch

   grok

   gronk

   gronk out

   gronked

   grovel

   grue

   grunge

   gubbish

   Guido

   guiltware

   gumby

   gunch

   gunpowder chicken

   guru

   guru meditation

   gweep

   GWF

:G: pref.,suff.

        1. [SI] See {quantifiers}.

        2. The letter G has special significance in the hacker community,
        largely thanks to the GNU project and the GPL.

        Many {free software} projects have names that names that begin with
        G. The GNU project gave many of its projects names that were
        acronyms beginning with the word "GNU", such as "GNU C Compiler"
        (gcc) and "GNU Debugger" (gdb), and this launched a tradition. Just
        as many Java developers will begin their projects with J, many free
        software developers will begin theirs with G. It is often the case
        that a program with a G-prefixed name is licensed under the GNU GPL.

        For example, someone may write a free Enterprise Engineering Kludge
        package (EEK technology is all the rage in the technical journals)
        and name it "geek" to imply that it is a GPL'd EEK package.

:gang bang: n.

        The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an
        attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short
        time. Though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that
        over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in Steven Levy's Hackers),
        and large numbers of loosely-coupled programmers operating in
        {bazaar} mode can do very useful work when they're not on a
        deadline, most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet
        unrealistic deadlines; the inevitable result is enormous buggy
        masses of code entirely lacking in {orthogonal}ity. When
        market-driven managers make a list of all the features the
        competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, the
        probability of maintaining a coherent (or even functional) design
        goes to {epsilon}. See also {firefighting}, {Mongolian Hordes
        technique}, {Conway's Law}.

:Gang of Four: n.

        (also abbreviated GOF) [prob. a play on the `Gang Of Four' who
        briefly ran Communist China after the death of Mao] Describes either
        the authors or the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable
        Object-Oriented Software published in 1995 by Addison-Wesley (ISBN
        0-201-63361-2). The authors forming the Gang Of Four are Erich
        Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. They are also
        sometimes referred to as `Gamma et. al.' The authors state at
        http://www.hillside.net/patterns/DPBook/GOF.html "Why are we ...
        called this? Who knows. Somehow the name just stuck." The term is
        also used to describe any of the design patterns that are used in
        the book, referring to the patterns within it as `Gang Of Four
        Patterns.'

:garbage collect: vi.

        (also garbage collection, n.) See {GC}.

:garply: /gar'plee/, n.

        [Stanford] Another metasyntactic variable (see {foo}); once popular
        among SAIL hackers.

:gas:

        [as in `gas chamber']

        1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be
        dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source
        of irritation. "Some loser just reloaded the system for no reason!
        Gas!"

        2. interj. A suggestion that someone or something ought to be
        flushed out of mercy. "The system's getting {wedged} every few
        minutes. Gas!"

        3. vt. To {flush} (sense 1). "You should gas that old crufty
        software."

        4. [IBM] n. Dead space in nonsequentially organized files that was
        occupied by data that has since been deleted; the compression
        operation that removes it is called degassing (by analogy, perhaps,
        with the use of the same term in vacuum technology).

        5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a disk that has been clandestinely
        allocated against future need.

:Gates's Law:

        "The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited law
        is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace
        the every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar
        predicted by {Moore's Law}. The reference is to Bill Gates;
        Microsoft is widely considered among the worst if not the worst of
        the perpetrators of bloat.

:gawble: /gaw'bl/, n.

        See {chawmp}.

:GC: /GC/

        [from LISP terminology; Garbage Collect]

        1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC
        the top of my desk today."

        2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use.

        3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process.

        Garbage collection is computer-science techspeak for a particular
        class of strategies for dynamically but transparently reallocating
        computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit allocation and
        deallocation by higher-level software). One such strategy involves
        periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is
        no longer accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that
        the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose.
        Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage collection.

        In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} GC is
        more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there is an
        ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going to
        garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but
        it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself.

:GCOS: /jee'kohs/, n.

        A {quick-and-dirty} {clone} of System/360 DOS that emerged from GE
        around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric
        Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support primitive
        timesharing and transaction processing. After the buyout of GE's
        computer division by Honeywell, the name was changed to General
        Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other OS groups at Honeywell
        began referring to it as `God's Chosen Operating System', allegedly
        in reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about
        the superiority of their product. All this might be of zero
        interest, except for two facts: (1) The GCOS people won the
        political war, and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of
        Honeywell {Multics}, and (2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on
        Unix. Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for
        print spooling and various other services; the field added to
        /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information was called the GECOS field
        and survives today as the pw_gecos member used for the user's full
        name and other human-ID information. GCOS later played a major role
        in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and
        was itself mostly ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when Honeywell
        began to retire its aging {big iron} designs.

:GECOS: /jee'kohs/, n.

        See {GCOS}.

:gedanken: /g@dahnkn/, adj.

        Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested.

        `Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought experiment is
        one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term gedanken
        experiment is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to
        carry out, but useful to consider because it can be reasoned about
        theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory
        involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through
        space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but must be
        used with care. It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect
        of the real world in constructing the `apparatus'.

        Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation.
        It is typically used of a project, especially one in artificial
        intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically
        as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great
        extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't
        very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a
        hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious lack of
        intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what
        does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm.
        See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.

:geef: v.

        [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. {mung}. See also
        {blinkenlights}.

:geek: n.

        A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one
        who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not
        mainstream social acceptance. Geeks usually have a strong case of
        {neophilia}. Most geeks are adept with computers and treat {hacker}
        as a term of respect, but not all are hackers themselves -- and some
        who are in fact hackers normally call themselves geeks anyway,
        because they (quite properly) regard `hacker' as a label that should
        be bestowed by others rather than self-assumed.

        One description accurately if a little breathlessly enumerates
        "gamers, ravers, science fiction fans, punks, perverts, programmers,
        nerds, subgenii, and trekkies. These are people who did not go to
        their high school proms, and many would be offended by the
        suggestion that they should have even wanted to."

        Originally, a geek was a carnival performer who bit the heads off
        chickens. (In early 20th-century Scotland a `geek' was an immature
        coley, a type of fish.) Before about 1990 usage of this term was
        rather negative. Earlier versions of this lexicon defined a computer
        geek as one who eats (computer) bugs for a living -- an asocial,
        malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a
        cheese grater. This is often still the way geeks are regarded by
        non-geeks, but as the mainstream culture becomes more dependent on
        technology and technical skill mainstream attitudes have tended to
        shift towards grudging respect. Correspondingly, there are now `geek
        pride' festivals (the implied reference to `gay pride' is not
        accidental).

        See also {propeller head}, {clustergeeking}, {geek out}, {wannabee},
        {terminal junkie}, {spod}, {weenie}, {geek code}, {alpha geek}.

:geek code: n.

        (also "Code of the Geeks"). A set of codes commonly used in {sig
        block}s to broadcast the interests, skills, and aspirations of the
        poster. Features a G at the left margin followed by numerous letter
        codes, often suffixed with plusses or minuses. Because many net
        users are involved in computer science, the most common prefix is
        `GCS'. To see a copy of the current code, browse
        http://www.geekcode.com/. Here is a sample geek code (that of Robert
        Hayden, the code's inventor) from that page:

        -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
        Version: 3.1
        GED/J d-- s:++>: a- C++(++++)$ ULUO++ P+>+++ L++ !E---- W+(---) N+++
        o+ K+++ w+(---) O- M+$>++ V-- PS++(+++)>$ PE++(+)>$ Y++ PGP++ t- 5+++
        X++ R+++>$ tv+ b+ DI+++ D+++ G+++++>$ e++$>++++ h r-- y+**
        ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

        The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according to the
        inventor) by previous "bear", "smurf" and "twink"
        style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay {newsgroup}s.
        It has in turn spawned imitators; there is now even a "Saturn geek
        code" for owners of the Saturn car. See also {geek}.

:geek out: vi.

        To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish
        context, for example at parties held near computer equipment.
        Especially used when you need to do or say something highly
        technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek
        out for a moment." See {geek}; see also {propeller head}.

:geekasm:

        Originally from a quote on the PBS show Scientific American
        Frontiers (week of May 21st 2002) by MIT professor Alex Slocum:
        "When they build a machine, if they do the calculations right, the
        machine works and you get this intense ... uhh ... just like a
        geekasm, from knowing that what you created in your mind and on the
        computer is actually doing what you told it to do". Unsurprisingly,
        this usage went live on the Web almost instantly. Every hacker knows
        this feeling. Compare earlier {progasm}.

:gen: /jen/, n.,v.

        Short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken and written
        contexts.

:gender mender: n.

        [common] A cable connector shell with either two male or two female
        connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result when
        some {loser} didn't understand the RS232C specification and the
        distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C parts in
        either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format. Also
        called gender bender, gender blender, sex changer, and even
        homosexual adapter; however, there appears to be some confusion as
        to whether a male homosexual adapter has pins on both sides (is
        doubly male) or sockets on both sides (connects two males).

:General Public Virus: n.

        Pejorative name for some versions of the {GNU} project {copyleft} or
        General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or
        {app}s incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on
        the same anti-proprietary terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged
        that the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which
        may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. The
        Free Software Foundation's official position is that copyright law
        limits the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating
        significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not
        passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted.
        Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language is
        `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools
        and the GPL. Changes in the language of the version 2.0 GPL did not
        eliminate this problem.

:generate: vt.

        To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of
        rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of
        an algorithm or program. The opposite of {parse}. This term retains
        its mechanistic connotations (though often humorously) when used of
        human behavior. "The guy is rational most of the time, but mention
        nuclear energy around him and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."

:Genius From Mars Technique: n.

        [TMRC] A visionary quality which enables one to ignore the standard
        approach and come up with a totally unexpected new algorithm. An
        attack on a problem from an offbeat angle that no one has ever
        thought of before, but that in retrospect makes total sense. Compare
        {grok}, {zen}.

:gensym: /jen'sim/

        [from MacLISP for generated symbol]

        1. v. To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way
        that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already
        in use.

        2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is `Gnnnn'
        where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognize
        G0093 (for example) as a gensym.

        3. A freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name.
        Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying
        crufties (see {cruft}).

:Get a life!: imp.

        Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom it is
        directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {geek}). Often heard
        on {Usenet}, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking
        some obscure issue of {theology} too seriously. This exhortation was
        popularized by William Shatner on a 1987 Saturday Night Live episode
        in a speech that ended "Get a life!", but it can be traced back at
        least to `Valley Girl' slang in 1983. It was certainly in wide use
        among hackers for years before achieving mainstream currency via the
        sitcom Get A Life in 1990.

:Get a real computer!: imp.

        In 1996 when this entry first entered the File, it was the typical
        hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work
        done on a system that (a) was single-tasking, (b) had no hard disk,
        or (c) had an address space smaller than 16 megabytes. In 2003
        anything less powerful than a 500MHz Pentium with a multi-gigabyte
        hard disk would probably be similarly written off. The threshold for
        `real computer' rises with time. See {bitty box} and {toy}.

:GandhiCon:

        There is a quote from Mohandas Gandhi, describing the stages of
        establishment resistence to a winning strategy of nonviolent
        activism, that partisans of {open source} and especially {Linux}
        have embraced as almost an explanatory framework for the behaviors
        they observe while trying to get corporations and other large
        institutions to take new ways of doing things seriously:

          First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight
          you. Then you win.

        In hacker usage this quote has miscegenated with the U.S military's
        DefCon terminology describing `defense conditions' or degrees of war
        alert. At GandhiCon One, you're being ignored. At GandhiCon Two,
        opponents are laughing at you and dismissing the idea that you could
        ever be a threat. At GandhiCon Three, they're fighting you on the
        merits and/or attempting to discredit you. At GandhiCon Four, you're
        winning and they are arguing to save face or stave off complete
        collapse of their position.

:gib: /jib/

        1. vi. To destroy utterly. Like {frag}, but much more violent and
        final. "There's no trace left. You definitely gibbed that bug".

        2. n. Remnants after total obliteration.

        Popilarized by id software in the game Quake, but actually goes back
        to an earlier game called Rise of the Triad. It's short for giblets
        (thus pronounced "jib"), and referred to the bloody remains of slain
        opponents. Eventually the word was verbed, and leaked into general
        usage afterward.

:GIFs at 11:

        [Fidonet] Fidonet alternative to {film at 11}, especially in echoes
        (Fidonet topic areas) where uuencoded GIFs are permitted. Other
        formats, especially JPEG and MPEG, may be referenced instead.

:gig: /jig/, /gig/, n.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:giga-: /ji'ga/, /giga/, pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:GIGO: /gi:goh/

        1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' -- usually said in response to {luser}s
        who complain that a program didn't "do the right thing" when given
        imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly
        used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty,
        incomplete, or imprecise data.

        2. Garbage In, Gospel Out: this more recent expansion is a sardonic
        comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in
        `computerized' data.

:gilley: n.

        [Usenet] The unit of analogical {bogosity}. According to its
        originator, the standard for one gilley was "the act of
        bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines for a
        day with the killing of one person". The milligilley has been found
        to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.

:gillion: /gil'y@n/, /jily@n/, n.

        [formed from {giga-} by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion]
        10^9. Same as an American billion or a British milliard. How one
        pronounces this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or
        soft `g'.

:ginger: n.

        See {saga}.

:GIPS: /gips/, /jips/, n.

        [analogy with {MIPS}] Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly
        `Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). Compare
        {KIPS}.

:GIYF: n.

        Abbrev: Google Is Your Friend. Used to suggest, gently and politely,
        that you have just asked a question of human beings that would have
        been better directed to a search engine. See also {STFW}.

:glark: /glark/, vt.

        To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are
        pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context."
        Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was
        "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the
        overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser,
        quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his Metamagical Themas column in the
        January 1981 Scientific American). It is conjectured that hacker
        usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was already an
        established jargon term (some hackers do report using the original
        term). Compare {grok}, {zen}.

:glass: n.

        [IBM] Synonym for {silicon}.

:glass tty: /glas TTY/, /glas ti'tee/, n.

        [obs.] A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of
        hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some
        other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of
        both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and
        like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is
        the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor
        control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}. See TV
        Typewriters (Appendix A) for an interesting true story about a glass
        tty.

:glassfet: /glas'fet/, n.

        [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor
        Field-Effect Transistor] Syn. {firebottle}, a humorous way to refer
        to a vacuum tube.

:glitch: /glich/

        [very common; from German `glitschig' slippery, via Yiddish
        `glitshen', to slide or skid]

        1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity,
        or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in
        electric service is specifically called a power glitch (also {power
        hit}), of grave concern because it usually crashes all the
        computers. In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a
        sentence and then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might
        say, "Sorry, I just glitched".

        2. vi. To commit a glitch. See {gritch}.

        3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at
        a time. {WAITS} terminals used to do this in order to avoid
        continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye.

        4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.

        All these uses of glitch derive from the specific technical meaning
        the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now
        techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change,
        and the outputs change to some {random} value for some very brief
        time before they settle down to the correct value. If another
        circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the
        random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug
        (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).

        Coping with a hydraulic {glitch}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-24. The previous one
        is 73-05-28.)

:glob: /glob/, not, /glohb/, v.,n.

        [Unix; common] To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or
        the act of so doing (the action is also called globbing). The Unix
        conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently
        pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English,
        especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly
        encountered include the following:

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        | *  | wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})                   |
        |----+-------------------------------------------------------------|
        | ?  | wildcard for any single character (generally read this way  |
        |    | only at the beginning or in the middle of a word)           |
        |----+-------------------------------------------------------------|
        | [] | delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters |
        |----+-------------------------------------------------------------|
        | {} | alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,          |
        |    | `foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'        |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity).
        "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups
        on {Usenet}). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}. Note
        that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in
        {regexp}s.

        Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the name of a
        subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of
        the Unix shell.

:glork: /glork/

        1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as
        when one attempts to save the results of two hours of editing and
        finds that the system has just crashed.

        2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}.

        3. vt. Similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My
        program just glorked itself."

        4. Syn. for {glark}, which see.

:glue: n.

        Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two
        component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol,
        and hardware designers call anything used to connect large VLSI's or
        circuit blocks glue logic.

:gnarly: /nar'lee/, adj.

        Both {obscure} and {hairy} (sense 1). "{Yow!} -- the tuned assembler
        implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less
        specific usage in surfer slang.

:GNU: /gnoo/, not, /noo/

        1. [acronym: `GNU's Not Unix!', see {recursive acronym}] A
        Unix-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation
        headed by Richard Stallman. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two
        tools designed for this project, have become very popular in
        hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to
        proselytize for RMS's position that information is community
        property and all software source should be shared. One of its
        slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains
        controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers
        to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers
        who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large
        amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the
        Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. The GNU project has a web
        page at http://www.gnu.org/. See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General
        Public Virus}, {Linux}.

        2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>}, founder of
        Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.

:gnubie: /noo'bee/, n.

        Written-only variant of {newbie} in common use on IRC channels,
        which implies specifically someone who is new to the
        Linux/open-source/free-software world.

:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/, n.

        [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the
        {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}. StallMACS, referring to
        Richard Stallman, is less common but also heard. Used esp. in
        contrast with {GOSMACS} and X Emacs.

:go flatline: v.

        [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon
        brain-death] (also adjectival flatlined).

        1. To {die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker
        parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
        considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
        about.

        2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
        controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
        Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline."

        3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees
        is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

:go gold: v.

        [common] See {golden}.

:go root: vi.

        [Unix; common] To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform
        a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where
        v. `root' is a synonym for "fuck".

:go-faster stripes: n.

        [UK] Syn. {chrome}. Mainstream in some parts of UK.

:GoAT: //

        [Usenet] Abbreviation: "Go Away, Troll". See {troll}.

:goat file:

        A sacrificial file used to test a computer virus, i.e. a dummy
        executable that carries a sample of the virus, isolated so it can be
        studied. Not common among hackers, since the Unix systems most use
        basically don't get viruses.

:gobble: vt.

        1. To consume, usu.: used with `up'. "The output spy gobbles
        characters out of a {tty} output buffer."

        2. To obtain, usu.: used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down a
        copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also {snarf}.

:Godwin's Law: prov.

        [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
        comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
        tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is
        over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost
        whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically
        guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those
        groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any
        intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its
        thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. Godwin himself has
        discussed the subject. See also {Formosa's Law}.

:Godzillagram: /godzil'@gram/, n.

        [from Japan's national hero]

        1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine
        in the universe. The typical case is an IP datagram whose
        destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few
        gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this case!

        2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,535
        octets. Compare {super source quench}, {Christmas tree packet},
        {martian}.

:golden: adj.

        [prob.: from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a
        magnetic medium (e.g., golden disk, golden tape), describes one
        containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version.
        Compare {platinum-iridium}. One may also "go gold", which is the act
        of releasing a golden version. The gold color of many CDROMs is a
        coincidence; this term was well established a decade before CDROM
        distribution become common in the mid-1990s.

:golf-ball printer: n. obs.

        The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal
        based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The golf ball was a little
        spherical frob bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different
        characters arranged on four parallels of latitude; one could change
        the font by swapping in a different golf ball. The print element
        spun and jerked alarmingly in action and when in motion was
        sometimes described as an infuriated golf ball. This was the
        technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in
        fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years
        ahead of its time -- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next
        20, until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped
        devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.

:gonk: /gonk/, vi.,n.

        1. [prob. back-formed from {gonkulator}.] To prevaricate or to
        embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. In German the
        term is (mythically) gonken; in Spanish the verb becomes gonkar.
        "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk."
        In German, for example, "Du gonkst mich" (You're pulling my leg).
        See also {gonkulator}.

        2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.

:gonkulator: /gon'kyoolaytr/, n.

        [common; from the 1960s Hogan's Heroes TV series] A pretentious
        piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually
        used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware.
        See {gonk}.

:gonzo: /gon'zoh/, adj.

        [from Hunter S. Thompson]

        1. With total commitment, total concentration, and a mad sort of
        panache. (Thompson's original sense.)

        2. More loosely: Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large,
        esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual
        functions. Has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but
        without the implication of obscurity or complexity.

:Good Thing: n.,adj.

        [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the
        1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That,
        but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.]

        1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "A
        language that manages dynamic memory automatically for you is a Good
        Thing."

        2. Something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects and may
        save considerable grief later: "Removing the self-modifying code
        from that shared library would be a Good Thing."

        3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC is a Good
        Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has drastically reduced
        a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad Thing}.

:google: v.

        [common] To search the Web using the Google search engine,
        http://www.google.com. Google is highly esteemed among hackers for
        its significance ranking system, which is so uncannily effective
        that many hackers consider it to have rendered other search engines
        effectively irrelevant. The name `google' has additional flavor for
        hackers because most know that it was copied from a mathematical
        term for ten to the 100th power, famously first uttered as `googol'
        by a mathematician's nine-year-old nephew.

:google juice: n.

        A hypothetical substance which attracts the index bots of
        Google.com. In common usage, a web page or web site with high
        placement in the results of a particular search on Google or
        frequent placement in the results of a various searches is said to
        have "a lot of google juice" or "good google juice". Also used to
        compare web pages or web sites, for example "CrackMonkey has more
        google juice than KPMG". See also {juice}, {kilogoogle}.

:gopher: n.

        [obs.] A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and
        obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a
        menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to
        documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far
        across the net.

        Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed
        at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota
        Gophers (a sports team). Others claim the word derives from American
        slang gofer (from "go for", dialectal "go fer"), one whose job is to
        run and fetch things. Finally, observe that gophers dig long
        tunnels, and the idea of tunneling through the net to find
        information was a defining metaphor for the developers. Probably all
        three things were true, but with the first two coming first and the
        gopher-tunnel metaphor serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to
        the project as it developed out of its concept stage.

:gopher hole: n.

        1. Any access to a {gopher}.

        2. [Amateur Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a {wormhole}
        (sense 2), from which this term was coined. A gopher hole links two
        amateur packet relays through some non-ham radio medium.

:gorets: /gor'ets/, n.

        The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the
        Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets, which seems to be a running contest to
        redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar
        way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A
        correspondent from the former Soviet Union informs me that gorets is
        Russian for `mountain dweller'. Another from France informs me that
        goret is archaic French for a young pig --ESR] Compare {frink}.

:gorilla arm: n.

        The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input
        technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems
        the designers of all those {spiffy} touch-menu systems failed to
        notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of
        their faces making small motions. After more than a very few
        selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized --
        the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and
        feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic
        cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla
        arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?".

:gorp: /gorp/, n.

        [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and
        Peanuts] Another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} and {bar}.

:GOSMACS: /goz'maks/, n.

        [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] The first {EMACS}-in-C
        implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by {GNUMACS}.
        Originally freeware; a commercial version was modestly popular as
        `UniPress EMACS' during the 1980s. The author, James Gosling, went
        on to invent {NeWS} and the programming language Java; the latter
        earned him {demigod} status.

:gotcha: n.

        A {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming language or
        environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it is both
        enticingly easy to invoke and completely unexpected and/or
        unreasonable in its outcome. For example, a classic gotcha in {C} is
        the fact that if (a=b) {code;} is syntactically valid and sometimes
        even correct. It puts the value of b into a and then executes code
        if a is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was if (a==b)
        {code;}, which executes code if a and b are equal.

:GPL: /GPL/, n.

        Abbreviation for `General Public License' in widespread use; see
        {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. Often mis-expanded as `GNU
        Public License'.

:GPV: /GPV/, n.

        Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in widespread use.

:gray goo: n.

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

:gray hat:

        See {black hat}.

:Great Internet Explosion:

        The mainstreaming of the Internet in 1993-1994. Used normally in
        time comparatives; before the Great Internet Explosion and after it
        were very different worlds from a hacker's point of view. Before it,
        Internet access was expensive and available only to an elite few
        through universities, research laboratories, and well-heeled
        corporations; after it, everybody's mother had access.

:Great Renaming: n.

        The {flag day} in 1987 on which all of the non-local groups on the
        {Usenet} had their names changed from the net.- format to the
        current multiple-hierarchies scheme. Used esp. in discussing the
        history of newsgroup names. "The oldest sources group is
        comp.sources.misc; before the Great Renaming, it was net.sources."
        There is a Great Renaming FAQ on the Web.

:Great Runes: n.

        Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating
        systems still emit these. See also {runes}, {smash case}, {fold
        case}.

        There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of this
        entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only support of
        various old character codes and I/O equipment was chosen by a
        religious person in a position of power at the Teletype Company
        because supporting both upper and lower cases was too expensive and
        supporting lower case only would have made it impossible to spell
        `God' correctly. Not true; the upper-case interpretation of
        teleprinter codes was well established by 1870, long before Teletype
        was even founded.

:Great Worm: n.

        The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by {RTM}. This is a play on
        Tolkien (compare {elvish}, {elder days}). In the fantasy history of
        his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay
        waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were
        known as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation
        that the RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in
        hacker history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous
        about the Internet than anything before or since.

:great-wall: vi.,n.

        [from SF fandom] A mass expedition to an oriental restaurant, esp.
        one where food is served family-style and shared. There is a common
        heuristic about the amount of food to order, expressed as "Get N - 1
        entrees"; the value of N, which is the number of people in the
        group, can be inferred from context (see {N}). See {oriental food},
        {ravs}, {stir-fried random}.

:green bytes: n.

        (also green words)

        1. Meta-information embedded in a file, such as the length of the
        file or its name; as opposed to keeping such information in a
        separate description file or record. The term comes from an IBM
        user's group meeting (ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were
        being debated and the diagram of the file on the blackboard had the
        green bytes drawn in green.

        2. By extension, the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "A
        GIF file contains, among other things, green bytes describing the
        packing method for the image." Compare {out-of-band}, {zigamorph},
        {fence} (sense 1).

:green card: n.

        [after the IBM System/360 Reference Data card] A summary of an
        assembly language, even if the color is not green and not a card.
        Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of
        assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can check the
        addressing mode for that instruction."

        The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370 was
        introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM refers
        to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room at
        Yorktown in 1978. A {luser} overheard one of the programmers ask
        another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and passed the
        first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser turned a
        delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never to return.

        In fall 2000 it was reported from Electronic Data Systems that the
        green card for 370 machines has been a blue-green booklet since
        1989.

:green lightning: n.

        [IBM]

        1. Apparently random flashing streaks on the face of 3278-9
        terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. This hardware
        bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within IBM
        suggested it would let the user know that `something is happening'.
        That, it certainly does. Later microprocessor-driven IBM color
        graphics displays were actually programmed to produce green
        lightning!

        2. [proposed] Any bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit
        rationalization or marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the
        88000 architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
        lightning". See also {feature} (sense 6).

:green machine: n.

        A computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to
        military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand
        mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so
        forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform' paint used for military
        equipment.

:Green's Theorem: prov.

        [TMRC] For any story, in any group of people there will be at least
        one person who has not heard the story. A refinement of the theorem
        states that there will be exactly one person (if there were more
        than one, it wouldn't be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of
        this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --ESR]

:greenbar: n.

        A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating green
        and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers.
        This slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days.

:grep: /grep/, vi.

        [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p, where re stands for a regular
        expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print
        the lines containing matches to it, via {Unix} grep(1)] To rapidly
        scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or
        pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak
        of grepping around). By extension, to look for something by pattern.
        "Grep the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?"
        See also {vgrep}.

        [It has been alleged that the source is from the title of a paper "A
        General Regular Expression Parser", but dmr confirms the g/re/p
        etymology --ESR]

:gribble: n.

        Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise characters in
        a data stream are displayed as gribble. Dumping a binary file to the
        screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the bell/speaker
        is active) headaches.

:grilf: //, n.

        Girlfriend. Like {newsfroup} and {filk}, a typo reincarnated as a
        new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1990 on {Usenet}. [A
        friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel Watchers Of The
        Dark, in which alien species after species goes insane and begins to
        chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that
        the word means "Liar!" I hope this has nothing to do with the
        popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR]

:grind: vt.

        1. [MIT and Berkeley; now rare] To prettify hardcopy of code,
        especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and
        comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was
        associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; {prettyprint}
        was and is the generic term for such operations.

        2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a document from the
        {troff}, {TeX}, or Scribe source.

        3. [common] To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
        necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task.
        Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a connotation of using
        a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc.
        See also {hog}.

        4. To make the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a {PDP-11}."

        5. grind grind excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"

:grind crank: n., //

        A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a
        monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the
        computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank
        out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and noise. See
        {grind}.

        Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
        crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days
        of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as `The
        Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice University
        Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when
        debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program
        was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear
        arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button. This
        allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to
        single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke
        at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on
        cranking. See http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/.

:gritch: /grich/

        [MIT]

        1. n. A complaint (often caused by a {glitch}).

        2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch".

        3. A synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).

        Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from
        {glitch}, with which it is often confused. Back in the early 1960s,
        when `glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art, the Burton
        House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume,
        into which the residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and
        witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this tradition were
        maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was
        described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3
        above is at least historically incorrect.

:grok: /grok/, /grohk/, vt.

        [common; from the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A.
        Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink'
        and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is grok in
        fullness.

        1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When
        you claim to `grok' some knowledge or technique, you are asserting
        that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way
        but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For
        example, to say that you "know" {LISP} is simply to assert that you
        can code in it if necessary -- but to say you "grok" LISP is to
        claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the
        language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of
        programming. Contrast {zen}, which is similar supernal understanding
        experienced as a single brief flash. See also {glark}.

        2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding.
        "Almost all C compilers grok the void type these days."

:gronk: /gronk/, vt.

        [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C.: but the word
        apparently predates that]

        1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
        than `to {frob}' (sense 2).

        2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable.

        3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette drives. In particular,
        the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go "grink, gronk".

:gronk out: vi.

        To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I
        guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."

:gronked: adj.

        1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system
        down."

        2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly)
        sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours now and I am
        thoroughly gronked!" Compare {broken}, which means about the same as
        {gronk} used of hardware, but connotes depression or
        mental/emotional problems in people.

:grovel: vi.

        1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used
        transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger has been
        groveling through the /usr directories for 10 minutes now." Compare
        {grind} and {crunch}. Emphatic form: grovel obscenely.

        2. To examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels
        over the entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I
        grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find
        the command I wanted."

:grue: n.

        [from archaic English verb for shudder, as with fear] The grue was
        originated in the game {Zork} (Dave Lebling took the name from Jack
        Vance's Dying Earth fantasies) and used in several other {Infocom}
        games as a hint that you should perhaps look for a lamp, torch or
        some type of light source. Wandering into a dark area would cause
        the game to prompt you, "It is very dark. If you continue you are
        likely to be eaten by a grue." If you failed to locate a light
        source within the next couple of moves this would indeed be the
        case.

        The grue, according to scholars of the Great Underground Empire, is
        a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its
        favorite diet is either adventurers or enchanters, but its
        insatiable appetite is tempered by its extreme fear of light. No
        grues have ever been seen by the light of day, and only a few have
        been observed in their underground lairs. Of those who have seen
        grues, few have survived their fearsome jaws to tell the tale. Grues
        have sickly glowing fur, fish-mouthed faces, sharp claws and fangs,
        and an uncontrollable tendency to slaver and gurgle. They are
        certainly the most evil-tempered of all creatures; to say they are
        touchy is a dangerous understatement. "Sour as a grue" is a common
        expression, even among grues themselves.

        All this folklore is widely known among hackers.

:grunge: /gruhnj/, n.

        1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so.

        2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other
        parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is {dead
        code}.

:gubbish: /guhb'@sh/, n.

        [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'; may have originated with
        SF author Philip K. Dick] Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this
        gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported; in
        fact, it was British slang during the 19th century and appears in
        Dickens.

:Guido: /gwee'do/, /khweedo/

        Without qualification, Guido van Rossum (author of {Python}). Note
        that Guido answers to English /gwee'do/ but in Dutch it's
        /khwee'do/. Mythically, Guido's most important attribute besides
        Python itself is Guido's time machine, a device he is reputed to
        possess because of the unnerving frequency with which user requests
        for new features have been met with the response "I just implemented
        that last night...". See {BDFL}.

:guiltware: /gilt'weir/, n.

        1. A piece of {freeware} decorated with a message telling one how
        long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a
        no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor
        suffering martyr gobs of money.

        2. A piece of {shareware} that works.

:gumby: /guhm'bee/, n.

        [from a class of Monty Python characters, poss. with some influence
        from the 1960s claymation character]

        1. An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in gumby
        maneuver or pull a gumby.

        2. [NRL] n. A bureaucrat, or other technical incompetent who impedes
        the progress of real work.

        3. adj. Relating to things typically associated with people in sense
        2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave him gumby work
        that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel screwed up my plane
        tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")

:gunch: /guhnch/, vt.

        [TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a device that has almost (but not
        quite) produced the desired result. Implies a threat to {mung}.

:gunpowder chicken: n.

        Same as {laser chicken}.

:guru: n.

        [Unix] An expert. Implies not only {wizard} skill but also a history
        of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a
        qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in VMS guru. See
        {source of all good bits}.

:guru meditation: n.

        Amiga equivalent of panic in Unix (sometimes just called a guru or
        guru event). When the system crashes, a cryptic message of the form
        "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the
        problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers.
        Sometimes a {guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

        This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the
        Amiga. An earlier product of the Amiga corporation was a device
        called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto a
        joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for
        the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS
        crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by
        concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard
        trying to keep the board in balance. This position resembled that of
        a meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed fairly early on (but
        there's a well-known patch to restore it in more recent versions).

:gweep: /gweep/

        [WPI]

        1. v. To {hack}, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one
        who gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center
        punching cards or crashing the {PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20. A
        correspondent who was there at the time opines that the term was
        originally onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the
        Datapoint terminals long connected to the PDP-10; others allege that
        `gweep' was the sound of the Datapoint's bell (compare {feep}). The
        term has survived the demise of those technologies, however, and was
        still alive in early 1999. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See
        you in the morning." "I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week."

        2. n. One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a
        hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep." Around 1979 this was
        considered derogatory and not used in self-reference; it has since
        been proudly claimed in much the same way as {geek}.

:GWF: n.

        "Common abbreviation for Goober with Firewall". A {luser} who has
        equipped his desktop computer with a hypersensitive "software
        firewall" or host intrusion detection program, and who gives its
        alerts absolute credence. ISP tech support and abuse desks dread
        hearing from such persons, who insist that every packet of abnormal
        traffic the software detects is "a hacker" (sic) and, occasionally,
        threatening lawsuits or prosecution. GWFs have been known to assert
        that they are being attacked from 127.0.0.1, and that their ISP is
        criminally negligent for failing to block these attacks. "GWF" is
        used similarly to {ID10T error} and {PEBKAC} to flag trouble tickets
        opened by such users.

  H

   h

   ha ha only serious

   hack

   hack attack

   hack mode

   hack on

   hack together

   hack up

   hack value

   hacked off

   hacked up

   hacker

   hacker ethic

   hacker humor

   Hackers (the movie)

   hacking run

   Hacking X for Y

   Hackintosh

   hackish

   hackishness

   hackitude

   hair

   hairball

   hairy

   HAKMEM

   hakspek

   Halloween Documents

   ham

   hammer

   hamster

   HAND

   hand cruft

   hand-hacking

   hand-roll

   handle

   handshaking

   handwave

   hang

   Hanlon's Razor

   happily

   hard boot

   hardcoded

   hardwarily

   hardwired

   has the X nature

   hash bucket

   hash collision

   hat

   HCF

   heads down

   heartbeat

   heatseeker

   heavy metal

   heavy wizardry

   heavyweight

   Hed Rat

   heisenbug

   hell desk

   hello sailor!

   hello world

   hello, wall!

   hex

   hexadecimal

   hexit

   HHOK

   HHOS

   hidden flag

   high bit

   high moby

   highly

   hing

   hired gun

   hirsute

   HLL

   hoarding

   hog

   hole

   hollised

   holy penguin pee

   holy wars

   home box

   home machine

   home page

   honey pot

   hook

   hop

   horked

   hose

   hosed

   hot chat

   hot spot

   hotlink

   house wizard

   HP-SUX

   HTH

   huff

   hung

   hungry puppy

   hungus

   hyperspace

   hysterical reasons

:h:

        [from SF fandom] A method of `marking' common words, i.e., calling
        attention to the fact that they are being used in a nonstandard,
        ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish catchphrase
        "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago. H-infix marking of
        `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s counterculture via
        underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from the
        counterculture or from SF fandom (the three overlapped heavily at
        the time). More recently, the h infix has become an expected feature
        of benchmark names (Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc.); this is probably
        patterning on the original Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but
        influenced by the fannish/counterculture h infix.

:ha ha only serious:

        [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, `Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A
        phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the
        flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies,
        absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived
        to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that
        are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This lexicon contains
        many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content.
        Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as
        ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too
        lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a
        {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. For further enlightenment on this
        subject, consult any Zen master. See also {hacker humor}, and
        {koan}.

:hack:

        [very common]

        1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not
        well.

        2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of
        work that produces exactly what is needed.

        3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this heat!"

        4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In an immediate
        sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In a general
        (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?" "I hack TECO."
        More generally, "I hack foo" is roughly equivalent to "foo is my
        major interest (or project)". "I hack solid-state physics." See
        {Hacking X for Y}.

        5. vt. To pull a prank on. See sense 2 and {hacker} (sense 5).

        6. vi. To interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory
        rather than goal-directed way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking."

        7. n. Short for {hacker}.

        8. See {nethack}.

        9. [MIT] v. To explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels
        of a large, institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant
        workers and (since this is usually performed at educational
        institutions) the Campus Police. This activity has been found to be
        eerily similar to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and
        Dragons and {Zork}. See also {vadding}.

        Constructions on this term abound. They include happy hacking (a
        farewell), how's hacking? (a friendly greeting among hackers) and
        hack, hack (a fairly content-free but friendly comment, often used
        as a temporary farewell). For more on this totipotent term see The
        Meaning of Hack. See also {neat hack}, {real hack}.

:hack attack: n.

        [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the McDonald's
        fast-food chain; the variant big hack attack is reported] Nearly
        synonymous with {hacking run}, though the latter more strongly
        implies an all-nighter.

:hack mode: n.

        1. What one is in when hacking, of course.

        2. More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem
        that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good
        hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at will
        correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most
        important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes amplified
        as deep hack mode.

        Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be
        experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in hack
        mode is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this
        experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the
        existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted
        out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace} (sense
        3).

        Some aspects of hacker etiquette will appear quite odd to an
        observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For example,
        if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to hold up a
        hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to avoid
        being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the
        computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
        other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to leave
        without a word). The understanding is that you might be in {hack
        mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense 2) in your head, and you
        dare not {swap} that context out until you have reached a good point
        to pause. See also {juggling eggs}.

:hack on: vt.

        [very common] To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
        pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
        something one might {hack up}.

:hack together: vt.

        [common] To throw something together so it will work. Unlike kluge
        together or {cruft together}, this does not necessarily have
        negative connotations.

:hack up: vt.

        To {hack}, but generally implies that the result is a hack in sense
        1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}. To hack up on
        implies a {quick-and-dirty} modification to an existing system.
        Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up}, {monkey up}, {cruft
        together}.

:hack value: n.

        Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort
        toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the
        accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had features for
        reading and printing Roman numerals, which were installed purely for
        hack value. See {display hack} for one method of computing hack
        value, but this cannot really be explained, only experienced. As
        Louis Armstrong once said when asked to explain jazz: "Man, if you
        gotta ask you'll never know." (Feminists please note Fats Waller's
        explanation of rhythm: "Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it.")

:hacked off: adj.

        [analogous to `pissed off'] Said of system administrators who have
        become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their
        sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers, or used
        for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly criminal
        activities. For example, having unreadable files in your home
        directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot' would probably be
        an effective (as well as impressively obvious and stupid) way to get
        your sysadmin hacked off at you.

        It has been pointed out that there is precedent for this usage in
        U.S. Navy slang, in which officers under discipline are sometimes
        said to be "in hack" and one may speak of "hacking off the C.O.".

:hacked up: adj.

        Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical scars
        are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare {critical mass}).
        Not all programs that are hacked become hacked up; if modifications
        are done with some eye to coherence and continued maintainability,
        the software may emerge better for the experience. Contrast {hack
        up}.

:hacker: n.

        [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]

        1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems
        and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who
        prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet
        Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights
        in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a
        system, computers and computer networks in particular.

        2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who
        enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.

        3. A person capable of appreciating {hack value}.

        4. A person who is good at programming quickly.

        5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does
        work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1
        through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)

        6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy
        hacker, for example.

        7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively
        overcoming or circumventing limitations.

        8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive
        information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker.
        The correct term for this sense is {cracker}.

        The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global
        community defined by the net (see {the network}. For discussion of
        some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker
        FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe
        to some version of the hacker ethic (see {hacker ethic}).

        It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe
        oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite
        (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members
        are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be
        had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one
        and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). See also {geek},
        {wannabee}.

        This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s
        by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a
        report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage
        radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.

:hacker ethic: n.

        1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good,
        and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise
        by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information
        and to computing resources wherever possible.

        2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is
        ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or
        breach of confidentiality.

        Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no
        means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to
        the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and
        giving away open-source software. A few go further and assert that
        all information should be free and any proprietary control of it is
        bad; this is the philosophy behind the {GNU} project.

        Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of
        cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the
        belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least
        moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign'
        crackers (see also {samurai}, {gray hat}). On this view, it may be
        one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a
        system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from
        a {superuser} account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can
        be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger team}.

        The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker
        ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share
        technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources
        with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as {Usenet},
        {FidoNet} and the Internet itself can function without central
        control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a
        sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible
        asset.

:hacker humor:

        A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among
        hackers, having the following marked characteristics:

        1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor
        having to do with confusion of metalevels (see {meta}). One way to
        make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her with
        "GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is
        funny only the first time).

        2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such
        as specifications (see {write-only memory}), standards documents,
        language descriptions (see {INTERCAL}), and even entire scientific
        theories (see {quantum bogodynamics}, {computron}).

        3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
        ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.

        4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.

        5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents
        of intelligence in it -- for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky
        & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty
        Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements
        of high camp and slapstick is especially favored.

        6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas
        in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See {has the X nature},
        {Discordianism}, {zen}, {ha ha only serious}, {koan}.

        See also {filk}, {retrocomputing}, and the Portrait of J. Random
        Hacker in Appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that all six of
        these traits are really aspects of one thing that is incredibly
        difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b)
        responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though
        in a less marked form) throughout {science-fiction fandom}.

:Hackers (the movie): n.

        A notable bomb from 1995. Should have been titled Crackers, because
        cracking is what the movie was about. It's understandable that they
        didn't however; titles redolent of snack food are probably a tough
        sell in Hollywood.

:hacking run: n.

        [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] A hack session extended
        long outside normal working times, especially one longer than 12
        hours. May cause you to change phase the hard way (see {phase}).

:Hacking X for Y: n.

        [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made
        publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR
        record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various
        fields. On display, two of these fields were always combined into a
        project description of the form "Hacking X for Y" (e.g., "Hacking
        perceptrons for Minsky"). This form of description became
        traditional and has since been carried over to other systems with
        more general facilities for self-advertisement (such as Unix {plan
        file}s).

:Hackintosh: n.

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

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

:hackish: /hak'ish/, adj.

        (also {hackishness} n.)

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

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

:hackishness: n.

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

:hackitude: n.

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

:hair: n.

        [back-formation from {hairy}] The complications that make something
        hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a certain amount of hair."
        Often seen in the phrase infinite hair, which connotes extreme
        complexity. Also in hairiferous (tending to promote hair growth):
        "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers to write complex editing modes."
        "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right." (or just: "Hair
        squared!")

:hairball: n.

        1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward
        network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the
        phrase "Fido coughed up a hairball today", meaning that the stuck
        messages have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where
        there had previously been drought.

        2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code. "JWZ thought the
        Mozilla effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball."

        3. Any large amount of garbage coming out suddenly. "Sendmail is
        coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing the
        Internet."

:hairy: adj.

        1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."

        2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."

        3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
        incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this
        hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See also
        {hirsute}.

        There is a theorem in simplicial homology theory which states that
        any continuous tangent field on a 2-sphere is null at least in a
        point. Mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term
        `hairy' with the informal version of this theorem; "You can't comb a
        hairy ball smooth." (Previous versions of this entry associating the
        above informal statement with the Brouwer fixed-point theorem were
        incorrect.)

        The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang
        use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was
        equivalent to modern hairy senses 1 and 2, and was very likely
        ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair' was at
        the time used to describe a person satisfying sense 3. Both senses
        probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature
        trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish hairy as a sort
        of stunted mutant relic.

        In British mainstream use, "hairy" means "dangerous", and
        consequently, in British programming terms, "hairy" may be used to
        denote complicated and/or incomprehensible code, but only if that
        complexity or incomprehesiveness is also considered dangerous.

:HAKMEM: /hak'mem/, n.

        MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of neat
        mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT
        and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a
        6-letterism for `hacks memo'.) Some of them are very useful
        techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but
        most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia.
        Here is a sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly
        paraphrased:

        Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less
        than 2^18.

        Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most probable suit distribution in
        bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which is the most
        evenly distributed. This is because the world likes to have unequal
        numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be in the
        state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered
        energy.

        Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5 (that
        is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such
        that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number).
        There are about 320 million, not counting those that differ only by
        rotation and reflection.

        Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming language
        is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of
        powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1 with sign +, you
        are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops with period = 1
        at -1, you are on a twos-complement machine. If the result loops
        with period greater than 1, including the beginning, you are on a
        ones-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater
        than 1, not including the beginning, your machine isn't binary --
        the pattern should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you
        are on a string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal
        error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce
        machine independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is
        machine dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more
        precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 = ...111111
        (base 2). Now add X to itself: X + X = ...111110. Thus, 2X = X - 1,
        so X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that
        is two's-complement.

        Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only
        number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an
        integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two
        representations are identical.

        Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when
        processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed
        out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text,
        taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and
        iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output occurs in
        the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We note an
        ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one sense,
        there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are nine. The
        editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the first ANA in
        BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By Murphy's Law, there
        is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a loop. An option to find
        overlapped instances would be useful, although it would require
        backing up N  - 1 characters before seeking the next N-character
        string.

        Note: This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press} implementation.
        See also {banana problem}.

        HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
        technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.

        An HTML transcription of the entire document is available at
        http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.

:hakspek: /hak'speek/, n.

        A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic
        bulletin boards and {talker system}s. Syllables and whole words in a
        sentence are replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which
        are phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are
        usually dropped. Hence, `for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to'
        become `2'; `ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes
        "b4 i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was
        probably caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which
        operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no
        standard methods of communication.

        Hakspek almost disappeared after the great bandwidth explosion of
        the early 1990s, as fast Internet links wiped out the old-style
        talker systems. However, it has enjoyed a revival in another medium
        -- the Short Message Service (SMS) associated with GSM cellphones.
        SMS sends are limited to a maximum of 160 characters, and typing on
        a cellphone keypad is difficult and slow anyway. There are now even
        published paper dictionaries for SMS users to help them do
        hakspek-to-English and vice-versa.

        See also {talk mode}.

:Halloween Documents: n.

        A pair of Microsoft internal strategy memoranda leaked to ESR in
        late 1998 that confirmed everybody's paranoia about the current
        {Evil Empire}. These documents praised the technical excellence of
        {Linux} and outlined a counterstrategy of attempting to lock in
        customers by "de-commoditizing" Internet protocols and services.
        They were extensively cited on the Internet and in the press and
        proved so embarrassing that Microsoft PR barely said a word in
        public for six months afterwards.

:ham:

        The opposite of {spam}, sense 3; that is, incoming mail that the
        user actually wants to see.

:hammer: vt.

        Commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}.

:hamster: n.

        1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code that does
        one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is of a
        hamster {happily} spinning its exercise wheel.

        2. A tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a
        receiver on the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable.

        3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for
        its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.

:HAND: //

        [Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Have A Nice Day. Typically used
        to close a {Usenet} posting, but also used to informally close
        emails; often preceded by {HTH}.

:hand cruft: vt.

        [pun on `hand craft'] See {cruft}, sense 3.

:hand-hacking: n.

        1. [rare] The practice of translating {hot spot}s from an {HLL} into
        hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler
        into generating better code. Both the term and the practice are
        becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {by hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}.

        2. [common] More generally, manual construction or patching of data
        sets that would normally be generated by a translation utility and
        interpreted by another program, and aren't really designed to be
        read or modified by humans.

:hand-roll: v.

        [from obs. mainstream slang hand-rolled in opposition to ready-made,
        referring to cigarettes] To perform a normally automated software
        installation or configuration process {by hand}; implies that the
        normal process failed due to bugs in the configurator or was
        defeated by something exceptional in the local environment. "The
        worst thing about being a gateway between four different nets is
        having to hand-roll a new sendmail configuration every time any of
        them upgrades."

:handle: n.

        1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym; a nom de guerre intended
        to conceal the user's true identity. Network and BBS handles
        function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment and display
        one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term was adopted.
        Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of {warez d00dz},
        {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of network
        life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than
        invented legendry. Compare {nick}, {screen name}.

        2. A {magic cookie}, often in the form of a numeric index into some
        array somewhere, through which you can manipulate an object like a
        file or window. The form file handle is especially common.

        3. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the
        extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to
        cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with
        minimal impact on the (possibly multiple) parts of the larger
        program containing references to the allocated memory. Compare
        {snap} (to snap a handle would defeat its purpose); see also
        {aliasing bug}, {dangling pointer}.

:handshaking: n.

        [very common] Hardware or software activity designed to start or
        keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do
        protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might
        watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate
        that they have heard each others' points and say "Oh, they're
        handshaking!". See also {protocol}.

:handwave: /hand'wayv/

        [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians]

        1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to
        support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty
        logic.

        2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"

        If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or "Obviously..." or
        "It is self-evident that...", it is a good bet he is about to
        handwave (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic
        tone before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it
        is a handwave). The theory behind this term is that if you wave your
        hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently
        distracted to not notice that what you have said is {bogus}. Failing
        that, if a listener does object, you might try to dismiss the
        objection with a wave of your hand.

        The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands
        up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting
        at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the
        handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while
        rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context,
        the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an
        outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your
        hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than words
        could express, that his logic is faulty.

:hang: v.

        1. [very common] To wait for an event that will never occur. "The
        system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive". See
        {wedged}, {hung}.

        2. To wait for some event to occur; to hang around until something
        happens. "The program displays a menu and then hangs until you type
        a character." Compare {block}.

        3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang
        off': "We're going to hang another tape drive off the file server."
        Implies a device attached with cables, rather than something that is
        strictly inside the machine's chassis.

:Hanlon's Razor: prov.

        A corollary of {Finagle's Law}, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads
        "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
        stupidity." Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite
        of hackers, often showing up in {sig block}s, {fortune cookie} files
        and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This
        probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments
        created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people. Compare
        {Sturgeon's Law}, {Ninety-Ninety Rule}.

        At http://www.statusq.org/2001/11/26.html it is claimed that
        Hanlon's Razor was coined by one Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, PA.
        However, a curiously similar remark ("You have attributed conditions
        to villainy that simply result from stupidity.") appears in Logic of
        Empire, a classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls the
        error it indicates the `devil theory' of sociology. Similar epigrams
        have been attributed to William James and (on dubious evidence)
        Napoleon Bonaparte.

:happily: adv.

        Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some
        important fact about its environment, either because it has been
        fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense
        of `happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful
        ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily unaware that its
        output is going to /dev/null." Also used to suggest that a program
        or device would really rather be doing something destructive, and is
        being given an opportunity to do so. "If you enter an O here instead
        of a zero, the program will happily erase all your data."
        Nevertheless, use of this term implies a basically benign attitude
        towards the program: It didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to
        do its job. We'd like to be angry at it but we shouldn't, we should
        try to understand it instead. The adjective "cheerfully" is often
        used in exactly the same way.

:hard boot: n.

        See {boot}.

:hardcoded: adj.

        1. [common] Said of data inserted directly into a program, where it
        cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some {profile},
        resource (see {de-rezz} sense 2), or environment variable that a
        {user} or hacker can easily modify.

        2. In C, this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a
        #define macro (see {magic number}).

:hardwarily: /hardweir'@lee/, adv.

        In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily
        unreliable." The adjective `hardwary' is not traditionally used,
        though it has recently been reported from the U.K. See {softwarily}.

:hardwired: adj.

        1. In software, syn. for {hardcoded}.

        2. By extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the
        sense of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.

:has the X nature:

        [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have
        the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for `is an X',
        used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program
        with on-screen help embedded in it truly has the {loser} nature!"
        See also {the X that can be Y is not the true X}. See also {mu}.

:hash bucket: n.

        A notional receptacle, a set of which might be used to apportion
        data items for sorting or lookup purposes. When you look up a name
        in the phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting
        its first letter; the hash buckets are the alphabetically ordered
        letter sections. This term is used as techspeak with respect to code
        that uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human
        associative memory as well. Thus, two things `in the same hash
        bucket' are more difficult to discriminate, and may be confused. "If
        you hash English words only by length, you get too many common
        grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash
        collision}.

:hash collision: n.

        [from the techspeak] (var.: hash clash) When used of people,
        signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination,
        especially a persistent one (see {thinko}). True story: One of us
        [ESR] was once on the phone with a friend about to move out to
        Berkeley. When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the
        friend replied: "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women
        throwing Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in
        my hash tables." Compare {hash bucket}.

:hat: n.

        Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110)
        character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:HCF: /HCF/, n.

        Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented and
        semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects,
        supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known
        architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The MC6800
        microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely
        known. This instruction caused the processor to {toggle} a subset of
        the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this
        could actually cause lines to burn up. Compare {killer poke}.

:heads down: adj.

        Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything
        outside the focus area is missed. See also {hack mode} and {larval
        stage}, although this mode is hardly confined to fledgling hackers.

:heartbeat: n.

        1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the end
        of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is
        still connected.

        2. A periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware,
        such as a bus clock or a periodic interrupt.

        3. The `natural' oscillation frequency of a computer's clock
        crystal, before frequency division down to the machine's clock rate.

        4. A signal emitted at regular intervals by software to demonstrate
        that it is still alive. Sometimes hardware is designed to reboot the
        machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat. See also {breath-of-life
        packet}.

:heatseeker: n.

        [IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail, the
        latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a
        member of the {lunatic fringe}). A 1993 example of a heatseeker was
        someone who, owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, went out and bought
        Windows 3.1 (which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a
        386). If all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could
        be made by just fixing some of the bugs in each release (n) and
        selling it to them as release (n+1). Microsoft in fact seems to have
        mastered this technique.

:heavy metal: n.

        [Cambridge] Syn. {big iron}.

:heavy wizardry: n.

        Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or
        experience of a particular operating system or language or complex
        application interface. Distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades
        more on arcane theoretical knowledge. Writing device drivers is
        heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a
        toolkit. Esp.: found in source-code comments of the form "Heavy
        wizardry begins here". Compare {voodoo programming}.

:heavyweight: adj.

        [common] High-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive; featureful, but
        costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and
        any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease
        of implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane
        considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup time.
        {EMACS} is a heavyweight editor; {X} is an extremely heavyweight
        window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one hacker's
        heavyweight is another's {elephantine} and a third's {monstrosity}.
        Oppose lightweight. Usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in
        the compound heavyweight process.

:Hed Rat:

        Unflattering spoonerism of Red Hat, a popular {Linux} distribution.
        Compare {Macintrash}. {sun-stools}, {HP-SUX}, {Slowlaris}.

:heisenbug: /hi:'zenbuhg/, n.

        [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug
        that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or
        isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use
        of a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment
        significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on
        the values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.)
        Antonym of {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. In C,
        nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables,
        {fandango on core} phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of
        the malloc {arena}) or errors that {smash the stack}.

:hell desk:

        Common mispronunciation of `help desk', especially among people who
        have to answer phones at one.

:hello sailor!: interj.

        Occasional West Coast equivalent of {hello world}; seems to have
        originated at SAIL, later associated with the game {Zork} (which
        also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally
        from the traditional hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the
        boat, of course. The standard response is "Nothing happens here.";
        of all the Zork/Dungeon games, only in Infocom's Zork 3 is "Hello,
        Sailor" actually useful (excluding the unique situation where
        _knowing_ this fact is important in Dungeon...).

:hello world: interj.

        1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe.

        2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message (a
        representative sample in various languages can be found at
        http://www.latech.edu/~acm/helloworld/). Traditionally, the first
        program a C coder is supposed to write in a new environment is one
        that just prints "hello, world" to standard output (and indeed it is
        the first example program in {K&R}). Environments that generate an
        unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require
        a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered
        to {lose} (see {X}).

        3. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting
        information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the LAN back up
        yet?"

:hello, wall!: excl.

        See {wall}.

:hex: n.

        1. Short for {hexadecimal}, base 16.

        2. A 6-pack of anything (compare {quad}, sense 2). Neither usage has
        anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is
        appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke,
        some hackers once offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as
        protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were, of course,
        hex inverters.

:hexadecimal: n.

        Base 16. Coined in the early 1950s to replace earlier sexadecimal,
        which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by
        the rest of the industry.

        Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take binary to
        be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base 10,
        for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time,
        ten each), a Latin distributive number; the corresponding term for
        base-16 would be something like `sendenary'. "Decimal" comes from
        the combining root of decem, Latin for 10. If wish to create a truly
        analogous word for base 16, we should start with sedecim, Latin for
        16. Ergo, sedecimal is the word that would have been created by a
        Latin scholar. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this
        context, and `hexa-' is Greek. The word octal is similarly
        incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with decimal),
        or `octonary' (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a
        base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the
        unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two correct forms; both
        ternary and trinary have a claim to this throne.

:hexit: /hek'sit/, n.

        A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A-F or a-f). Used by people who claim
        that there are only ten digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human
        beings are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might
        seem to imply (see {space-cadet keyboard}).

:HHOK:

        See {ha ha only serious}.

:HHOS:

        See {ha ha only serious}.

:hidden flag: n.

        [scientific computation] An extra option added to a routine without
        changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an
        explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra
        diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for some
        otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a
        negative mass. The use of hidden flags can make a program very hard
        to debug and understand, but is all too common wherever programs are
        hacked on in a hurry.

:high bit: n.

        [from high-order bit]

        1. The most significant bit in a byte.

        2. [common] By extension, the most significant part of something
        other than a data byte: "Spare me the whole {saga}, just give me the
        high bit." See also {meta bit}, {dread high-bit disease}, and
        compare the mainstream slang bottom line.

:high moby: /hi:' mohbee/, n.

        The high half of a 512K {PDP-10}'s physical address space; the other
        half was of course the low moby. This usage has been generalized in
        a way that has outlasted the {PDP-10}; for example, at the 1990
        Washington D.C. Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a
        miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in
        commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last {ITS} machines, the one
        on the upper floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low
        moby'. All parties involved {grok}ked this instantly. See {moby}.

:highly: adv.

        [scientific computation] The preferred modifier for overstating an
        understatement. As in: highly nonoptimal, the worst possible way to
        do something; highly nontrivial, either impossible or requiring a
        major research project; highly nonlinear, completely erratic and
        unpredictable; highly nontechnical, drivel written for {luser}s,
        oversimplified to the point of being misleading or incorrect
        (compare {drool-proof paper}). In other computing cultures,
        postfixing of {in the extreme} might be preferred.

:hing: //, n.

        [IRC] Fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use among
        players of {initgame}. Compare {newsfroup}, {filk}.

:hired gun: n.

        A contract programmer, as opposed to a full-time staff member. All
        the connotations of this term suggested by innumerable spaghetti
        Westerns are intentional.

:hirsute: adj.

        Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for {hairy}.

:HLL: /HLL/, n.

        [High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in
        email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants `VHLL' and
        `MLL' are found. VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level Language' and is
        used to describe a {bondage-and-discipline language} that the
        speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often called
        VHLLs. `MLL' stands for `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes
        used half-jokingly to describe {C}, alluding to its
        `structured-assembler' image. See also {languages of choice}.

:hoarding: n.

        See {software hoarding}.

:hog: n.,vt.

        1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat
        far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which
        noticeably degrade interactive response. Not used of programs that
        are simply extremely large or complex or that are merely painfully
        slow themselves. More often than not encountered in qualified forms,
        e.g., memory hog, core hog, hog the processor, hog the disk. "A
        controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the
        bus-hog timer expires."

        2. Also said of people who use more than their fair share of
        resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the people
        use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many
        people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem,
        they typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the
        sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete.

:hole: n.

        A region in an otherwise {flat} entity which is not actually
        present. For example, some Unix filesystems can store large files
        with holes so that unused regions of the file are never actually
        stored on disk. (In techspeak, these are referred to as `sparse'
        files.) As another example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved
        for memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be present is
        called `the I/O hole', since memory-management systems must skip
        over this area when filling user requests for memory.

:hollised: /hol'ist/, adj.

        [Usenet: sci.space] To be hollised is to have been ordered by one's
        employer not to post any even remotely job-related material to
        Usenet (or, by extension, to other Internet media). The original and
        most notorious case of this involved one Ken Hollis, a Lockheed
        employee and space-program enthusiast who posted publicly available
        material on access to Space Shuttle launches to sci.space. He was
        gagged under threat of being fired in 1994 at the behest of NASA
        public-relations officers. The result was, of course, a huge
        publicity black eye for NASA. Nevertheless several other NASA
        contractor employees were subsequently hollised for similar
        activities. Use of this term carries the strong connotation that the
        persons doing the gagging are bureaucratic idiots blinded to their
        own best interests by territorial reflexes.

:holy penguin pee: n.

        [Linux] Notional substance said to be sprinkled by {Linus} onto
        other people's contributions. With this ritual, he blesses them,
        officially making them part of the kernel. First used in November
        1998 just after Linus had handed the maintenance of the stable
        kernel over to Alan Cox.

:holy wars: n.

        [from {Usenet}, but may predate it; common] n. {flame war}s over
        {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the
        terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in connection with the
        LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled On Holy Wars and a Plea
        for Peace.

        Great holy wars of the past have included {ITS} vs.: {Unix}, {Unix}
        vs.: {VMS}, {BSD} Unix vs.: System V, {C} vs.: {Pascal}, {C} vs.:
        FORTRAN, etc. In the year 2003, popular favorites of the day are KDE
        vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux vs. [Free|Net|Open]BSD. Hardy
        perennials include {EMACS} vs.: {vi}, my personal computer vs.:
        everyone else's personal computer, ad nauseam. The characteristic
        that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that
        in a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to
        pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as
        objective technical evaluations. This happens precisely because in a
        true holy war, the actual substantive differences between the sides
        are relatively minor. See also {theology}.

:home box: n.

        A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah?
        Well, my home box runs a full 4.4 BSD, so there!"

:home machine: n.

        1. Syn. {home box}.

        2. The machine that receives your email. These senses might be
        distinct, for example, for a hacker who owns one computer at home,
        but reads email at work.

:home page: n.

        1. One's personal billboard on the World Wide Web. The term `home
        page' is perhaps a bit misleading because home directories and
        physical homes in {RL} are private, but home pages are designed to
        be very public.

        2. By extension, a WWW repository for information and links related
        to a project or organization. Compare {home box}.

:honey pot: n.

        1. A box designed to attract {cracker}s so that they can be observed
        in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network,
        but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different
        machine). Different from an {iron box} in that its purpose is to
        attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive
        network security tactic -- you set up an easy-to-crack box so that
        your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented
        in Cheswick & Bellovin's book Firewalls and Internet Security.

        2. A mail server that acts as an open relay when a single message is
        attempted to send through it, but discards or diverts for
        examination messages that are detected to be part of a spam run.

:hook: n.

        A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later
        additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that
        prints numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more
        flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use;
        setting the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in
        base 5. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible program
        might examine the variable and treat a value of 16 or less as the
        base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a
        user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a {hairy} but
        powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as
        Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the
        program through the hook. Often the difference between a good
        program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in
        judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about
        equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for
        future expansion of capabilities ({EMACS}, for example, is all
        hooks). The term user exit is synonymous but much more formal and
        less hackish.

:hop:

        1. n. [common] One file transmission in a series required to get a
        file from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network. On such
        networks (including the old UUCP network and and {FidoNet}), an
        important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest
        path between them, which can be more significant than their
        geographical separation. See {bang path}.

        2. v. [rare] To log in to a remote machine, esp. via rlogin or
        telnet. "I'll hop over to foovax to FTP that."

:horked: adj.

        Broken. Confused. Trashed. Now common; seems to be post-1995. There
        is an entertaining web page of related definitions, few of which
        seem to be in live use but many of which would be in the recognition
        vocabulary of anyone familiar with the adjective.

:hose:

        1. vt. [common] To make non-functional or greatly degraded in
        performance. "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the system."
        See {hosed}.

        2. n. A narrow channel through which data flows under pressure.
        Generally denotes data paths that represent performance bottlenecks.

        3. n. Cabling, especially thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes
        called bit hose or hosery (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. See
        also {washing machine}.

:hosed: adj.

        Same as {down}. Used primarily by Unix hackers. Humorous: also
        implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse.
        Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser' popularized by the
        Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV, but this usage predated SCTV
        by years in hackerdom (it was certainly already live at CMU in the
        1970s). See {hose}. It is also widely used of people in the
        mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.

        Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic
        difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It
        was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some
        coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then
        assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed.
        See also {dehose}.

:hot chat: n.

        Sexually explicit one-on-one chat. See {teledildonics}.

:hot spot: n.

        1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is
        received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code
        eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction
        visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge
        spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called hot
        spots and are good candidates for heavy optimization or
        {hand-hacking}. The term is especially used of tight loops and
        recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say)
        initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See
        {tune}, {hand-hacking}.

        2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the
        mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button."

        3. A screen region that is sensitive to mouse gestures, which
        trigger some action. World Wide Web pages now provide the
        {canonical} examples; WWW browsers present hypertext links as hot
        spots which, when clicked on, point the browser at another document
        (these are specifically called {hotlink}s).

        4. In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one
        location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at
        once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same
        lock).

        5. More generally, any place in a hardware design that turns into a
        performance bottleneck due to resource contention.

:hotlink: /hot'link/, n.

        A {hot spot} on a World Wide Web page; an area, which, when clicked
        or selected, chases a URL. Also spelled `hot link'. Use of this term
        focuses on the link's role as an immediate part of your display, as
        opposed to the timeless sense of logical connection suggested by
        {web pointer}. Your screen shows hotlinks but your document has web
        pointers, not (in normal usage) the other way around.

:house wizard: n.

        [prob.: from ad-agency tradetalk, `house freak'] A hacker occupying
        a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial
        shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all
        proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a
        suit. Used esp. of Unix wizards. The term house guru is equivalent.

:HP-SUX: /HP suhks/, n.

        Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's Unix port, which
        features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals
        and elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems).
        HP-UX is often referred to as `hockey-pux' inside HP, and one
        respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /HP ukkkhhhh/ as
        though one were about to spit. Another such alternate spelling and
        pronunciation is "H-PUX" /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former
        Apollo Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard
        to complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name
        first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the
        resulting acronym. See {sun-stools}, {Slowlaris}.

:HTH: //

        [Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Hope This Helps (e.g. following
        a response to a technical question). Often used just before {HAND}.
        See also {YHBT}.

:huff: v.

        To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that use
        such methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant thereof. Oppose
        {puff}. Compare {crunch}, {compress}.

:hung: adj.

        [from `hung up'; common] Equivalent to {wedged}, but more common at
        Unix/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with {locked up},
        {wedged}; compare {hosed}. See also {hang}. A hung state is
        distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, where the program or system
        is also unusable but because it is not running rather than because
        it is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both
        situations is often the same. It is also distinguished from the
        similar but more drastic state {wedged} -- hung software can be
        woken up with easy things like interrupt keys, but wedged will need
        a kill -9 or even reboot.

:hungry puppy: n.

        Syn. {slopsucker}.

:hungus: /huhng'g@s/, adj.

        [perhaps related to slang `humongous'] Large, unwieldy, usually
        unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a hungus set
        of modifications." The {Infocom} text adventure game Beyond Zork
        included two monsters called hunguses.

:hyperspace: /hi:'perspays/, n.

        A memory location that is far away from where the program counter
        should be pointing, especially a place that is inaccessible because
        it is not even mapped in by the virtual-memory system. "Another core
        dump -- looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow."
        (Compare {jump off into never-never land}.) This usage is from the
        SF notion of a spaceship jumping into hyperspace, that is, taking a
        shortcut through higher-dimensional space -- in other words,
        bypassing this universe. The variant east hyperspace is recorded
        among CMU and Bliss hackers.

:hysterical reasons: n.

        (also hysterical raisins) A variant on the stock phrase "for
        historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be
        done in some stupid way for backwards compatibility, and moreover
        that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad
        design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adapters have to
        support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare {bug-for-bug
        compatible}.

  I

   I didn't change anything!

   I see no X here.

   I for one welcome our new X overlords

   IANAL

   IBM

   ICBM address

   ice

   ID10T error

   idempotent

   IDP

   If you want X, you know where to find it.

   ifdef out

   IIRC

   ill-behaved

   IMHO

   Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!

   in the extreme

   incantation

   include

   include war

   indent style

   Indent-o-Meter

   index of X

   infant mortality

   infinite

   infinite loop

   Infinite-Monkey Theorem

   infinity

   inflate

   Infocom

   initgame

   insanely great

   installfest

   INTERCAL

   InterCaps

   interesting

   Internet

   Internet Death Penalty

   Internet Exploder

   Internet Exploiter

   interrupt

   interrupts locked out

   intertwingled

   intro

   IRC

   iron

   Iron Age

   iron box

   ironmonger

   ISO standard cup of tea

   ISP

   Itanic

   ITS

   IWBNI

   IYFEG

:I didn't change anything!: interj.

        An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression
        test. The {canonical} reply to this assertion is "Then it works just
        the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also {one-line fix}.
        This is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an
        obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software
        change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added
        to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon
        close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the
        program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but
        which actually {hosed} the code completely.

:I see no X here.:

        Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write)
        traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other possible
        equivalents such as "There's no X here!" or "X is missing." or
        "Where's the X?". This goes back to the original PDP-10 {ADVENT},
        which would respond in this wise if you asked it to do something
        involving an object not present at your location in the game.

:I for one welcome our new X overlords:

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

:IANAL: //

        [Usenet] Abbreviation, "I Am Not A Lawyer". Usually precedes legal
        advice.

:IBM: /IBM/

        Once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved to hate;
        today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.

        From hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, IBM
        was regarded with active loathing. Common expansions of the
        corporate name included: Inferior But Marketable; It's Better
        Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning;
        Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-{infinite} number of even
        less complimentary expansions (see also {fear and loathing}). What
        galled hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level wasn't so
        much that they were underpowered and overpriced (though that counted
        against them), but that the designs were incredibly archaic,
        {crufty}, and {elephantine} ... and you couldn't fix them -- source
        code was locked up tight, and programming tools were expensive, hard
        to find, and bletcherous to use once you had found them.

        We didn't know how good we had it back then. In the 1980s IBM had
        its own troubles with Microsoft and lost its strategic way, receding
        from the hacker community's view. Then, in the 1990s, Microsoft
        became more noxious and omnipresent than IBM had ever been.

        In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a services company,
        began to release open-source software through its AlphaWorks group,
        and began shipping {Linux} systems and building ties to the Linux
        community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a
        staunch friend of the hacker community and {open source}
        development, with ironic consequences noted in the {FUD} entry.

        This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these
        derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within
        IBM's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.

:ICBM address: n.

        (Also missile address) The form used to register a site with the
        Usenet mapping project, back before the day of pervasive Internet,
        included a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to
        seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for generating
        geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter; however,
        it became traditional to refer to this as one's ICBM address or
        missile address, and some people include it in their {sig block}
        with that name. (A real missile address would include target
        elevation.)

:ice: n.

        [coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's
        cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion
        Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels,
        software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or
        even literally kill the intruder). Hence, icebreaker: a program
        designed for cracking security on a system.

        Neither term is in serious use yet as of late 2003, but many hackers
        find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in
        the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused
        with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit emulator".

        In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some hackers
        and computer scientists formed ICE (International Cryptographic
        Experiment) in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote uniform
        international access to strong cryptography.

:ID10T error: /IDtenT er'@r/

        Synonym for {PEBKAC}, e.g. "The user is being an idiot".
        Tech-support people passing a problem report to someone higher up
        the food chain (and presumably better equipped to deal with idiots)
        may ask the user to convey that there seems to be an I-D-ten-T
        error. Users never twig.

:idempotent: adj.

        [from mathematical techspeak] Acting as if used only once, even if
        used multiple times. This term is often used with respect to {C}
        header files, which contain common definitions and declarations to
        be included by several source files. If a header file is ever
        included twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested
        #include files), compilation errors can result unless the header
        file has protected itself against multiple inclusion; a header file
        so protected is said to be idempotent. The term can also be used to
        describe an initialization subroutine that is arranged to perform
        some critical action exactly once, even if the routine is called
        several times.

:IDP: /IDP/, v.,n.

        [Usenet] Abbreviation for {Internet Death Penalty}. Common (probably
        now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed. Compare
        {UDP}.

:If you want X, you know where to find it.:

        There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of {C}, once
        responded to demands for features resembling those of what at the
        time was a much more popular language by observing "If you want
        PL/I, you know where to find it." Ever since, this has been hackish
        standard form for fending off requests to alter a new design to
        mimic some older (and, by implication, inferior and {baroque}) one.
        The case X = {Pascal} manifests semi-regularly on Usenet's
        comp.lang.c newsgroup. Indeed, the case X = X has been reported in
        discussions of graphics software (see {X}).

:ifdef out: /if'def owt/, v.

        Syn. for {condition out}, specific to {C}.

:IIRC: //

        Common abbreviation for "If I Recall Correctly".

:ill-behaved: adj.

        1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method
        that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor
        convergence properties.

        2. [obs.] Software that bypasses the defined {OS} interfaces to do
        things (like screen, keyboard, and disk I/O) itself, often in a way
        that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or
        which is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software.
        In the MS-DOS world, there was a folk theorem (nearly true) to the
        effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance penalties
        in the OS interface) all interesting applications were ill-behaved.
        See also {bare metal}. Oppose {well-behaved}. See also {mess-dos}.

        3. In modern usage, a program is called ill-behaved if it uses
        interfaces to the OS or other programs that are private,
        undocumented, or grossly non-portable. Another way to be ill-behaved
        is to use headers or files that are theoretically private to another
        application.

:IMHO: //, abbrev.

        [from SF fandom via Usenet; abbreviation for `In My Humble Opinion']
        "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as mistyping something
        in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors -- and they look
        too Pascalish anyhow." Also seen in variant forms such as IMNSHO (In
        My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).

:Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: prov.

        [Usenet] Since {Usenet} first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has
        grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On
        the other hand, most people feel the {signal-to-noise ratio} of
        Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as
        mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the
        net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy
        prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent
        Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out
        any time someone grumbles about the {S/N ratio} or the huge and
        steadily increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or
        link, or the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post
        copyrighted material, etc., etc., etc.

:in the extreme: adj.

        A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for
        example, obscure in the extreme under {obscure}, and compare
        {highly}.

:incantation: n.

        Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter
        at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or
        other explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are
        so poorly documented that they must be learned from a {wizard}.
        "This compiler normally locates initialized data in the data
        segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they will be
        forced into text space."

:include: vt.

        [Usenet]

        1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically
        with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for
        clarifying the context of one's response. See the discussion of
        inclusion styles under Hacker Writing Style.

        2. [from {C}] #include <disclaimer.h> has appeared in {sig block}s
        to refer to a notional standard {disclaimer} file.

:include war: n.

        Excessive multi-leveled inclusion within a discussion {thread}, a
        practice that tends to annoy readers. In a forum with high-traffic
        newsgroups, such as Usenet, this can lead to {flame}s and the urge
        to start a {kill file}.

:indent style: n.

        [C, C++, and Java programmers] The rules one uses to indent code in
        a readable fashion. There are four major C indent styles, described
        below; all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to
        visually track the scope of control constructs. They have been
        inherited by C++ and Java, which have C-like syntaxes. The
        significant variable is the placement of { and } with respect to the
        statement(s) they enclose and to the guard or controlling statement
        (if, else, for, while, or do) on the block, if any.

        K&R style -- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples
        in {K&R} are formatted this way. Also called kernel style because
        the Unix kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style'
        (abbrev. 1TBS) by its partisans. In C code, the body is typically
        indented by eight spaces (or one tab) per level, as shown here. Four
        spaces are occasionally seen in C, but in C++ and Java four tends to
        be the rule rather than the exception.

        if (<cond>) {
                <body>
        }

        Allman style -- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who wrote a
        lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called BSD style).
        Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol. It is the only
        style other than K&R in widespread use among Java programmers. Basic
        indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four (or sometimes
        three) spaces are generally preferred by C++ and Java programmers.

        if (<cond>)
        {
                <body>
        }

        Whitesmiths style -- popularized by the examples that came with
        Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent per
        level shown here is eight spaces, but four spaces are occasionally
        seen.

        if (<cond>)
                {
                <body>
                }

        GNU style -- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
        Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always
        four spaces per level, with { and } halfway between the outer and
        inner indent levels.

        if (<cond>)
          {
            <body>
          }

        Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most
        common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly
        universal, but is now much less common in C (the opening brace tends
        to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an if or
        while, which is a {Bad Thing}). Defenders of 1TBS argue that any
        putative gain in readability is less important than their style's
        relative economy with vertical space, which enables one to see more
        code on one's screen at once. The Java Language Specification
        legislates not only the capitalization of identifiers, but where
        nouns, adjectives, and verbs should be in method, class, interface,
        and variable names (section 6.8). While the specification stops
        short of also standardizing on a bracing style, all source code
        originating from Sun Laboratories uses the K&R style. This has set a
        precedent for Java programmers, which most follow.

        Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of {holy
        wars}.

:Indent-o-Meter:

        [] A fiendishly clever ASCII display hack that became a brief fad in
        1993-1994; it used combinations of tabs and spaces to produce an
        analog indicator of the amount of indentation an included portion of
        a reply had undergone. The full story is at
        http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/indent.html.

:index of X: n.

        See {coefficient of X}.

:infant mortality: n.

        It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at
        large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of
        sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time
        since first use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which
        enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in
        components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile).
        Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new
        system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as
        infant mortality problems (or, occasionally, as sudden infant death
        syndrome). See {bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}.

:infinite: adj.

        [common] Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very
        loosely as in: "This program produces infinite garbage." "He is an
        infinite loser." The word most likely to follow infinite, though, is
        {hair}. (It has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent
        example of infinite hair.) These uses are abuses of the word's
        mathematical meaning. The term semi-infinite, denoting an
        immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "This
        compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my
        program." See also {semi}.

:infinite loop: n.

        One that never terminates (that is, the machine {spin}s or {buzz}es
        forever and goes {catatonic}). There is a standard joke that has
        been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast
        machine: "The Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in
        under 2 seconds!"

:Infinite-Monkey Theorem: n.

        "If you put an {infinite} number of monkeys at typewriters,
        eventually one will bash out the script for Hamlet." (One may also
        hypothesize a small number of monkeys and a very long period of
        time.) This theorem asserts nothing about the intelligence of the
        one {random} monkey that eventually comes up with the script (and
        note that the mob will also type out all the possible incorrect
        versions of Hamlet). It may be referred to semi-seriously when
        justifying a {brute force} method; the implication is that, with
        enough resources thrown at it, any technical challenge becomes a
        {one-banana problem}. This argument gets more respect since {Linux}
        justified the {bazaar} mode of development.

        Other hackers maintain that the Infinite-Monkey Theorem cannot be
        true -- otherwise Usenet would have reproduced the entire canon of
        great literature by now.

        In mid-2002, researchers at Plymouth Univesity in England actually
        put a working computer in a cage with six crested macaques. The
        monkeys proceeded to bash the machine with a rock, urinate on it,
        and type the letter S a lot (later, the letters A, J, L, and M also
        crept in). The results were published in a limited-edition book,
        Notes Towards The Complete Works of Shakespeare. A researcher
        reported: "They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw
        that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level
        of intention there." Scattered field reports that there are AOL
        users this competent have been greeted with well-deserved
        skepticism.

        This theorem has been traced to the mathematiciamn mile Borel in
        1913, and was first popularized by the astronomer Sir Arthur
        Eddington. It became part of the idiom of techies via the classic SF
        short story Inflexible Logic by Russell Maloney, and many younger
        hackers know it through a reference in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's
        Guide to the Galaxy. Some other references have been collected on
        the Web. On 1 April 2000 the usage acquired its own Internet
        standard, RFC2795 (Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite).

:infinity: n.

        1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of
        variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever).

        2. minus infinity: The smallest such value, not necessarily or even
        usually the simple negation of plus infinity. In N-bit
        twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2^N-1 - 1 but minus infinity
        is - (2^N-1), not -(2^N-1 - 1). Note also that this is different
        from time T equals minus infinity, which is closer to a
        mathematician's usage of infinity.

:inflate: vt.

        To decompress or {puff} a file. Rare among Internet hackers, used
        primarily by MS-DOS/Windows types.

:Infocom: n.

        A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to 1989, that
        commercialized the MDL parser technology used for {Zork} to produce
        a line of text adventure games that remain favorites among hackers.
        Infocom's games were intelligent, funny, witty, erudite, irreverent,
        challenging, satirical, and most thoroughly hackish in spirit. The
        physical game packages from Infocom are now prized collector's
        items. After being acquired by Activision in 1989 they did a few
        more "modern" (e.g. graphics-intensive) games which were less
        successful than reissues of their classics.

        The software, thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were
        written in a kind of P-code (called, actually, z-code) and
        distributed with a P-code interpreter core, and not only open-source
        emulators for that interpreter but an actual compiler as well have
        been written to permit the P-code to be run on platforms the games
        never originally graced. In fact, new games written in this P-code
        are still being written. There is a home page at
        http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/, and it is even possible to play
        these games in your browser if it is Java-capable.

:initgame: /init'gaym/, n.

        [IRC] An {IRC} version of the trivia game "Botticelli", in which one
        user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other
        named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions,
        with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a
        courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a
        4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status,
        reality-status. For example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive,
        Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can be surprisingly
        addictive. See also {hing}.

        [1996 update: a recognizable version of the initgame has become a
        staple of some radio talk shows in the U.S. We had it first! -- ESR]

:insanely great: adj.

        [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD Unix people via Bill Joy]
        Something so incredibly {elegant} that it is imaginable only to
        someone possessing the most puissant of {hacker}-natures.

:installfest:

        [Linux community since c.1998] Common portmanteau word for
        "installation festival"; Linux user groups frequently run these.
        Computer users are invited to bring their machines to have Linux
        installed on their machines. The idea is to get them painlessly over
        the biggest hump in migrating to Linux, which is initially
        installing and configuring it for the user's machine.

:INTERCAL: /in't@rkal/, n.

        [said by the authors to stand for Compiler Language With No
        Pronounceable Acronym] A computer language designed by Don Woods and
        James Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other
        computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written
        language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL
        Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear:

          It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
          work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if
          one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
          in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:

          DO :1 <- #0$#256

          any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this
          is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to
          look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have
          happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be
          no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.

        INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
        more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used
        by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language
        has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently
        enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an
        alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ...
        appreciation of the language on Usenet.

        Inevitably, INTERCAL has a home page on the Web:
        http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/. An extended version, implemented
        in (what else?) {Perl} and adding object-oriented features, is
        rumored to exist. See also {Befunge}.

:InterCaps:

        [Great Britain] Synonym for {BiCapitalization}.

:interesting: adj.

        In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying',
        or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy
        wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient Chinese curse
        "May you live in interesting times". Oppose {trivial},
        {uninteresting}.

:Internet: n.

        The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as
        the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though
        it has been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network
        architecture for military command-and-control that could survive
        disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a myth; in
        fact, ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to get most
        economical use out of then-scarce large-computer resources. Robert
        Herzfeld, who was director of ARPA at the time, has been at some
        pains to debunk the "survive-a-nuclear-war" myth, but it seems
        unkillable.

        As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to
        support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms
        of distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic
        mail quickly grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research
        labs and defense contractors early discovered the Internet's
        potential as a medium of communication between humans and linked up
        in steadily increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of
        academics, techies, hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The
        roots of this lexicon lie in those early years.

        Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The
        typical machine/OS combination moved from {DEC} {PDP-10}s and
        {PDP-20}s, running {TOPS-10} and {TOPS-20}, to PDP-11s and {VAX}en
        and Suns running {Unix}, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel
        microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most
        notably in the move from NCP/IP to {TCP/IP} in 1982 and the
        implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this
        time that people began referring to the collection of interconnected
        networks with ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".

        The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines --
        connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related
        research project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations
        clamoring to join didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National
        Science Foundation built NSFnet to open up access to its five
        regional supercomputing centers; NSFnet became the backbone of the
        Internet, replacing the original ARPANET pipes (which were formally
        shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and late 1994 the pieces of NSFnet
        were sold to major telecommunications companies until the Internet
        backbone had gone completely commercial.

        That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered
        the Internet. Once again, the {killer app} was not the anticipated
        one -- rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext
        and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the
        Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol
        stack favored by European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process
        of absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built
        during the second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996
        it had become a commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that
        a globally-extended Internet would become the key unifying
        communications technology of the next century. See also {the
        network}.

:Internet Death Penalty:

        [Usenet] (often abbreviated IDP) The ultimate sanction against
        {spam}-emitting sites -- complete shunning at the router level of
        all mail and packets, as well as Usenet messages, from the offending
        domain(s). Compare {Usenet Death Penalty}, with which it is
        sometimes confused.

:Internet Exploder:

        [very common] Pejorative hackerism for Microsoft's "Internet
        Explorer" web browser (also "Internet Exploiter"). Compare {HP-SUX},
        {Macintrash}, {sun-stools}, {Slowlaris}.

:Internet Exploiter: n.

        Another common name-of-insult for Internet Explorer, Microsoft's
        overweight Web Browser; more hostile than {Internet Exploder}.
        Reflects widespread hostility to Microsoft and a sense that it is
        seeking to hijack, monopolize, and corrupt the Internet. Compare
        {Exploder} and the less pejorative {Netscrape}.

:interrupt:

        1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that interrupts normal
        processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an
        "interrupt handler" routine. See also {trap}.

        2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker. Often explicitly
        spoken. "Interrupt -- have you seen Joe recently?" See {priority
        interrupt}.

:interrupts locked out: adj.

        When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several
        fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might
        well observe "She must have interrupts locked out". The synonym
        interrupts disabled is also common. Variations abound; "to have
        one's interrupt mask bit set" and "interrupts masked out" are also
        heard. See also {spl}.

:intertwingled:

        adj. [Invented by Theodor Holm Nelson, prob. a blend of "mingled"
        and "intertwined".] Connected together in a complex way;
        specifically, composed of one another's components.

:intro: n.

        [{demoscene}] Introductory {screen} of some production.

        2. A short {demo}, usually showing just one or two {screen}s.

        3. Small, usually 64k, 40k or 4k {demo}. Sizes are generally
        dictated by {compo} rules. See also {dentro}, {demo}.

:IRC: /IRC/, n.

        [Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide "party line" network that allows
        one to converse with others in real time. IRC is structured as a
        network of Internet servers, each of which accepts connections from
        client programs, one per user. The IRC community and the {Usenet}
        and {MUD} communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers
        and regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer
        networks. Some Usenet jargon has been adopted on IRC, as have some
        conventions such as {emoticon}s. There is also a vigorous native
        jargon, represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'. See
        also {talk mode}.

:iron: n.

        Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of {mainframe} class
        with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics
        (but the term is also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the
        phrase {big iron}. Oppose {silicon}. See also {dinosaur}.

:Iron Age: n.

        In the history of computing, 1961-1971 -- the formative era of
        commercial {mainframe} technology, when ferrite-core {dinosaur}s
        ruled the earth. The Iron Age began, ironically enough, with the
        delivery of the first minicomputer (the PDP-1) and ended with the
        introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004)
        in 1971. See also {Stone Age}; compare {elder days}.

:iron box: n.

        [Unix/Internet] A special environment set up to trap a {cracker}
        logging in over remote connections long enough to be traced. May
        include a modified {shell} restricting the cracker's movements in
        unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep him interested and
        logged on. See also {back door}, {firewall machine}, {Venus
        flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's account in The Cuckoo's Egg of how he
        made and used one (see the Bibliography in Appendix C). Compare
        {padded cell}, {honey pot}.

:ironmonger: n.

        [IBM] A hardware specialist (derogatory). Compare {sandbender},
        {polygon pusher}.

:ISO standard cup of tea: n.

        [South Africa] A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar,
        where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are
        ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on.

        This may derive from the "NATO standard" cup of coffee and tea (milk
        and two sugars), military slang going back to the late 1950s and
        parodying NATO's relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts
        across European and U.S. militaries.

        Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in North
        America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice
        of adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer
        instead to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling
        extremely silly, one might hypothesize an analogous ANSI standard
        cup of tea and wind up with a political situation distressingly
        similar to several that arise in much more serious technical
        contexts. (Milk and lemon don't mix very well.)

        [2000 update: There is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103: `Method
        for preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory tests.',
        alleged to be equivalent to British Standard BS6008: How to make a
        standard cup of tea. --ESR]

:ISP: /ISP/

        Common abbreviation for Internet Service Provider, a kind of company
        that barely existed before 1993. ISPs sell Internet access to the
        mass market. While the big nationwide commercial BBSs with Internet
        access (like America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, Netcom, etc.) are
        technically ISPs, the term is usually reserved for local or regional
        small providers (often run by hackers turned entrepreneurs) who
        resell Internet access cheaply without themselves being information
        providers or selling advertising. Compare {NSP}.

:Itanic: n.

        The Intel Itanium, so called in reference to the legendary disaster
        that was the Titanic. This term bubbled up in several places on the
        Internet in 1999 when it was beginning to become clear that the
        Itanium was turning into the most expensive and protracted flop in
        the history of the semiconductor industry.

:ITS: /ITS/, n.

        1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential though highly
        idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT
        and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker jargon derives from
        ITS folklore, and to have been `an ITS hacker' qualifies one
        instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered
        many important innovations, including transparent file sharing
        between machines and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982,
        most actual work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining
        ITS boxes run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker
        community. The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990
        marked the end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning
        nationwide (see {high moby}). There is an ITS home page.

        2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a
        bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see
        {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue
        believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking
        that supported only monocase 6-character filenames in one directory
        per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art
        (their venom against {Unix} is particularly intense). See also {holy
        wars}, {Weenix}.

:IWBNI: //

        Abbreviation for `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare {WIBNI}.

:IYFEG: //

        [Usenet] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'. Used
        as a meta-name when telling ethnic jokes on the net to avoid
        offending anyone. See {JEDR}.

  J

   J. Random

   J. Random Hacker

   jack in

   jaggies

   Java

   JCL

   JEDR

   Jeff K.

   jello

   Jeopardy-style quoting

   jibble

   jiffy

   job security

   jock

   joe code

   joe-job

   juggling eggs

   juice

   jump off into never-never land

   jupiter

:J. Random: /J rand'm/, n.

        [common; generalized from {J. Random Hacker}] Arbitrary; ordinary;
        any one; any old. `J. Random' is often prefixed to a noun to make a
        name out of it. It means roughly some particular or any specific
        one. "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most
        common uses are `J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser', and `J.
        Random Nerd' ("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to kill other
        peoples' processes?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate
        version of {random} in any sense.

:J. Random Hacker: /J rand'm hakr/, n.

        [very common] A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the
        archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the
        jargon, apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. See {random},
        {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been inspired by `J. Fred
        Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back
        in the early days of {TMRC}, and was probably influenced by `J.
        Presper Eckert' (one of the co-inventors of the electronic
        computer). See also {Fred Foobar}.

:jack in: v.

        To log on to a machine or connect to a network or {BBS}, esp. for
        purposes of entering a {virtual reality} simulation such as a {MUD}
        or {IRC} (leaving is "jacking out"). This term derives from
        {cyberpunk} SF, in which it was used for the act of plugging an
        electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the brain
        directly to a virtual reality. It is primarily used by MUD and IRC
        fans and younger hackers on BBS systems.

:jaggies: /jag'eez/, n.

        The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge
        of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as
        opposed to a vector display).

:Java:

        An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by James
        Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the intention of being
        the successor to {C++} (the project was however originally sold to
        Sun as an embedded language for use in set-top boxes). After the
        great Internet explosion of 1993-1994, Java was hacked into a
        byte-interpreted language and became the focus of a relentless hype
        campaign by Sun, which touted it as the new language of choice for
        distributed applications.

        Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has been
        embraced by many in the hacker community -- but it has been a
        considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons
        ranging from uneven support on different Web browser platforms,
        performance issues, and some notorious deficiencies in some of the
        standard toolkits (AWT in particular). {Microsoft}'s determined
        attempts to corrupt the language (which it rightly sees as a threat
        to its OS monopoly) have not helped. As of 2003, these issues are
        still in the process of being resolved.

        Despite many attractive features and a good design, it is difficult
        to find people willing to praise Java who have tried to implement a
        complex, real-world system with it (but to be fair it is early days
        yet, and no other language has ever been forced to spend its
        childhood under the limelight the way Java has). On the other hand,
        Java has already been a big {win} in academic circles, where it has
        taken the place of {Pascal} as the preferred tool for teaching the
        basics of good programming to the next generation of hackers.

:JCL: /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 one gives to
        someone who memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at
        IBM itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that
        mangles you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the
        Mickey Mouse Club theme to express their opinion of the beast.

        2. A comparative for any very {rude} software that a hacker is
        expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As with {COBOL}, JCL is
        often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't
        experienced it. See also {IBM}, {fear and loathing}.

        A (poorly documented, naturally) shell simulating JCL syntax is
        available at the Retrocomputing Museum http://www.catb.org/retro/.

:JEDR: //, n.

        Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in the Usenet newsgroup
        rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of {IYFEG} or
        `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group
        once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was offended by an
        ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was {retcon}ned by expanding
        these initials as `Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound
        and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise.
        JEDR's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit
        `sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more
        recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and
        near-universal rejection.

:Jeff K.:

        The spiritual successor to {B1FF} and the archetype of {script
        kiddies}. Jeff K. is a sixteen-year-old suburbanite who fancies
        himself a "l33t haX0r", although his knowledge of computers seems to
        be limited to the procedure for getting Quake up and running. His
        Web page http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/ features a number of
        hopelessly naive articles, essays, and rants, all filled with the
        kind of misspellings, {studlycaps}, and number-for-letter
        substitutions endemic to the script kiddie and {warez d00dz}
        communities. Jeff's offerings, among other things, include hardware
        advice (such as "AMD VERSIS PENTIUM" and "HOW TO OVARCLOAK YOUR
        COMPUTAR"), his own Quake clan (Clan 40 OUNSCE), and his own comic
        strip (Wacky Fun Computar Comic Jokes).

        Like B1FF, Jeff K. is (fortunately) a hoax. Jeff K. was created by
        internet game journalist Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, whose web site
        Something Awful (http://www.somethingawful.com) highlights
        unintentionally humorous news items and Web sites, as a parody of
        the kind of teenage {luser} who infests Quake servers, chat rooms,
        and other places where computer enthusiasts congregate. He is
        well-recognized in the PC game community and his influence has
        spread to hacker {fora} like Slashdot as well.

:jello: n.

        [Usenet: by analogy with {spam}] A message that is both excessively
        cross-posted and too frequently posted, as opposed to {spam} (which
        is merely too frequently posted) or {velveeta} (which is merely
        excessively cross-posted). This term is widely recognized but not
        commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse or their
        combination as spam.

:Jeopardy-style quoting:

        See {top-post}.

:jibble:

        [UK] Unspecified stuff. An unspecified action. A deliberately blank
        word; compare {gorets}. A deliberate experiment in tracking the
        spread of a near-meaningless word. See
        http://www.jibble.org/jibblemeaning.php.

:jiffy: n.

        1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer
        (see {tick}). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and
        Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has
        become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the
        virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks
        of the clock, or about ten times a second.

        2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond
        {wall time} interval.

        3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to
        mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum,
        which turns out to be close to one nanosecond. Other physicists use
        the term for the quantum-nechanical lower bound on meaningful time
        lengths,

        4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in
        a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit
        contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose {nano}. See
        also {Real Soon Now}.

:job security: n.

        When some piece of code is written in a particularly {obscure}
        fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can
        be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting
        to increase his job security (i.e., by making himself indispensable
        for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if
        two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a
        section and says "job security", the other one may just nod.

:jock: n.

        1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat
        brute-force programs. See {brute force}.

        2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some
        particular computing area. The compounds compiler jock and systems
        jock seem to be the best-established examples.

:joe code: /joh' kohd`/, n.

        1. Code that is overly {tense} and unmaintainable. "{Perl} may be a
        handy program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe
        code."

        2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.

        Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a
        particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed that
        usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code' was
        intended in sense 1.

        1994 update: This term has now generalized to `<name> code', used to
        designate code with distinct characteristics traceable to its
        author. "This section doesn't check for a NULL return from malloc()!
        Oh. No wonder! It's Ed code!". Used most often with a programmer who
        has left the shop and thus is a convenient scapegoat for anything
        that is wrong with the project.

:joe-job: n., vt.

        A spam run forged to appear as though it came from an innocent
        party, who is then generally flooded by the bounces; or, the act of
        performing such a run. The original incident is described here.

:juggling eggs: vi.

        Keeping a lot of {state} in your head while modifying a program.
        "Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is
        likely to result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic
        1975 first-contact SF novel The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven
        and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by
        saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." It is
        possible that this was intended as tribute to a less colorful use of
        the same image in Robert Heinlein's influential 1961 novel Stranger
        in a Strange Land. See also {hack mode} and {on the gripping hand}.

:juice: n.

        The weight of a given node in some sort of graph (like a web of
        trust or a relevance-weighted search query). This appears to have
        been generalized from {google juice}, but may derive from black
        urban slang for power or a respect. Example: "I signed your key, but
        I really don't have the juice to be authoritative."

:jump off into never-never land: v.

        [from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan] An unexpected jump in a program that
        produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. Compare
        {hyperspace}.

:jupiter: vt.

        [IRC] To kill an {IRC} {bot} or user and then take its place by
        adopting its {nick} so that it cannot reconnect. Named after a
        particular IRC user who did this to NickServ, the robot in charge of
        preventing people from inadvertently using a nick claimed by another
        user. Now commonly shortened to jupe.

  K

   K

   K&R

   k-

   kahuna

   kamikaze packet

   kangaroo code

   ken

   kernel-of-the-week club

   kgbvax

   KIBO

   kiboze

   kibozo

   kick

   kill file

   killer app

   killer micro

   killer poke

   kilo-

   kilogoogle

   KIPS

   KISS Principle

   kit

   KLB

   klone

   kludge

   kluge

   kluge around

   kluge up

   Knights of the Lambda Calculus

   knobs

   knurd

   Knuth

   koan

   kook

   Kool-Aid

   kremvax

   kyrka

:K: /K/, n.

        [from {kilo-}] A kilobyte. Used both as a spoken word and a written
        suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte and gigabyte). See
        {quantifiers}.

:K&R: n.

        Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book The C Programming
        Language, esp. the classic and influential first edition
        (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-13-110163-3). Syn. {Old Testament}. See
        also {New Testament}.

:k-: pref.

        [rare; poss fr. kilo- prefix] Extremely. Rare among hackers, but
        quite common among crackers and {warez d00dz} in compounds such as
        k-kool /K'kool/, k-rad /Krad/, and k-awesome /Kaw`sm/. Also used
        to intensify negatives; thus, k-evil, k-lame, k-screwed, and
        k-annoying. Overuse of this prefix, or use in more formal or
        technical contexts, is considered an indicator of {lamer} status.

:kahuna: /k@hoo'n@/, n.

        [IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] Synonym for {wizard},
        {guru}.

:kamikaze packet: n.

        The `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a {Christmas
        tree packet}. {RFC}-1025, TCP and IP Bake Off says:

          10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze" packet
          (AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.).
          That is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination
          of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options
          and data).

        See also {Chernobyl packet}.

:kangaroo code: n.

        Syn. {spaghetti code}.

:ken: /ken/, n.

        1. [Unix] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of Unix. In the early
        days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that
        read "Love, ken". Old-timers still use his first name (sometimes
        uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail address) in
        third-person reference; it is widely understood (on Usenet, in
        particular) that without a last name `Ken' refers only to Ken
        Thompson. Similarly, `Dennis' without last name means Dennis Ritchie
        (and he is often known as dmr). See also {demigod}, {Unix}.

        2. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software Support group
        at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community
        were both named Ken.

:kernel-of-the-week club:

        The fictional society that {BSD} {bigot}s claim {Linux} users belong
        to, alluding to the release-early-release-often style preferred by
        the kernel maintainers. See {bazaar}. This was almost certainly
        inspired by the earlier {bug-of-the-month club}.

:kgbvax: /KGB'vaks/, n.

        See {kremvax}.

:KIBO: /ki:boh/

        1. [acronym] Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. A summary of what happens
        whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or person)
        that deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores its
        significance. Consider, for example, what an advertising campaign
        can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see
        also {SNAFU principle}.

        2. James Parry <kibo@world.std.com>, a Usenetter infamous for
        various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack
        for joining any thread in which his nom de guerre is mentioned. He
        has a website at http://www.kibo.com/.

:kiboze: v.

        [Usenet] To {grep} the Usenet news for a string, especially with the
        intention of posting a follow-up. This activity was popularised by
        Kibo (see {KIBO}, sense 2).

:kibozo: /ki:boh'zoh/, n.

        [Usenet] One who {kiboze}s but is not Kibo (see {KIBO}, sense 2).

:kick: v.

        1. [IRC] To cause somebody to be removed from a {IRC} channel, an
        option only available to channel ops. This is an extreme measure,
        often used to combat extreme {flamage} or {flood}ing, but sometimes
        used at the {CHOP}'s whim.

        2. To reboot a machine or kill a running process. "The server's
        down, let me go kick it."

:kill file: n.

        [Usenet; very common] (alt.: KILL file) Per-user file(s) used by
        some {Usenet} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's rn(1)) to
        discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching
        some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject,
        author, or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to
        one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's
        newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to
        ignore the person or subject in other media. See also {plonk}.

:killer app:

        The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a
        promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the mid-1980s
        to describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that demand for that
        product had been the major driver of the early business market for
        IBM PCs. The term was then retrospectively applied to VisiCalc,
        which had played a similar role in the success of the Apple II.
        After 1994 it became commonplace to describe the World Wide Web as
        the Internet's killer app. One of the standard questions asked about
        each new personal-computer technology as it emerges has become
        "what's the killer app?"

:killer micro: n.

        [popularized by Eugene Brooks c.1990] A microprocessor-based machine
        that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance
        turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer
        micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers.

        The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is
        doubtless reinforced by the title of the movie Attack Of The Killer
        Tomatoes (one of the {canonical} examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful
        among hackers). This has even more {flavor} now that killer micros
        have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations)
        but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).

        [2002 update: Eugene Brooks was right. Since this term first entered
        the Jargon File in 1990, the minicomputer has effectively vanished,
        the {mainframe} sector is in deep and apparently terminal decline,
        and even the supercomputer business has contracted into a smaller
        niche. It's networked killer micros as far as the eye can see.
        --ESR]

:killer poke: n.

        A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of
        invalid values (see {poke}) into a memory-mapped control register;
        used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es
        without hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore
        PET) that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor.
        See also {HCF}.

:kilo-: pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:kilogoogle: n.

        The standard unit of measurement for Web search hits: a thousand
        Google matches. "There are about a kilogoogle and a half sites with
        that band's name on it." Compare {google juice}.

:KIPS: /kips/, n.

        [abbreviation, by analogy with {MIPS} using {K}] Thousands (not
        1024s) of Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.

:KISS Principle: /kis' prinsipl/, n.

        "Keep It Simple, Stupid". A maxim often invoked when discussing
        design to fend off {creeping featurism} and control development
        complexity. Possibly related to the {marketroid} maxim on sales
        presentations, "Keep It Short and Simple".

:kit: n.

        [Usenet; poss.: fr.: {DEC} slang for a full software distribution,
        as opposed to a patch or upgrade] A source software distribution
        that has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be
        unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only
        standard Unix tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable
        chain of references from the top-level {README file}. The more
        general term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more
        stringent conditions on the host environment are required.

:KLB: n.

        [common among Perl hackers] Known Lazy Bastard. Used to describe
        somebody who perpetually asks questions which are easily answered by
        referring to the reference material or manual.

:klone: /klohn/, n.

        See {clone}, sense 4.

:kludge:

        1. /kluhj/ n. Incorrect (though regrettably common) spelling of
        {kluge} (US). These two words have been confused in American usage
        since the early 1960s, and widely confounded in Great Britain since
        the end of World War II.

        2. [TMRC] A {crock} that works. (A long-ago Datamation article by
        Jackson Granholme similarly said: "An ill-assorted collection of
        poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.")

        3. v. To use a kludge to get around a problem. "I've kludged around
        it for now, but I'll fix it up properly later."

        This word appears to have derived from Scots kludge or kludgie for a
        common toilet, via British military slang. It apparently became
        confused with U.S. {kluge} during or after World War II; some
        Britons from that era use both words in definably different ways,
        but {kluge} is now uncommon in Great Britain. `Kludge' in
        Commonwealth hackish differs in meaning from `kluge' in that it
        lacks the positive senses; a kludge is something no Commonwealth
        hacker wants to be associated too closely with. Also, `kludge' is
        more widely known in British mainstream slang than `kluge' is in the
        U.S.

:kluge: /klooj/

        [from the German `klug', clever; poss. related to Polish & Russian
        `klucz' (a key, a hint, a main point)]

        1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in
        hardware or software.

        2. n. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular
        nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to
        repair bugs. Often involves {ad-hockery} and verges on being a
        {crock}.

        3. n. Something that works for the wrong reason.

        4. vt. To insert a kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine
        to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way."

        5. [WPI] n. A feature that is implemented in a {rude} manner.

        Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling
        `kludge'. Reports from {old fart}s are consistent that `kluge' was
        the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the
        mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges. In
        1947, the New York Folklore Quarterly reported a classic shaggy-dog
        story `Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the Armed Forces,
        in which a `kluge' was a complex and puzzling artifact with a
        trivial function. Other sources report that `kluge' was common Navy
        slang in the WWII era for any piece of electronics that worked well
        on shore but consistently failed at sea.

        However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade
        older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a
        device called a "Kluge paper feeder", an adjunct to mechanical
        printing presses. Legend has it that the Kluge feeder was designed
        before small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it
        relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and
        linkages to both power and synchronize all its operations from one
        motive driveshaft. It was accordingly temperamental, subject to
        frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair -- but oh,
        so clever! People who tell this story also aver that `Kluge' was the
        name of a design engineer.

        There is in fact a Brandtjen & Kluge Inc., an old family business
        that manufactures printing equipment -- interestingly, their name is
        pronounced /kloo'gee/! Henry Brandtjen, president of the firm, told
        me (ESR, 1994) that his company was co-founded by his father and an
        engineer named Kluge /kloo'gee/, who built and co-designed the
        original Kluge automatic feeder in 1919. Mr. Brandtjen claims,
        however, that this was a simple device (with only four cams); he
        says he has no idea how the myth of its complexity took hold. Other
        correspondents differ with Mr. Brandtjen's history of the device and
        his allegation that it was a simple rather than complex one, but
        agree that the Kluge automatic feeder was the most likely source of
        the folklore.

        {TMRC} and the MIT hacker culture of the early '60s seems to have
        developed in a milieu that remembered and still used some WWII
        military slang (see also {foobar}). It seems likely that `kluge'
        came to MIT via alumni of the many military electronics projects
        that had been located in Cambridge (many in MIT's venerable Building
        20, in which {TMRC} is also located) during the war.

        The variant `kludge' was apparently popularized by the {Datamation}
        article mentioned under {kludge}; it was titled How to Design a
        Kludge (February 1962, pp. 30, 31). This spelling was probably
        imported from Great Britain, where {kludge} has an independent
        history (though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on either
        side of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group
        alt.folklore.computers over the First and Second Edition versions of
        this entry; everybody used to think {kludge} was just a mutation of
        {kluge}). It now appears that the British, having forgotten the
        etymology of their own `kludge' when `kluge' crossed the Atlantic,
        repaid the U.S. by lobbing the `kludge' orthography in the other
        direction and confusing their American cousins' spelling!

        The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S. hackers
        pronounce the word as /klooj/ but spell it, incorrectly for its
        meaning and pronunciation, as `kludge'. (Phonetically, consider
        huge, refuge, centrifuge, and deluge as opposed to sludge, judge,
        budge, and fudge. Whatever its failings in other areas, English
        spelling is perfectly consistent about this distinction.) British
        hackers mostly learned /kluhj/ orally, use it in a restricted
        negative sense and are at least consistent. European hackers have
        mostly learned the word from written American sources and tend to
        pronounce it /kluhj/ but use the wider American meaning!

        Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the word's
        meaning.

:kluge around: vt.

        To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a {kluge}.
        Compare {workaround}.

:kluge up: vt.

        To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than
        {cruft together} and has some of the connotations of {hack up}
        (note, however, that the construction kluge on corresponding to
        {hack on} is never used). "I've kluged up this routine to dump the
        buffer contents to a safe place."

:Knights of the Lambda Calculus: n.

        A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers.
        The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo
        Church, with which LISP is intimately connected. There is no
        enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one
        well-known LISPer has been known to give out buttons and, in
        general, the members know who they are....

:knobs: pl.n.

        Configurable options, even in software and even those you can't
        adjust in real time. Anything you can {twiddle} is a knob. "Has this
        PNG viewer got an alpha knob?" Software may be described as having
        "knobs and switches" or occasionally "knobs and lights". See also
        {nerd knob}

:knurd: n.

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

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

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

:Knuth: /kanooth'/, n.

        [Donald E. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming] Mythically, the
        reference that answers all questions about data structures or
        algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: "I think you can
        find that in Knuth." Contrast {the literature}. See also {bible}.
        There is a Donald Knuth home page at
        http://Sunburn.Stanford.EDU/~knuth/.

:koan: /koh'an/, n.

        A Zen teaching riddle. Classically, koans are attractive paradoxes
        to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to enlightenment by
        temporarily jamming normal cognitive processing so that something
        more interesting can happen (this practice is associated with Rinzai
        Zen Buddhism). Defined here because hackers are very fond of the
        koan form and compose their own koans for humorous and/or
        enlightening effect. See Some AI Koans, {has the X nature}, {hacker
        humor}.

:kook:

        [Usenet; originally and more formally, net.kook] Term used to
        describe a regular poster who continually posts messages with no
        apparent grounding in reality. Different from a {troll}, which
        implies a sort of sly wink on the part of a poster who knows better,
        kooks really believe what they write, to the extent that they
        believe anything.

        The kook trademark is paranoia and grandiosity. Kooks will often
        build up elaborate imaginary support structures, fake corporations
        and the like, and continue to act as if those things are real even
        after their falsity has been documented in public.

        While they may appear harmless, and are usually filtered out by the
        other regular participants in a newsgroup of mailing list, they can
        still cause problems because the necessity for these measures is not
        immediately apparent to newcomers; there are several instances on
        record, for example, of journalists writing stories with quotes from
        kooks who caught them unaware.

        An entertaining web page chronicling the activities of many notable
        kooks can be found at http://www.crank.net/usenet.html.

:Kool-Aid:

        [from a kid's sugar-enriched drink in fruity flavors] When someone
        who should know better succumbs to marketing influences and actually
        begins to believe the propaganda being dished out by a vendor, they
        are said to have drunk the Kool-Aid. Usually the decortication
        process is slow and almost unnoticeable until one day the victim
        emerges as a True Believer and begins spreading the faith himself.
        The term originates in the suicide of 914 followers of Jim Jones's
        People's Temple cult in Guyana in 1978 (there are also resonances
        with Ken Kesey's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests from the 1960s). What
        the Jonestown victims actually drank was cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid, a
        cheap knockoff, rather than Kool-Aid itself. There is a FAQ on this
        topic.

        This has live variants. When a suit is blithering on about their
        latest technology and how it will save the world, that's `pouring
        Kool-Aid'. When the suit does not violate the laws of physics,
        doesn't make impossible claims, and in fact says something
        reasonable and believable, that's pouring good Kool-Aid, usually
        used in the sentence "He pours good Kool-Aid, doesn't he?" This
        connotes that the speaker might be about to drink same.

:kremvax: /kremvaks/, n.

        [from the then-large number of {Usenet} {VAXen} with names of the
        form foovax] Originally, a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin,
        announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there
        by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually
        forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious
        sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}. This was
        probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated
        on Usenet (which has negligible security against them), because the
        notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so
        totally absurd at the time.

        In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in
        Moscow, demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers needed convincing that
        the postings from it weren't just another prank. Vadim Antonov,
        senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there up to
        mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in
        his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by
        blandly asserting that he was a hoax!

        Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site named
        kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into fact and demonstrating
        that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [Mr.
        Antonov also contributed the Russian-language material for this
        lexicon. --ESR]

        In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an
        electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the
        bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the
        Soviet UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy
        news source for many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were
        concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings
        included immediate transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees
        condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in
        Moscow's streets. In those hours, years of speculation that
        totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on
        politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking
        were proved devastatingly accurate -- and the original kremvax joke
        became a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of
        glasnost and perestroika made kremvax one of the timeliest means of
        their outreach to the West.

:kyrka: /chur'ka/, n.

        [Swedish] See {feature key}.

  L

   lag

   lamer

   LAN party

   language lawyer

   languages of choice

   LART

   larval stage

   lase

   laser chicken

   leaf site

   leak

   leaky heap

   leapfrog attack

   leech

   leech mode

   legal

   legalese

   lenna

   LER

   LERP

   let the smoke out

   letterbomb

   lexer

   life

   Life is hard

   light pipe

   lightweight

   like kicking dead whales down the beach

   like nailing jelly to a tree

   line 666

   line eater, the

   line noise

   linearithmic

   link farm

   link rot

   link-dead

   lint

   Lintel

   Linus

   Linux

   lion food

   Lions Book

   LISP

   list-bomb

   lithium lick

   little-endian

   live

   live data

   Live Free Or Die!

   livelock

   liveware

   lobotomy

   locals, the

   locked and loaded

   locked up

   logic bomb

   logical

   loop through

   loose bytes

   lord high fixer

   lose

   lose lose

   loser

   losing

   loss

   lossage

   lossy

   lost in the noise

   lost in the underflow

   lots of MIPS but no I/O

   low-bandwidth

   Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

   Lumber Cartel

   lunatic fringe

   lurker

   luser

:lag: n.

        [MUD, IRC; very common] When used without qualification this is
        synonymous with {netlag}. Curiously, people will often complain "I'm
        really lagged" when in fact it is their server or network connection
        that is lagging.

:lamer: n.

        [originally among Amiga fans]

        1. Synonym for {luser}, not used much by hackers but common among
        {warez d00dz}, crackers, and {phreaker}s. A person who downloads
        much, but who never uploads. (Also known as leecher). Oppose
        {elite}. Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that
        use of {luser} does among hackers.

        2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS.

        3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users -- for instance,
        by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software,
        frequently dropping carrier, etc.

        Crackers also use it to refer to cracker {wannabee}s. In phreak
        culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing
        cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In {warez
        d00dz} culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial
        software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market
        is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware
        or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few
        years to anything older than 3 days). `Lamer' is also much used in
        the IRC world in a similar sense to the above.

        This term seems to have originated in the Commodore-64 scene in the
        mid 1980s. It was popularized among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s
        by `Lamer Exterminator', the most famous and feared Amiga virus
        ever, which gradually corrupted non-write-protected floppy disks
        with bad sectors. The bad sectors, when looked at, were overwritten
        with repetitions of the string "LAMER!".

:LAN party: /lan par'tee/

        An event to which several users bring their boxes and hook them up
        to a common LAN (Local Area Network), often for the purpose of
        playing multiplayer computer games, especially action games such as
        Quake or Unreal Tournament. This is also a good venue for people to
        show-off their fancy new hardware. Such events can get pretty large,
        several hundred people attend the annual QuakeCon in Texas. The
        theoretical rationale behind LAN parties is that playing over the
        Internet often introduces too much lag in the playing experience --
        but just as important is the special quality of trash-talking each
        other across the room while playing, and the instinctive social
        ritual of consuming vast amounts of food and drink together.

:language lawyer: n.

        A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is
        intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions
        and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more
        computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished
        by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a
        200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question
        "if only you had thought to look there". Compare {wizard}, {legal},
        {legalese}.

:languages of choice: n.

        {C}, {Perl}, {Python}, {Java} and {LISP} -- the dominant languages
        in open-source development. This list has changed over time, but
        slowly. Java bumped C++ off of it, and Python appears to be
        recruiting people who would otherwise gravitate to LISP (which used
        to be much more important than it is now). Smalltalk and Prolog are
        also popular in small but influential communities.

        The {Real Programmer}s who loved FORTRAN and assembler have pretty
        much all retired or died since 1990. Assembler is generally no
        longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL}
        implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and
        hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a
        shrinking niche in scientific programming.

        Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {Pascal} and Ada, which
        don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for
        hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard
        everything even remotely connected with {COBOL} or other traditional
        {DP} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}.

:LART: //

        Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool.

        1. n. In the collective mythos of {scary devil monastery}, this is
        an essential item in the toolkit of every {BOFH}. The LART classic
        is a 2x4 or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be
        applied upside the head of spammers and other people who cause
        sysadmins more grief than just naturally goes with the job.
        Perennial debates rage on alt.sysadmin.recovery over what
        constitutes the truly effective LART; knobkerries, automatic
        weapons, flamethrowers, and tactical nukes all have their partisans.
        Compare {clue-by-four}.

        2. v. To use a LART. Some would add "in malice", but some sysadmins
        do prefer to gently lart their users as a first (and sometimes
        final) warning.

        3. interj. Calling for one's LART, much as a surgeon might call
        "Scalpel!".

        4. interj. [rare] Used in {flame}s as a rebuke. "LART! LART! LART!"

:larval stage: n.

        Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding
        apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms
        include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a
        given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics
        like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of
        advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent
        median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a
        more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce
        really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See
        also {wannabee}. A less protracted and intense version of larval
        stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is
        learning a new {OS} or programming language.

:lase: /layz/, vt.

        To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, let's lase that
        sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right
        things."

:laser chicken: n.

        Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken,
        peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many
        hackers call it laser chicken for two reasons: It can {zap} you just
        like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some
        laser beams. The dish has also been called gunpowder chicken.

        In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian
        hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as
        Chernobyl Chicken. The name is derived from the color of the sauce,
        which is considered bright enough to glow in the dark (as,
        mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl).

:leaf site: n.

        [obs.] Before pervasive TCP/IP, this term was used of a machine that
        merely originated and read Usenet news or mail, and did not relay
        any third-party traffic. It was often uttered in a critical tone;
        when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites
        got too high, the network tended to develop bottlenecks. Compare
        {backbone site}. Now that traffic patterns depend more on the
        distribution of routers than of host machines this term has largely
        fallen out of use.

:leak: n.

        With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that
        occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them
        are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads
        to eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come in. {memory
        leak} has its own entry; one might also refer, to, say, a window
        handle leak in a window system.

:leaky heap: n.

        [Cambridge] An {arena} with a {memory leak}.

:leapfrog attack: n.

        Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from one
        host (e.g., downloading a file of account IDs and passwords, tapping
        TELNET, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act of
        TELNETting through one or more hosts in order to confuse a trace (a
        standard cracker procedure).

:leech:

        1. n. (Also leecher.) Among BBS types, crackers and {warez d00dz},
        one who consumes knowledge without generating new software, cracks,
        or techniques. BBS culture specifically defines a leech as someone
        who downloads files with few or no uploads in return, and who does
        not contribute to the message section. Cracker culture extends this
        definition to someone (a {lamer}, usually) who constantly presses
        informed sources for information and/or assistance, but has nothing
        to contribute. See {troughie}.

        2. v. [common, Toronto area] v. To download a file across any kind
        of internet link. "Hop on IRC later so I can leech some MP3s from
        you." Used to describe activities ranging from FTP, to IRC DCC-send,
        to ICQ file requests, to Napster searches (but never to downloading
        email with file attachments; the implication is that the download is
        the result of a browse or search of some sort of file server). Seems
        to be a holdover from the early 1990s when Toronto had a very active
        BBS and warez scene. Synonymous with {snarf} (sense 2), and contrast
        {snarf} (sense 4).

:leech mode: n.

        [warez d00dz] "Leech mode" or "leech access" or (simply "leech" as
        in "You get leech") is the access mode on a FTP site where one can
        download as many files as one wants, without having to upload. Leech
        mode is often promised on banner sites, but rarely obtained. See
        {ratio site}, {banner site}.

:legal: adj.

        Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules',
        esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software.
        "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C."
        "This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees
        the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of
        game played with the environment in which the objective is to
        maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired
        objective. Their use of legal is flavored as much by this
        game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with
        courts and lawyers. Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}.

:legalese: n.

        Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product
        specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to
        obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to {parse} it. Though
        hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in
        language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and
        abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception,
        {suit}s, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end
        of the stick.

:lenna:

        The Internet's first poster girl, a standard test load used in the
        image processing community. The image was originally cropped from
        the November 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine, which anglicized the
        model's name with a double n. It has interesting properties --
        complex feathers, shadows, smooth (but not flat) surfaces -- that
        are pertinent in demonstrating various processing algorithms for
        image compression, filtering, dithering, texture mapping, image
        recognition, and so on. After a quarter century of remaining
        completely unaware that she had become an icon, a gray-haired but
        still winsome Lenna finally met her fans at a computer graphics
        conference in 1997. There is a fan page at www.lenna.org, with more
        details. Compare {Utah teapot} and {Stanford Bunny}

        Miss Lena Sjblom

:LER: /LER/

        n.

        1. [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] A light-emitting resistor
        (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was broken.
        See also {SED}.

        2. An incandescent light bulb (the filament emits light because it's
        resistively heated).

:LERP: /lerp/, vi.,n.

        Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for
        the operation. "Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between
        the two endpoints of the line."

:let the smoke out: v.

        To fry hardware (see {fried}). See {magic smoke} for a discussion of
        the underlying mythology.

:letterbomb:

        1. n. A piece of {email} containing {live data} intended to do
        nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It used to
        be possible, for example, to send letterbombs that would lock up
        some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly
        that the user must cycle power (see {cycle}, sense 3) to unwedge
        them. Under Unix, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its
        contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results
        of this could range from silly to tragic; fortunately it has been
        some years since any of the standard Unix/Internet mail software was
        vulnerable to such an attack (though, as the Melissa virus attack
        demonstrated in early 1999, Microsoft systems can have serious
        problems). See also {Trojan horse}; compare {nastygram}.

        2. Loosely, a {mailbomb}.

:lexer: /lek'sr/, n.

        Common hacker shorthand for lexical analyzer, the input-tokenizing
        stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into
        word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style
        compound ops like =-."

:life: n.

        1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first
        introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American, October
        1970); the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers
        on which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate
        the cells by hand. Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination
        with it, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the
        mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT,
        who even implemented life in {TECO}!). When a hacker mentions
        `life', he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine,
        the breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. Many web
        resources are available starting from the Open Directory page of
        Life. The Life Lexicon is a good indicator of what makes the game so
        fascinating.

        A glider, possibly the best known of the quasi-organic phenomena in
        the Game of Life.

        2. The opposite of {Usenet}. As in "{Get a life!}"

:Life is hard: prov.

        [XEROX PARC] This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1)
        "While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though
        I hadn't heard it." (2) "While your suggestion has obvious merit,
        equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously
        considered." The charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle
        but important ambiguity.

:light pipe: n.

        Fiber optic cable. Oppose {copper}.

:lightweight: adj.

        Opposite of {heavyweight}; usually found in combining forms such as
        lightweight process.

:like kicking dead whales down the beach: adj.

        Describes a slow, difficult, and disgusting process. First
        popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty of getting work
        done under one of IBM's mainframe OSes. "Well, you could write a C
        compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the
        beach." See also {fear and loathing}.

:like nailing jelly to a tree: adj.

        Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which
        the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent
        slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the
        `prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given
        graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what
        `prettiest' means algorithmically."

        Hacker use of this term may recall mainstream slang originated early
        in the 20th century by President Theodore Roosevelt. There is a
        legend that, weary of inconclusive talks with Colombia over the
        right to dig a canal through its then-province Panama, he remarked,
        "Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly
        to the wall." Roosevelt's government subsequently encouraged the
        anti-Colombian insurgency that created the nation of Panama.

:line 666:

        [from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notional line of source
        at which a program fails for obscure reasons, implying either that
        somebody is out to get it (when you are the programmer), or that it
        richly deserves to be so gotten (when you are not). "It works when I
        trace through it, but seems to crash on line 666 when I run it."
        "What happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf
        dies on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit hardcoded a buffer
        size."

:line eater, the: n. obs.

        1. [Usenet] A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews
        software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text.
        The bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a
        space or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a mythical
        creature called the line eater, and postings often included a dummy
        line of line eater food. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning
        with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was
        avoided; but if there was a space or tab before it, then the line
        eater would eat the food and the beginning of the text it was
        supposed to be protecting. The practice of sacrificing to the line
        eater continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the
        wall}, and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself was still
        occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways
        as late as 1991.

        2. See {NSA line eater}.

:line noise: n.

        1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in a
        communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection. Line
        noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or crosstalk
        from other circuits, electrical storms, {cosmic rays}, or
        (notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires.

        2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the
        results of line noise in sense 1.

        3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but
        employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1
        or 2. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is
        {TECO}; it is often claimed that "TECO's input syntax is
        indistinguishable from line noise." Other non-{WYSIWYG} editors,
        such as Multics qed and Unix ed, in the hands of a real hacker, also
        qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
        {INTERCAL}.

:linearithmic: adj.

        Of an algorithm, having running time that is O(N log N). Coined as a
        portmanteau of `linear' and `logarithmic' in Algorithms In C by
        Robert Sedgewick (Addison-Wesley 1990, ISBN 0-201-51425-7).

:link farm: n.

        [Unix] A directory tree that contains many links to files in a
        master directory tree of files. Link farms save space when one is
        maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree
        -- for example, when the only difference is architecture-dependent
        object files. "Let's freeze the source and then rebuild the
        FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms may also be used to
        get around restrictions on the number of -I (include-file directory)
        arguments on older C preprocessors. However, they can also get
        completely out of hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of
        {spaghetti code}. See also {farm}.

:link rot: n.

        The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected to
        change or die. Compare {bit rot}.

:link-dead: adj.

        [MUD] The state a player is in when they kill their connection to a
        {MUD} without leaving it properly. The player is then commonly left
        as a statue in the game, and is only removed after a certain period
        of time (an hour on most MUDs). Used on {IRC} as well, although it
        is inappropriate in that context. Compare {netdead}.

:lint:

        [from Unix's lint(1), named for the bits of fluff it supposedly
        picks from programs]

        1. vt. To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and
        portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated
        analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility lint(1) is used. This
        term used to be restricted to use of lint(1) itself, but (judging by
        references on Usenet) it has become a shorthand for any exhaustive
        review process at some non-Unix shops, even in languages other than
        C. Also as v. {delint}.

        2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as in "This draft has too much
        lint".

:Lintel: n.

        The emerging {Linux}/Intel alliance. This term began to be used in
        early 1999 after it became clear that the {Wintel} alliance was
        under increasing strain and Intel started taking stakes in Linux
        companies.

:Linus: /leen'us/, /linus/, /li:nus/

        Linus Torvalds, the author of {Linux}. Nobody in the hacker culture
        has been as readily recognized by first name alone since {ken}.

:Linux: /lee'nuhks/, /linuks/, not, /li:nuhks/, n.

        The free Unix workalike created by Linus Torvalds and friends
        starting about 1991. The pronunciation /li'nuhks/ is preferred
        because the name `Linus' has an /ee/ sound in Swedish (Linus's
        family is part of Finland's 6% ethnic-Swedish minority) and Linus
        considers English short /i/ to be closer to /ee/ than English long
        /i:/. This may be the most remarkable hacker project in history --
        an entire clone of Unix for 386, 486 and Pentium micros, distributed
        for free with sources over the net (ports to Alpha and Sparc and
        many other machines are also in use).

        Linux is what {GNU} aimed to be, and it relies on the GNU toolset.
        But the Free Software Foundation didn't produce the kernel to go
        with that toolset until 1999, which was too late. Other, similar
        efforts like FreeBSD and NetBSD have been technically successful but
        never caught fire the way Linux has; as this is written in 2003,
        Linux has effectively swallowed all proprietary Unixes except
        Solaris and is seriously challenging Microsoft. It has already
        captured 41% of the Internet-server market and over 25% of general
        business servers.

        An earlier version of this entry opined "The secret of Linux's
        success seems to be that Linus worked much harder early on to keep
        the development process open and recruit other hackers, creating a
        snowball effect." Truer than we knew. See {bazaar}.

        (Some people object that the name `Linux' should be used to refer
        only to the kernel, not the entire operating system. This claim is a
        proxy for an underlying territorial dispute; people who insist on
        the term GNU/Linux want the {FSF} to get most of the credit for
        Linux because RMS and friends wrote many of its user-level tools.
        Neither this theory nor the term GNU/Linux has gained more than
        minority acceptance).

:lion food: n.

        [IBM] Middle management or HQ staff (or, by extension,
        administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two lions
        who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but
        agree to meet after 2 months. When they finally meet, one is skinny
        and the other overweight. The thin one says: "How did you manage? I
        ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase me
        -- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to
        eating mice, insects, even grass." The fat one replies: "Well, I hid
        near an IBM office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even
        noticed!"

:Lions Book: n.

        Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6, by John Lions. The two
        parts of this book contained (1) the entire source listing of the
        Unix Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on the source discussing
        the algorithms. These were circulated internally at the University
        of New South Wales beginning 1976--77, and were, for years after,
        the only detailed kernel documentation available to anyone outside
        Bell Labs. Because Western Electric wished to maintain trade secret
        status on the kernel, the Lions Book was only supposed to be
        distributed to affiliates of source licensees. In spite of this, it
        soon spread by {samizdat} to a good many of the early Unix hackers.

        [1996 update: The Lions book lives again! It was put back in print
        as ISBN 1-57398-013-7 from Peer-To-Peer Communications, with
        forewords by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. In a neat bit of
        reflexivity, the page before the contents quotes this entry.]

        [1998 update: John Lions's death was an occasion of general mourning
        in the hacker community.]

:LISP: n.

        [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of
        Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] AI's mother tongue, a language
        based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as
        fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data
        and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s,
        it is actually older than any other {HLL} still in use except
        FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive
        radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in
        detail from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers
        until the early 1980s, LISP has since shared the throne with {C}.
        Its partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful.
        See {languages of choice}.

        All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values;
        this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise
        to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote)
        that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of
        nothing".

        One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example
        that most newer languages, such as {COBOL} and Ada, are full of
        unnecessary {crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already been done
        once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer languages.

        We've got your numbers....

:list-bomb: v.

        To {mailbomb} someone by forging messages causing the victim to
        become a subscriber to many mailing lists. This is a self-defeating
        tactic; it merely forces mailing list servers to require
        confirmation by return message for every subscription.

:lithium lick: n.

        [NeXT] Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten too much attention from
        their esteemed founder are said to have `lithium lick' when they
        begin to show signs of Jobsian fervor and repeat the most recent
        catch phrases in normal conversation -- for example, "It just works,
        right out of the box!"

:little-endian: adj.

        Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or
        32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the
        word is stored `little-end-first'). The {PDP-11} and {VAX} families
        of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot of communications
        and networking hardware are little-endian. See {big-endian},
        {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. The term is sometimes used to
        describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often, bits
        within a byte.

:live: /li:v/, adj.,adv.

        [common] Opposite of `test'. Refers to actual real-world data or a
        program working with it. For example, the response to "I think the
        record deleter is finished" might be "Is it live yet?" or "Have you
        tried it out on live data?" This usage usually carries the
        connotation that live data is more fragile and must not be
        corrupted, or bad things will happen. So a more appropriate response
        might be: "Well, make sure it works perfectly before we throw live
        data at it." The implication here is that record deletion is
        something pretty significant, and a haywire record-deleter running
        amok live would probably cause great harm.

:live data: n.

        1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program
        flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing
        it. One use of such hacks is to break security. For example, some
        smart terminals have commands that allow one to download strings to
        program keys; this can be used to write live data that, when listed
        to the terminal, infects it with a security-breaking {virus} that is
        triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. For
        another, there are some well-known bugs in {vi} that allow certain
        texts to send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are
        simply viewed.

        2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s
        (executable code).

        3. An object, such as a {trampoline}, that is constructed on the fly
        by a program and intended to be executed as code.

:Live Free Or Die!: imp.

        1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that state's
        automobile license plates.

        2. A slogan associated with Unix in the romantic days when Unix
        aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground
        tilting against the windmills of industry. The "free" referred
        specifically to freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and
        crufty misfeatures common on competing operating systems. Armando
        Stettner, one of the early Unix developers, used to give out fake
        license plates bearing this motto under a large Unix, all in New
        Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued
        collector's items. In 1994 {DEC} put an inferior imitation of these
        in circulation with a red corporate logo added. Compaq (half of
        which was once DEC) continued the practice.

        Armando Stettner's original Unix license plate.

:livelock: /li:v'lok/, n.

        A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to
        finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do
        after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue.
        Differs from {deadlock} in that the process is not blocked or
        waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to
        do and can never catch up.

:liveware: /li:v'weir/, n.

        1. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.

        2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my
        salad..."

:lobotomy: n.

        1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to
        have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both
        hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as
        a joke.

        2. The act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order
        to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold
        in lobotomized form -- everything but the brain.

:locals, the: pl.n.

        The users on one's local network (as opposed, say, to people one
        reaches via public Internet connections). The marked thing about
        this usage is how little it has to do with real-space distance. "I
        have to do some tweaking on this mail utility before releasing it to
        the locals."

:locked and loaded: adj.,obs.

        [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and
        prepared for firing] Said of a removable disk volume properly
        prepared for use -- that is, locked into the drive and with the
        heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads are `loaded' whenever
        the power is up, this description is never used of {Winchester}
        drives (which are named after a rifle).

:locked up: adj.

        Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.

:logic bomb: n.

        Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or OS that causes
        it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity
        whenever specified conditions are met. Compare {back door}.

:logical: adj.

        [from the technical term logical device, wherein a physical device
        is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] Having the role of.
        If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain
        post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be
        known as the logical Les Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment
        on the replacement.) Compare {virtual}.

        At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate system
        relative to El Camino Real, in which `logical north' is always
        toward San Francisco and `logical south' is always toward San
        Jose--in spite of the fact that El Camino Real runs physical
        north/south near San Francisco, physical east/west near San Jose,
        and along a curve everywhere in between. (The best rule of thumb
        here is that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical
        north-south.)

        In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco
        restaurant, get onto {El Camino Bignum} going logical north." Using
        the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from worrying
        about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front
        of him. The concept is reinforced by North American highways which
        are almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather
        than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT: Route
        128 (famous for the electronics industry that grew up along it)
        wraps roughly 3 quarters around Boston at a radius of 10 miles,
        terminating near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise
        to describe the two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and
        `counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and "south",
        respectively. A hacker might describe these directions as logical
        north and logical south, to indicate that they are conventional
        directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those
        words.

:loop through: vt.

        To process each element of a list of things. "Hold on, I've got to
        loop through my paper mail." Derives from the computer-language
        notion of an iterative loop; compare cdr down (under {cdr}), which
        is less common among C and Unix programmers. ITS hackers used to say
        IRP over after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler
        (the same IRP op can nowadays be found in Microsoft's assembler).

:loose bytes: n.

        Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or {shim}s many
        compilers insert between members of a record or structure to cope
        with alignment requirements imposed by the machine architecture.

:lord high fixer: n.

        [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high
        executioner'] The person in an organization who knows the most about
        some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.

:lose: vi.

        1. [very common] To fail. A program loses when it encounters an
        exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.

        2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky.

        3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to
        ignorant). See also {deserves to lose}.

        4. n. Refers to something that is {losing}, especially in the
        phrases "That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"

:lose lose: interj.

        A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally
        deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."

:loser: n.

        An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person.
        Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose occasionally.)
        Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. Emphatic
        forms are real loser, total loser, and complete loser (but not
        **moby loser, which would be a contradiction in terms). See {luser}.

:losing: adj.

        Said of anything that is or causes a {lose} or {lossage}. "The
        compiler is losing badly when I try to use templates."

:loss: n.

        Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which something
        is losing. Emphatic forms include moby loss, and total loss,
        complete loss. Common interjections are "What a loss!" and "What a
        moby loss!" Note that moby loss is OK even though **moby loser is
        not used; applied to an abstract noun, moby is simply a magnifier,
        whereas when applied to a person it implies substance and has
        positive connotations. Compare {lossage}.

:lossage: /los'@j/, n.

        [very common] The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a mass or
        collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly
        synonymous. The former is slightly more particular to the speaker's
        present circumstances; the latter implies a continuing {lose} of
        which the speaker is currently a victim. Thus (for example) a
        temporary hardware failure is a loss, but bugs in an important tool
        (like a compiler) are serious lossage.

:lossy: adj.

        [Usenet]

        1. Said of people, this indicates a poor memory, usually short-term.
        This usage is analogical to the same term applied to data
        compression and analysis. "He's very lossy." means that you can't
        rely on him to accurately remember recent experiences or
        conversations, or requests. Not to be confused with a `loser', which
        is a person who is in a continual state of lossiness, as in sense 2
        (see below).

        2. Said of an attitude or a situation, this indicates a general
        downturn in emotions, lack of success in attempted endeavors, etc.
        Eg, "I'm having a lossy day today." means that the speaker has
        `lost' or is `losing' in all of their activities, and that this is
        causing some increase in negative emotions.

:lost in the noise: adj.

        Syn. {lost in the underflow}. This term is from signal processing,
        where signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from
        low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among hackers, it
        is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers, astronomers,
        and statisticians all use it.

:lost in the underflow: adj.

        Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond
        the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to
        floating underflow, a condition that can occur when a floating-point
        arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its
        limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast,
        cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous
        to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights
        alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in
        the underflow." Compare {epsilon}, {epsilon squared}; see also
        {overflow bit}.

:lots of MIPS but no I/O: adj.

        Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't
        seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it
        describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is
        bottlenecked on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000,
        was a notorious example).

:low-bandwidth: adj.

        [from communication theory] Used to indicate a talk that, although
        not {content-free}, was not terribly informative. "That was a
        low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of
        {suit}s!" Compare {zero-content}, {bandwidth}, {math-out}.

:Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: prov.

        "There is always one more bug."

:Lumber Cartel: n.

        A mythical conspiracy accused by {spam}-spewers of funding anti-spam
        activism in order to force the direct-mail promotions industry back
        onto paper. Hackers, predictably, responded by forming a "Lumber
        Cartel" spoofing this paranoid theory; the web page is
        http://come.to/the.lumber.cartel/. Members often include the tag
        TINLC ("There Is No Lumber Cartel") in their postings; see {TINC},
        {backbone cabal} and {NANA} for explanation.

:lunatic fringe: n.

        [IBM] Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions
        of software. Compare {heatseeker}.

:lurker: n.

        One of the `silent majority' in an electronic forum; one who posts
        occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings
        regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used
        reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in the lurkers, the
        hypothetical audience for the group's {flamage}-emitting regulars.
        When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called
        delurking.

        The creator of the popular science-fiction TV series Babylon 5 has
        ties to SF fandom and the hacker culture. In that series, the use of
        the term `lurker' for a homeless or displaced person is a conscious
        reference to the jargon term.

:luser: /loo'zr/, n.

        [common] A {user}; esp. one who is also a {loser}. ({luser} and
        {loser} are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around
        1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at
        MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed
        out some status information, including how many people were already
        using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone
        thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14
        losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the
        users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces
        every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers
        struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the
        others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money
        whether it would say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried the
        compromise "lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines
        supported luser as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in
        mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and
        the term luser is often seen in program comments and on Usenet.
        Compare {mundane}, {muggle}, {newbie}, {chainik}.

  M

   M

   M$

   macdink

   machoflops

   Macintoy

   Macintrash

   macro

   macro-

   macrology

   maggotbox

   magic

   magic cookie

   magic number

   magic smoke

   mail storm

   mailbomb

   mailing list

   main loop

   mainframe

   mainsleaze

   malware

   man page

   management

   mandelbug

   manged

   mangle

   mangled name

   mangler

   manularity

   marching ants

   marbles

   marginal

   marginally

   marketroid

   Mars

   martian

   massage

   math-out

   Matrix

   mav

   maximum Maytag mode

   McQuary limit

   meatspace

   meatware

   meeces

   meg

   mega-

   megapenny

   MEGO

   meltdown, network

   meme

   meme plague

   memetics

   memory farts

   memory leak

   memory smash

   menuitis

   mess-dos

   meta

   meta bit

   metasyntactic variable

   MFTL

   mickey

   mickey mouse program

   micro-

   MicroDroid

   microfortnight

   microLenat

   microReid

   microserf

   Microsloth Windows

   Microsoft

   micros~1

   middle-endian

   middle-out implementation

   milliLampson

   minor detail

   MIPS

   misbug

   misfeature

   missile address

   MiSTing

   miswart

   MMF

   mobo

   moby

   mockingbird

   mod

   mode

   mode bit

   modulo

   mojibake

   molly-guard

   Mongolian Hordes technique

   monkey up

   monkey, scratch

   monstrosity

   monty

   Moof

   Moore's Law

   moria

   MOTAS

   MOTOS

   MOTSS

   mouse ahead

   mouse belt

   mouse droppings

   mouse elbow

   mouse pusher

   mouso

   MS-DOS

   mu

   MUD

   muddie

   mudhead

   muggle

   Multics

   multitask

   mumblage

   mumble

   munch

   munching

   munching squares

   munchkin

   mundane

   mung

   munge

   Murphy's Law

   music

   mutter

:M: pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:M$:

        Common net abbreviation for Microsoft, everybody's least favorite
        monopoly.

:macdink: /mak'dink/, vt.

        [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior]
        To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a
        program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better
        off without them. "When I left at 11PM last night, he was still
        macdinking the slides for his presentation." See also {fritterware},
        {window shopping}.

:machoflops: /mach'ohflops/, n.

        [pun on megaflops, a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point
        Operations Per Second'] Refers to artificially inflated performance
        figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. Real applications
        are lucky to get half the quoted speed. See {Your mileage may vary},
        {benchmark}.

:Macintoy: /mak'intoy/, n.

        The Apple Macintosh, considered as a {toy}. Less pejorative than
        {Macintrash}.

:Macintrash: /mak'intrash`/, n.

        The Apple Macintosh, as described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate
        being kept away from the real computer by the interface. The term
        {maggotbox} has been reported in regular use in the Research
        Triangle area of North Carolina. Compare {Macintoy}. See also {beige
        toaster}, {WIMP environment}, {point-and-drool interface},
        {drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}.

:macro: /mak'roh/, n.

        [techspeak] A name (possibly followed by a formal {arg} list) that
        is equated to a text or symbolic expression to which it is to be
        expanded (possibly with the substitution of actual arguments) by a
        macro expander. This definition can be found in any technical
        dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish
        connotations of the term have changed over time.

        The term macro originated in early assemblers, which encouraged the
        use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device. During
        the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes
        quite as powerful and expensive as {HLL}s, only to fall from favor
        as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler programming
        (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is most often used in
        connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several
        special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility
        (such as TeX or Unix's [nt]roff suite).

        Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective macros is
        now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application
        control language (whether or not the language is actually translated
        by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the keyboard
        macros supported in some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh
        INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).

:macro-: pref.

        Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the mainstream and among other
        technical cultures (for example, medical people) this competes with
        the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to restrict the latter to
        quantification.

:macrology: /makrol'@jee/, n.

        1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large
        system written in {LISP}, {TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler.

        2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in
        sense 1. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike
        archeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike
        construction. See also {boxology}.

:maggotbox: /mag'@tboks/, n.

        See {Macintrash}. This is even more derogatory.

:magic:

        1. adj. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare
        {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any
        sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
        "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This
        routine magically computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three
        instructions."

        2. adj. Characteristic of something that works although no one
        really understands why (this is especially called {black magic}).

        3. n. [Stanford] A feature not generally publicized that allows
        something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that
        category but now unveiled.

        4. n. The ultimate goal of all engineering & development, elegance
        in the extreme; from the first corollary to Clarke's Third Law: "Any
        technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced".

        Parodies playing on these senses of the term abound; some have made
        their way into serious documentation, as when a MAGIC directive was
        described in the Control Card Reference for GCOS c.1978. For more
        about hackish `magic', see Appendix A. Compare {black magic},
        {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}.

:magic cookie: n.

        [Unix; common]

        1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the
        receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque
        identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data
        encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g.,
        on non-Unix OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result
        of ftell(3) may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can
        be passed to fseek(3), but not operated on in any meaningful way.
        The phrase it hands you a magic cookie means it returns a result
        whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the
        same or some other program later.

        2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse
        video or underlining) or performing other control functions (see
        also {cookie}). Some older terminals would leave a blank on the
        screen corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also
        called a {glitch} (or occasionally a turd; compare {mouse
        droppings}). See also {cookie}.

:magic number: n.

        [Unix/C; common]

        1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is
        significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted
        inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}), rather than expanded in by a
        symbol set by a commented #define. Magic numbers in this sense are
        bad style.

        2. A number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm
        in some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers
        used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear
        congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense
        actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense

        3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to
        indicate its type to a utility. Under Unix, the system and various
        applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between
        types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a
        time, these magic numbers were {PDP-11} branch instructions that
        skipped over header data to the start of executable code; 0407, for
        example, was octal for `branch 16 bytes relative'. Many other kinds
        of files now have magic numbers somewhere; some magic numbers are,
        in fact, strings, like the !<arch> at the beginning of a Unix
        archive file or the %! leading PostScript files. Nowadays only a
        {wizard} knows the spells to create magic numbers. How do you choose
        a fresh magic number of your own? Simple -- you pick one at random.
        See? It's magic!

        4. An input that leads to a computational boundary condition, where
        algorithm behavior becomes discontinuous. Numeric overflows
        (particularly with signed data types) and run-time errors (divide by
        zero, stack overflows) are indications of magic numbers. The Y2K
        scare was probably the most notorious magic number non-incident.

        The magic number, on the other hand, is 72. See The magical number
        seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing
        information by George Miller, in the Psychological Review 63:81-97
        (1956). This classic paper established the number of distinct items
        (such as numeric digits) that humans can hold in short-term memory.
        Among other things, this strongly influenced the interface design of
        the phone system.

:magic smoke: n.

        A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function
        (also called blue smoke; this is similar to the archaic phlogiston
        hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what
        happens when a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it
        doesn't work any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.

        Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while
        hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing
        EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened.
        One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that after I
        realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz
        windows on the tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing
        white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it,
        filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's
        still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't
        get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's Law}.

:mail storm: n.

        [from {broadcast storm}, influenced by maelstrom] What often happens
        when a machine with an Internet connection and active users
        re-connects after extended downtime -- a flood of incoming mail that
        brings the machine to its knees. See also {hairball}.

:mailbomb:

        (also mail bomb) [Usenet]

        1. v. To send, or urge others to send, massive amounts of {email} to
        a single system or person, esp. with intent to crash or {spam} the
        recipient's system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a perceived
        serious offense. Mailbombing is itself widely regarded as a serious
        offense -- it can disrupt email traffic or other facilities for
        innocent users on the victim's system, and in extreme cases, even at
        upstream sites.

        2. n. An automatic procedure with a similar effect.

        3. n. The mail sent. Compare {letterbomb}, {nastygram}, {BLOB}
        (sense 2), {list-bomb}.

:mailing list: n.

        (often shortened in context to list)

        1. An {email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word
        is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses.
        Some mailing lists are simple reflectors, redirecting mail sent to
        them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or
        programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by
        humans are said to be moderated.

        2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an
        address.

        Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
        along with {Usenet}. They predate Usenet, having originated with the
        first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for private
        information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or
        inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though some of these maintain
        almost purely technical content (such as the Internet Engineering
        Task Force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list
        maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and many
        are purely social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was
        the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny,
        lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and
        most interesting people in hackerdom.

        Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a
        significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,
        at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail
        software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working
        groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project
        without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in
        this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing list
        (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of
        Steele-1983.

:main loop: n.

        The top-level control flow construct in an input- or event-driven
        program, the one which receives and acts or dispatches on the
        program's input. See also {driver}.

:mainframe: n.

        Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central
        processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling {Stone Age} batch
        machine. After the emergence of smaller minicomputer designs in the
        early 1970s, the traditional {big iron} machines were described as
        `mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term
        carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than
        interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing
        operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of
        machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s
        surviving from computing's {Stone Age}.

        It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that
        the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside
        of the tiny market for {number-crunching} supercomputers having been
        swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost
        personal computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers
        among traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out.
        The biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent
        itself as a huge systems-consulting house. (See {dinosaurs mating}
        and {killer micro}).

        However, in yet another instance of the {cycle of reincarnation},
        the port of Linux to the IBM S/390 architecture in 1999 -- assisted
        by IBM -- produced a resurgence of interest in mainframe computing
        as a way of providing huge quantities of easily maintainable,
        reliable virtual Linux servers, saving IBM's mainframe division from
        almost certain extinction.

:mainsleaze: n.

        1. Spam emitted by a reputable, mainstream company (as opposed to
        fly-by-night Viagra oeddlers and the like). Sometime this happens in
        honest ignorance, but the reputation danage can take years to live
        down.

        2. Occasionally used for a big-time spammer, with its own {fat
        pipe}, their own mailservers, and a {pink contract}. Almost
        impossible to get shut down.

:malware: n.

        [Common] Malicious software. Software intended to cause consequences
        the unwitting user would not choose; especially used of {virus} or
        {Trojan horse} software.

:man page: n.

        A page from the Unix Programmer's Manual, documenting one of Unix's
        many commands, system calls, library subroutines, device driver
        interfaces, file formats, games, macro packages, or maintenance
        utilities. By extension, the term "man page" may be used to refer to
        documentation of any kind, under any system, though it is most
        likely to be confined to short on-line references.

        As mentioned in Chapter 11, Other Lexicon Conventions, there is a
        standard syntax for referring to man page entries: the phrase
        "foo(n)" refers to the page for "foo" in chapter n of the manual,
        where chapter 1 is user commands, chapter 2 is system calls, etc.

        The man page format is beloved, or berated, for having the same sort
        of pithy utility as the rest of Unix. Man pages tend to be written
        as very compact, concise descriptions which are complete but not
        forgiving of the lazy or careless reader. Their stylized format does
        a good job of summarizing the essentials: invocation syntax,
        options, basic functionality. While such a concise reference is
        perfect for the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well tools which are favored
        by the Unix philosophy, it admittedly breaks down when applied to a
        command which is itself a major subsystem.

:management: n.

        1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance
        from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see
        also {suit}). Spoken derisively, as in "Management decided that
        ...".

        2. Mythically, a vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's
        minor irritations. Hackers' satirical public notices are often
        signed `The Mgt'; this derives from the Illuminatus novels (see the
        Bibliography in Appendix C).

:mandelbug: /man'delbuhg/, n.

        [from the Mandelbrot set] A bug whose underlying causes are so
        complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even
        non-deterministic. This term implies that the speaker thinks it is a
        {Bohr bug}, rather than a {heisenbug}. See also {schroedinbug}.

:manged: /mahnjd/, n.

        [probably from the French `manger' or Italian `mangiare', to eat;
        perhaps influenced by English `mange', `mangy'] adj. Refers to
        anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair. "The
        disk was manged after the electrical storm." Compare {mung}.

:mangle: vt.

        1. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent in its
        connotations; something that is mangled has been irreversibly and
        totally trashed.

        2. To produce the {mangled name} corresponding to a C++ declaration.

:mangled name: n.

        A name, appearing in a C++ object file, that is a coded
        representation of the object declaration as it appears in the
        source. Mangled names are used because C++ allows multiple objects
        to have the same name, as long as they are distinguishable in some
        other way, such as by having different parameter types. Thus, the
        internal name must have that additional information embedded in it,
        using the limited character set allowed by most linkers. For
        instance, one popular compiler encodes the standard library function
        declaration "memchr(const void*,int,unsigned int)" as
        "@memchr$qpxviui".

:mangler: n.

        [DEC] A manager. Compare {management}. Note that {system mangler} is
        somewhat different in connotation.

:manularity: /man`yoola'ritee/, n.

        [prob. fr. techspeak manual + granularity] A notional measure of the
        manual labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort
        that automation is supposed to eliminate. "Composing English on
        paper has much higher manularity than using a text editor,
        especially in the revising stage." Hackers tend to consider
        manularity a symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker
        confronted with an apparent requirement to do a computing task {by
        hand} will inevitably seize the opportunity to build another tool
        (see {toolsmith}).

:marching ants:

        The animated dotted-line marquee that indicates a rectangle or item
        select in Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP, and other similar image-editing
        programs.

:marbles: pl.n.

        [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] The minimum needed to
        build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions.
        After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has
        enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to allow a
        rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "This
        compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile {hello world}."

:marginal: adj.

        [common]

        1. [techspeak] An extremely small change. "A marginal increase in
        {core} can decrease {GC} time drastically." In everyday terms, this
        means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a
        spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it.

        2. Of little merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal
        to me."

        3. Of extremely small probability of {win}ning. "The power supply
        was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it fried."

:marginally: adv.

        Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small
        Eating Place." See {epsilon}.

:marketroid: /mar'k@troyd/, n.

        alt.: marketing slime, marketeer, marketing droid, marketdroid. A
        member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises
        users that the next version of a product will have features that are
        not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to
        implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or
        one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient,
        buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare {droid}.

:Mars: n.

        A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong.
        Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible computers
        built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the multi-processor
        SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25, and the never-built
        superprocessor SC-40. These machines were marvels of engineering
        design; although not much slower than the unique {Foonly} F-1, they
        were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much slower
        {DEC} KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also
        completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries
        (including the operating system) with no modifications at about 2--3
        times faster than a KL10.

        When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983 (their followup to
        the PDP-10), Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling
        their machine into shops with a lot of software investment in
        PDP-10s, and in fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a
        great deal of excitement in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on
        the Mars by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall.
        Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were much better
        at designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; the
        company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism
        into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as
        delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product
        ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the KL10 and
        {VAX} 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems
        and other hungry startups building workstations with power
        comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC
        shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers
        had already made the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10,
        usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most of the Mars computers built
        ended up being purchased by CompuServe.

        This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for
        hackers: if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to learn
        Real World moves.

:martian: n.

        A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the test
        loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back
        labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth.
        "The domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that
        gateway have a martian filter?" Compare {Christmas tree packet},
        {Godzillagram}.

:massage: vt.

        [common] Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of a
        data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do not
        lose information. Connotes less pain than {munch} or {crunch}. "He
        wrote a program that massages X bitmap files into GIF format."
        Compare {slurp}.

:math-out: n.

        [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] A paper or
        presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation
        as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for concealing the
        fact that it is actually {content-free}. See also {numbers}, {social
        science number}.

        A {math-out} approach to history.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-19. The previous one
        is the frontispiece.)

:Matrix: n.

        [FidoNet]

        1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call {FidoNet}.

        2. Fanciful term for a {cyberspace} expected to emerge from current
        networking experiments (see {the network}). The name of the rather
        good 1999 {cypherpunk} movie The Matrix played on this sense, which
        however had been established for years before.

        3. The totality of present-day computer networks (popularized in
        this sense by John Quarterman; rare outside academic literature).

:mav: n.

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

:maximum Maytag mode: n.

        What a {washing machine} or, by extension, any disk drive is in when
        it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with
        an unbalanced load. If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to
        disks becoming {walking drives}. In 1999 it's been some years since
        hard disks were large enough to do this, but the same phenomenon has
        recently been reported with 24X CD-ROM drives.

:McQuary limit:

        [from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see {warlording}.]
        4 lines of at most 80 characters each, sometimes still cited on
        Usenet as the maximum acceptable size of a {sig block}. Before the
        great bandwidth explosion of the early 1990s, long sigs actually
        cost people running Usenet servers significant amounts of money.
        Nowadays social pressure against long sigs is intended to avoid
        waste of human attention rather than machine bandwidth. Accordingly,
        the McQuary limit should be considered a rule of thumb rather than a
        hard limit; it's best to avoid sigs that are large, repetitive, and
        distracting. See also {warlording}.

:meatspace: /meet'spays/, n.

        The physical world, where the meat lives -- as opposed to
        {cyberspace}. Hackers are actually more willing to use this term
        than `cyberspace', because it's not speculative -- we already have a
        running meatspace implementation (the universe). Compare {RL}.

:meatware: n.

        Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.

:meeces: /mees'@z/, n.

        [TMRC] Occasional furry visitors who are not {urchin}s. [That is,
        mice. This may no longer be in live use; it clearly derives from the
        refrain of the early-1960s cartoon character Mr. Jinks: "I hate
        meeces to pieces!" -- ESR]

:meg: /meg/, n.

        See {quantifiers}.

:mega-: /me'g@/, pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:megapenny: /meg'@pen`ee/, n.

        $10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing
        computer cost and performance figures.

:MEGO: /me'goh/, /meegoh/

        ["My Eyes Glaze Over", often "Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over",
        attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also MEGO factor.

        1. n. A {handwave} intended to confuse the listener and hopefully
        induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not
        understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior
        management by engineers and contains a high proportion of {TLA}s.

        2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics.

        3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behavior that causes the
        eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be
        triggered by the mere threat of excessive technical detail as
        effectively as by an actual excess of it.

:meltdown, network: n.

        See {network meltdown}.

:meme: /meem/, n.

        [coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] An idea
        considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes
        parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used
        esp. in the phrase meme complex denoting a group of mutually
        supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a
        religion. This lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker
        subculture' meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme.
        However, meme is often misused to mean meme complex. Use of the term
        connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other
        tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection
        of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection
        of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably
        obvious reasons.

:meme plague: n.

        The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, esp. one that
        parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it.
        Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered
        to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact
        that `joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of
        millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of
        exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir
        populations.

:memetics: /memet'iks/, n.

        [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of early 2003, this is still an
        extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps
        towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson
        and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among
        hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new
        information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.

:memory farts: n.

        The flatulent sounds that some DOS box BIOSes (most notably AMI's)
        make when checking memory on bootup.

:memory leak: n.

        An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes
        it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse
        due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called {core leak}.
        These problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size
        address spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were commonly
        written to root them out. With the advent of virtual memory, it is
        unfortunately easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory
        (although when you run out of memory on a VM machine, it means
        you've got a real leak!). See {aliasing bug}, {fandango on core},
        {smash the stack}, {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky
        heap}, {leak}.

:memory smash: n.

        [XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what
        you think it does. This occasionally reduces your memory to a rubble
        of bits. Note that this is subtly different from (and more general
        than) related terms such as a {memory leak} or {fandango on core}
        because it doesn't imply an allocation error or overrun condition.

:menuitis: /men`yooi:'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: /mesdos/, n.

        [semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often
        followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See {MS-DOS}. Most
        hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathed MS-DOS for its
        single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty
        primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness and Microsoftness (see
        {fear and loathing}). Also mess-loss, messy-dos, mess-dog,
        mess-dross, mush-dos, and various combinations thereof. In Ireland
        and the U.K. it is even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of
        toilet cleanser.

:meta: /me't@/, /mayt@/, /meet@/, pref.

        [from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A
        metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe
        syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language.
        This is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on
        deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See {hacker humor}.

:meta bit: n.

        The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values
        128--255. Also called {high bit}, {alt bit}. Some terminals and
        consoles (see {space-cadet keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others
        (including, mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have
        an ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.

        Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of
        8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things
        were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit
        bytes. The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see {space-cadet keyboard})
        generated hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.

:metasyntactic variable: n.

        A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing
        is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under
        discussion. The word {foo} is the {canonical} example. To avoid
        confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other
        words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a
        common convention is that any filename beginning with a
        metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be deleted
        at any time.

        Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables
        in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are
        variables whose values are often variables (as in usages like "the
        value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar"). However, it has
        been plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term
        "metasyntactic variable" is that it sounds good. To some extent, the
        list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural
        signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of
        variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common
        signatures:

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

        Of all these, only foo and bar are universal (and {baz} nearly so).
        The compounds {foobar} and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency.
        Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf} and
        {mumble}, for example. See also {Commonwealth Hackish} for
        discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great
        Britain and the Commonwealth.

:MFTL: /MFTL/

        [abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language']

        1. adj. Describes a talk on a programming language design that is
        heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about
        semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content
        (see {content-free}). More broadly applied to talks -- even when the
        topic is not a programming language -- in which the subject matter
        is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice
        of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk".

        2. n. Describes a language about which the developers are passionate
        (often to the point of proselytic zeal) but no one else cares about.
        Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He
        cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL."

        The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
        usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away
        from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it
        in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is
        "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?" On the
        other hand, a (compiled) language that cannot even be used to write
        its own compiler is beneath contempt. (The qualification has become
        necessary because of the increasing popularity of interpreted
        languages like {Perl} and {Python}.) See {break-even point}. (On a
        related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the generality
        and utility of a language and the operating system under which it is
        compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program acceptable as input to
        the FORTRAN compiler?" In other words, can you write programs that
        write programs? (See {toolsmith}.) Alarming numbers of (language,
        OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is FORTRAN;
        aficionados are quick to point out that {Unix} (even using FORTRAN)
        passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed is only
        surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have worked
        only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file
        types".)

:mickey: n.

        The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that
        the disney will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics
        performance.

:mickey mouse program: n.

        North American equivalent of a {noddy} (that is, trivial) program.
        Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream
        slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial
        programs can be very useful.

:micro-: pref.

        1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix.

        2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by 10^-6 (see
        {quantifiers}). Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but
        hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than is
        countenanced in standard English. It is recorded, for example, that
        one CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his
        lectures as a microcentury -- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also
        {attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, and especially {microfortnight}).

        3. Personal or human-scale -- that is, capable of being maintained
        or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense is
        generalized from microcomputer, and is esp. used in contrast with
        macro- (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning `large').

        4. Local as opposed to global (or {macro-}). Thus a hacker might say
        that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a
        microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better
        solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or
        (best of all) telecommuting.

:MicroDroid: n.

        [Usenet] A Microsoft employee, esp. one who posts to various
        operating-system advocacy newsgroups. MicroDroids post follow-ups to
        any messages critical of Microsoft's operating systems, and often
        end up sounding like visiting fundamentalist missionaries. See also
        {astroturfing}; compare {microserf}.

:microfortnight: n.

        1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time in the
        Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec. (A
        furlong is 1/8th of a mile; a firkin is 9 imperial gallons; the mass
        unit of the system is taken to be a firkin of water). The VMS
        operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set
        with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the
        time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date
        and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus.
        This time is specified in microfortnights!

        Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and
        {nanofortnight} have also been reported.

:microLenat: /mi:`krohlen'@t/, n.

        The unit of {bogosity}. Abbreviated L or mL in ASCII Consensus is
        that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. The
        microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was promulgated
        as an attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a
        {tenured graduate student} at CMU. Doug had failed the student on an
        important exam because the student gave only "AI is bogus" as his
        answer to the questions. The slur is generally considered unmerited,
        but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends
        argue that of course a microLenat is bogus, since it is only one
        millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be
        redesignated after the grad student, as the microReid.

:microReid: /mi:'krohreed/, n.

        See {microLenat}.

:microserf: /mi:kros@rf/

        [popularized, though not originated, by Douglas Coupland's book
        Microserfs] A programmer at {Microsoft}, especially a low-level
        coder with little chance of fame or fortune. Compare {MicroDroid}.

:Microsloth Windows: /mi:'krohsloth` windohz/, n.

        (Variants combine {Microshift, Macroshaft, Microsuck} with {Windoze,
        WinDOS}. Hackerism(s) for `Microsoft Windows'. A thirty-two bit
        extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit
        operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor
        which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of
        competition. Also just called Windoze, with the implication that you
        can fall asleep waiting for it to do anything; the latter term is
        extremely common on Usenet. See {Black Screen of Death} and {Blue
        Screen of Death}; compare {X}, {sun-stools}.

:Microsoft:

        The new {Evil Empire} (the old one was {IBM}). The basic complaints
        are, as formerly with IBM, that (a) their system designs are
        horrible botches, (b) we can't get {source} to fix them, and (c)
        they throw their weight around a lot. See also {Halloween
        Documents}.

:micros~1:

        An abbreviation of the full name {Microsoft} resembling the rather
        {bogus} way Windows 9x's VFAT filesystem truncates long file names
        to fit in the MS-DOS 8+3 scheme (the real filename is stored
        elsewhere). If other files start with the same prefix, they'll be
        called micros~2 and so on, causing lots of problems with backups and
        other routine system-administration problems. During the US
        Antitrust trial against Microsoft the names Micros~1 and Micros~2
        were suggested for the two companies that would exist after a
        break-up.

:middle-endian: adj.

        Not {big-endian} or {little-endian}. Used of perverse byte orders
        such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal
        formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See
        {NUXI problem}. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the
        American mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write
        little-endian dd/mm/yy, and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for
        Western dates).

:middle-out implementation:

        See {bottom-up implementation}.

:milliLampson: /mil'@lamp`sn/, n.

        A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200
        milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and
        systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A
        few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the
        (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate
        ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer
        architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the {PDP-11}) is said, with
        some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he
        is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries
        to keep up with his speeding brain.

:minor detail:

        Often used in an ironic sense about brokenness or problems that
        while apparently major, are in principle solvable. "It works -- the
        fact that it crashes the system right after is a minor detail."
        Compare {SMOP}.

:MIPS: /mips/, n.

        [abbreviation]

        1. A measure of computing speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per
        Second' (that's 10^6 per second, not 2^20!); often rendered by
        hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in other
        unflattering ways, such as `Meaningless Information Provided by
        Salesmen'. This joke expresses an attitude nearly universal among
        hackers about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said attitude
        being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and
        {marketroid}s (see also {BogoMIPS}). The singular is sometimes `1
        MIP' even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also
        {KIPS} and {GIPS}.

        2. Computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as
        sources of {computron}s. "This is just a workstation; the heavy MIPS
        are hidden in the basement."

        3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company, later
        acquired by SGI.

        4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second' (a joke, prob.:
        from sense 1).

:misbug: /misbuhg/, n.

        [MIT; rare (like its referent)] An unintended property of a program
        that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a {bug}
        but turns out to be a {feature}. Compare {green lightning}. See
        {miswart}.

:misfeature: /misfee'chr/, /misfee`chr/, n.

        [common] A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because
        it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it
        results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a
        misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect;
        the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned,
        but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately
        predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at
        all). A misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to
        resolve, because fixing it usually involves a substantial
        philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.

        Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because
        the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of
        nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because
        trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly
        only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it is kind
        of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but
        the original implementors wanted to save directory space and we're
        stuck with it for now."

:missile address: n.

        See {ICBM address}.

:MiSTing:

        [blogosphere] A variant of {fisking} patterned on the protocol of
        Mystery Science Theater 3000, In a MiSTing, the satire is spoken
        through characters purporting to be the MST3K robots or other
        suitably bizarre characters, such as the Roman emperors Augustus and
        Caligula.

:miswart: /miswort/, n.

        [from {wart} by analogy with {misbug}] A {feature} that
        superficially appears to be a {wart} but has been determined to be
        the {Right Thing}. For example, in some versions of the {EMACS} text
        editor, the `transpose characters' command exchanges the character
        under the cursor with the one before it on the screen, except when
        the cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters
        before the cursor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps
        surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been found through
        extensive experimentation to be what most users want. This feature
        is a miswart.

:MMF: //

        [Usenet; common] Abbreviation: "Make Money Fast". Refers to any kind
        of scheme which promises participants large profits with little or
        no risk or effort. Typically, it is a some kind of multi-level
        marketing operation which involves recruiting more members, or an
        illegal pyramid scam. The term is also used to refer to any kind of
        spam which promotes this. For more information, see the Make Money
        Fast Myth Page.

:mobo: /moh'bo/

        Written and (rarely) spoken contraction of "motherboard"

:moby: /moh'bee/

        [MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago.
        Derived from Melville's Moby Dick (some say from `Moby Pickle'). Now
        common.]

        1. adj. Large, immense, complex, impressive. "A Saturn V rocket is a
        truly moby frob." "Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the
        Harvard-Yale game." (See Appendix A for discussion.)

        2. n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see below). For a
        680[234]0 or {VAX} or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is
        4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes).

        3. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually
        used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent
        hacker. "Greetings, moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for the
        Mac going?"

        4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in moby sixes, moby
        ones, etc. Compare this with {bignum} (sense 3): double sixes are
        both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use
        of moby to describe double ones is sarcastic). Standard emphatic
        forms: Moby foo, moby win, moby loss. Foby moo: a spoonerism due to
        Richard Greenblatt.

        5. The largest available unit of something which is available in
        discrete increments. Thus, ordering a "moby Coke" at the local
        fast-food joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it's an
        explicit request for the largest size they sell.

        This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory added to
        the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered unimaginably huge
        when it was installed in the 1960s (at a time when a more typical
        memory size for a timesharing system was 72 kilobytes). Thus, a moby
        is classically 256K 36-bit words, the size of a PDP-6 or PDP-10
        moby. Back when address registers were narrow the term was more
        generally useful, because when a computer had virtual memory
        mapping, it might actually have more physical memory attached to it
        than any one program could access directly. One could then say "This
        computer has 6 mobies" meaning that the ratio of physical memory to
        address space is 6, without having to say specifically how much
        memory there actually is. That in turn implied that the computer
        could timeshare six `full-sized' programs without having to swap
        programs between memory and disk.

        Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces
        are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto a
        machine, so most systems have much less than one theoretical
        `native' moby of {core}. Also, more modern memory-management
        techniques (esp. paging) make the `moby count' less significant.
        However, there is one series of widely-used chips for which the term
        could stand to be revived -- the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their
        incredibly {brain-damaged} segmented-memory designs. On these, a
        moby would be the 1-megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair
        (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit
        bytes).

:mockingbird: n.

        Software that intercepts communications (especially login
        transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like
        responses to the users while saving their responses (especially
        account IDs and passwords). A special case of {Trojan horse}.

:mod: vt.,n.

        [very common]

        1. Short for `modify' or `modification'. Very commonly used -- in
        fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal.
        The plural `mods' is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor
        design changes in hardware or software, most esp. with respect to
        {patch} sets or a {diff}. See also {case mod}.

        2. Short for {modulo} but used only for its techspeak sense.

:mode: n.

        [common] A general state, usually used with an adjective describing
        the state. Use of the word `mode' rather than `state' implies that
        the state is extended over time, and probably also that some
        activity characteristic of that state is being carried out. "No time
        to hack; I'm in thesis mode." In its jargon sense, `mode' is most
        often attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to
        programs and inanimate objects. In particular, see {hack mode}, {day
        mode}, {night mode}, {demo mode}, {fireworks mode}, and {yoyo mode};
        also {talk mode}.

        One also often hears the verbs enable and disable used in connection
        with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying "I'm
        going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode now". One might
        also hear a request to "disable flame mode, please".

        In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that
        certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain
        functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a
        document in the Unix editor vi, one must type the "i" key, which
        invokes the "Insert" command. The effect of this command is to put
        vi into "insert mode", in which typing the "i" key has a quite
        different effect (to wit, it inserts an "i" into the document). One
        must then hit another special key, "ESC", in order to leave "insert
        mode". Nowadays, modeful interfaces are generally considered
        {losing} but survive in quite a few widely used tools built in less
        enlightened times.

:mode bit: n.

        [common] A {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects between two
        (usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are
        different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are mainly written
        during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly read, and
        seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic
        example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status
        Word of the IBM 360.

:modulo: /mod'yuloh/, prep.

        Except for. An overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one
        can consider saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 = 22 mod
        9). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that {GC} bug." "I
        feel fine today modulo a slight headache."

:mojibake: n., /mo'jeebake/

        Japanese for "ghost characters", the garbage that comes out when one
        tries to display international character sets through software not
        configured for them. There is a page on the topic at
        http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/mojibake/.

:molly-guard: /mol'eegard/, n.

        [University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some {Big
        Red Switch} by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the
        plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a
        programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one
        day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk
        drives and networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you'll see
        the much less interesting description "guarded button".

:Mongolian Hordes technique: n.

        [poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression Mongolian
        clusterfuck for a public orgy] Development by {gang bang}. Implies
        that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a
        job better performed by a few skilled ones (but see {bazaar}). Also
        called Chinese Army technique; see also {Brooks's Law}.

:monkey up: vt.

        To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a
        one-shot job. Connotes an extremely {crufty} and consciously
        temporary solution. Compare {hack up}, {kluge up}, {cruft together}.

:monkey, scratch: n.

        See {scratch monkey}.

:monstrosity:

        1. n. A ridiculously {elephantine} program or system, esp. one that
        is buggy or only marginally functional.

        2. adj. The quality of being monstrous (see the section called
        "Overgeneralization" in the discussion of jargonification). See also
        {baroque}.

:monty: /mon'tee/, n.

        1. [US Geological Survey] A program with a ludicrously complex user
        interface written to perform extremely trivial tasks. An example
        would be a menu-driven, button clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows
        program for listing directories. The original monty was an infamous
        weather-reporting program, Monty the Amazing Weather Man, written at
        the USGS. Monty had a widget-packed X-window interface with over 200
        buttons; and all monty actually did was files off the network.

        2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as Monty or as the Full
        Monty] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or
        compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with a
        normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM. Generally
        used of a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean fully populated with
        memory, disk-space or some other desirable resource. See the World
        Wide Words article "The Full Monty" for discussion of the rather
        complex etymology that may lie behind this phrase. Compare American
        {moby}.

:Moof: /moof/

        [Macintosh users]

        1. n. The call of a semi-legendary creature, properly called the
        {dogcow}. (Some previous versions of this entry claimed,
        incorrectly, that Moof was the name of the creature.)

        2. adj. Used to flag software that's a hack, something untested and
        on the edge. On one Apple CD-ROM, certain folders such as "Tools &
        Apps (Moof!)" and "Development Platforms (Moof!)", are so marked to
        indicate that they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned
        by the powers that be. When you open these folders you cross the
        boundary into hackerland.

        3. v. On the Microsoft Network, the term `moof' has gained
        popularity as a verb meaning `to be suddenly disconnected by the
        system'. One might say "I got moofed".

:Moore's Law: /morz law/, prov.

        Any one of several similar folk theorems that fit computing capacity
        or cost to a 2^t exponential curve, with doubling time close to a
        year. The most common fits component density to such a curve
        (previous versions of this entry gave that form). Another variant
        asserts that the dollar cost of constant computing power decreases
        on the same curve. The original Moore's Law, first uttered in 1965
        by semiconductor engineer Gordon Moore (who co-founded Intel four
        years later), spoke of the number of components on the lowest-cost
        silicon integrated circuits -- but Moore's own formulation varied
        somewhat over the years, and reconstructing the meaning of the
        terminology he used in the original turns out to be fraught with
        difficulties. Further variants were spawned by Intel's PR department
        and various journalists.

        It has been shown that none of the variants of Moore's Law actually
        fit the data very well (the price curves within DRAM generations
        perhaps come closest). Nevertheless, Moore's Law is constantly
        invoked to set up expectations about the next generation of
        computing technology. See also {Parkinson's Law of Data} and
        {Gates's Law}.

:moria: /mor'ee@/, n.

        Like {nethack} and {rogue}, one of the large PD
        Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide
        range of machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's
        Mines of Moria; compare {elder days}, {elvish}. The game is
        extremely addictive and a major consumer of time better used for
        hacking. See also {nethack}, {rogue}, {Angband}.

:MOTAS: /mohtahz/, n.

        [Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate Sex, after {MOTOS} and {MOTSS}] A
        potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See also {SO}.

:MOTOS: /mohtohs/, n.

        [acronym from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet: Member Of The
        Opposite Sex] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See
        {MOTAS}, {MOTSS}, {SO}. Less common than MOTSS or {MOTAS}, which has
        largely displaced it.

:MOTSS: /mots/, /MOTSS/, n.

        [from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The Same Sex,
        esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. The gay-issues
        newsgroup on Usenet is called soc.motss. See {MOTOS} and {MOTAS},
        which derive from it. See also {SO}.

:mouse ahead: vi.

        Point-and-click analog of type ahead. To manipulate a computer's
        pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage, but not
        necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before a computer
        program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation of the
        program accepting the input. Handling this properly is rare, but it
        can help make a {WIMP environment} much more usable, assuming the
        users are familiar with the behavior of the user interface.

:mouse belt: n.

        See {rat belt}.

:mouse droppings: n.

        [MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when
        the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the
        screen, producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left
        droppings behind. The major causes for this problem are programs
        that write to the screen memory corresponding to the mouse pointer's
        current location without hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse
        drivers that do not quite support the graphics mode in use.

:mouse elbow: n.

        A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of
        a {WIMP environment}. Similarly, mouse shoulder; GLS reports that he
        used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.

:mouse pusher:

        [common] A person that prefers a mouse over a keyboard; originally
        used for Macintosh fans. The derogatory implication is that the
        person has nothing but the most superficial knowledge of the
        software he/she is employing, and is incapable of using or
        appreciating the full glory of the command line.

:mouso: /mow'soh/, n.

        [by analogy with `typo'] An error in mouse usage resulting in an
        inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen. Compare
        {thinko}, {braino}.

:MS-DOS: /MSdos/, n.

        [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A {clone} of {CP/M} for the 8088
        crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle
        Computer Products, who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty
        Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever since.
        Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have something to demo for IBM
        on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including
        vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O
        redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft's 2.0 and
        subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible
        versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never
        agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch
        or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now
        the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS,
        which annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated
        operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was
        attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the 360). The name
        further annoys those who know what the term {operating system} does
        (or ought to) connote; DOS is more properly a set of relatively
        simple interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS like
        "dose", as in "I don't work on dose, man!", or to compare it to a
        dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation
        among hackers exhorts: "MS-DOS: Just say No!"). See {mess-dos}.

:mu: /moo/

        The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped
        beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have
        never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies
        that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse
        because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her.
        According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct
        answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your
        question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect
        assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies
        in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm.
        The word `mu' is actually from Chinese, meaning `nothing'; it is
        used in mainstream Japanese in that sense. In Chinese it can also
        mean "have not" (as in "I have not done it"), or "lack of", which
        may or may not be a definite, complete 'nothing'). Native speakers
        of Japanese do not recognize the Discordian question-denying use,
        which almost certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer
        in the following well-known Rinzai Zen {koan}:

          A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu
          retorted, "Mu!"

        See also {has the X nature}, Some AI Koans, and Douglas Hofstadter's
        Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (pointer in the
        Bibliography in Appendix C.

:MUD: /muhd/, n.

        [acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt.: Multi-User Dimension]

        1. A class of {virtual reality} experiments accessible via the
        Internet. These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have
        multiple `locations' like an adventure game, and may include combat,
        traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability
        for characters to build more structure onto the database that
        represents the existing world.

        2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often lowercased and/or
        verbed; thus, one may speak of going mudding, etc.

        Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU-
        form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the
        University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of that
        game still exist today and are sometimes generically called
        BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by
        earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name MUD was trademarked
        to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto:
        "You haven't lived 'til you've died on MUD!"); however, this is
        false -- Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD' in the public domain
        in 1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark
        claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the
        myth.

        Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the
        MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD).
        Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social
        interaction. Because these had an image as `research' they often
        survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together
        with the fact that Usenet feeds were often spotty and difficult to
        get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish social
        interaction there.

        AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and
        quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large
        hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom
        (some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early
        1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to
        emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative
        world-building as opposed to combat and competition (in writing,
        these social MUDs are sometimes referred to as `MU*', with `MUD'
        implicitly reserved for the more game-oriented ones). By 1991, over
        50% of MUD sites were of a third major variety, LPMUD, which
        synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems
        with the extensibility of TinyMud. In 1996 the cutting edge of the
        technology is Pavel Curtis's MOO, even more extensible using a
        built-in object-oriented language. The trend toward greater
        programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue.

        The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly,
        with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month.
        Around 1991 there was an unsuccessful movement to deprecate the term
        {MUD} itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names
        corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. It
        survived. See also {bonk/oif}, {FOD}, {link-dead}, {mudhead}, {talk
        mode}.

:muddie: n.

        Syn. {mudhead}. More common in Great Britain, possibly because
        system administrators there like to mutter "bloody muddies" when
        annoyed at the species.

:mudhead: n.

        Commonly used to refer to a {MUD} player who eats, sleeps, and
        breathes MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail their degrees, drop
        out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made wizard
        level. When encountered in person, on a MUD, or in a chat system,
        all a mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic,
        character, or wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping
        him/her from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD; why the
        specific game he/she has experience with is so much better than any
        other; and the MUD he or she is writing or going to write because
        his/her design ideas are so much better than in any existing MUD.
        See also {wannabee}.

        To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the
        Zuni/Hopi legend of the mudheads or koyemshi, mythical half-formed
        children of an unnatural union. Figures representing them act as
        clowns in Zuni sacred ceremonies. Others may recall the `High School
        Madness' sequence from the Firesign Theatre album Don't Crush That
        Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, in which there is a character named
        "Mudhead".

:muggle:

        [from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, 1998] A non-{wizard}. Not
        as disparaging as {luser}; implies vague pity rather than contempt.
        In the universe of Rowling's enormously (and deservedly) popular
        children's series, muggles and wizards inhabit the same modern
        world, but each group is ignorant of the commonplaces of the others'
        existence -- most muggles are unaware that wizards exist, and
        wizards (used to magical ways of doing everything) are perplexed and
        fascinated by muggle artifacts.

        In retrospect it seems completely inevitable that hackers would
        adopt this metaphor, and in hacker usage it readily forms compounds
        such as muggle-friendly. Compare {luser}, {mundane}, {chainik},
        {newbie}.

:Multics: /muhl'tiks/, n.

        [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An early
        timesharing {operating system} co-designed by a consortium including
        MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to {CTSS}. The design
        was first presented in 1965, planned for operation in 1967, first
        operational in 1969, and took several more years to achieve
        respectable performance and stability.

        Multics was very innovative for its time -- among other things, it
        provided a hierarchical file system with access control on
        individual files and introduced the idea of treating all devices
        uniformly as special files. It was also the first OS to run on a
        symmetric multiprocessor, and the only general-purpose system to be
        awarded a B2 security rating by the NSA (see {Orange Book}).

        Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that
        {second-system effect} had bloated Multics to the point of practical
        unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 after buying
        out GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at its
        peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each
        a multi-million dollar mainframe.

        One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken
        Thompson, and {Unix} deliberately carried through and extended many
        of Multics' design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name
        `Unix' as "a weak pun on Multics". For this and other reasons,
        aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional debate
        among hackers. See also {brain-damaged} and {GCOS}.

        MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977.
        Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and
        development on Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were
        known to be still in use as late as 1998, but the last one (a
        Canadian military site) was decommissioned in November 2000. There
        is a Multics page at
        http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html.

:multitask: n.

        Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to
        describe a person doing several things at once (but see {thrash}).
        The term multiplex, from communications technology (meaning to
        handle more than one channel at the same time), is used similarly.

:mumblage: /muhm'bl@j/, n.

        The topic of one's mumbling (see {mumble}). "All that mumblage" is
        used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the
        subject of discussion works, or like "all that crap" when `mumble'
        is being used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives.

:mumble: interj.

        1. Said when the correct response is too complicated to enunciate,
        or the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces a longer
        answer, or indicates a general reluctance to get into a long
        discussion. "Don't you think that we could improve LISP performance
        by using a hybrid reference-count transaction garbage collector, if
        the cache is big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the
        microcode to use?" "Well, mumble ... I'll have to think about it."

        2. [MIT] Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used
        as an informal vote of consensus in a meeting: "So, shall we dike
        out the COBOL emulation?" "Mumble!"

        3. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement (distinguished
        from sense 2 by tone of voice and other cues). "I think we should
        buy a {{VAX}}." "Mumble!" Common variant: mumble frotz (see {frotz};
        interestingly, one does not say `mumble frobnitz' even though
        `frotz' is short for `frobnitz').

        4. Yet another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo}.

        5. When used as a question ("Mumble?") means "I didn't understand
        you".

        6. Sometimes used in `public' contexts on-line as a placefiller for
        things one is barred from giving details about. For example, a
        poster with pre-released hardware in his machine might say "Yup, my
        machine now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card I'm
        testing for Mumbleco."

        7. A conversational wild card used to designate something one
        doesn't want to bother spelling out, but which can be {glark}ed from
        context. Compare {blurgle}.

        8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further
        discussion would be fruitless.

:munch: vt.

        [often confused with {mung}, q.v.] To transform information in a
        serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To
        trace down a data structure. Related to {crunch} and nearly
        synonymous with {grovel}, but connotes less pain.

:munching: n.

        Exploration of security holes of someone else's computer for
        thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. Compare
        {cracker}. See also {hacked off}.

:munching squares: n.

        A {display hack} dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly
        discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation
        (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of
        T -- see {HAKMEM} items 146--148) to produce an impressive display
        of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The initial
        value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can
        produce amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the
        LISP machine, have been christened munching triangles (try AND for
        XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's, and
        munching mazes. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces
        an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on
        a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program;
        then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred
        to as munching foos. [This is a good example of the use of the word
        {foo} as a {metasyntactic variable}.]

:munchkin: /muhnch'kin/, n.

        [from the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum's The Wizard
        of Oz] A teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking BASIC or
        something else equally constricted. A term of mild derision --
        munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers after passing
        through a {larval stage}. The term {urchin} is also used. See also
        {wannabee}, {bitty box}.

:mundane: n.

        [from SF fandom]

        1. A person who is not in science fiction fandom.

        2. A person who is not in the computer industry. In this sense, most
        often an adjectival modifier as in "in my mundane life...." See also
        {Real World}, {muggle}.

:mung: /muhng/, vt.

        [in 1960 at MIT, "Mash Until No Good"; sometime after that the
        derivation from the {recursive acronym} "Mung Until No Good" became
        standard; but see {munge}]

        1. To make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable
        changes. See {BLT}.

        2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The
        system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of
        {Finagle's Law}. See {scribble}, {mangle}, {trash}, {nuke}. Reports
        from {Usenet} suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in
        speech, but the spelling `mung' is still common in program comments
        (compare the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of
        {kluge}).

        3. In the wake of the {spam} epidemics of the 1990s, mung is now
        commonly used to describe the act of modifying an email address in a
        sig block in a way that human beings can readily reverse but that
        will fool an {address harvester}. Example: johnNOSPAMsmith@isp.net.

        4. The kind of beans the sprouts of which are used in Chinese food.
        (That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)

        Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at
        {TMRC}; it was already in use there in 1958. Peter Samson (compiler
        of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it may originally have been
        onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact) being
        twanged. However, it is known that during the World Wars, `mung' was
        U.S.: army slang for the ersatz creamed chipped beef better known as
        `SOS', and it seems quite likely that the word in fact goes back to
        Scots-dialect {munge}.

        Charles Mackay's 1874 book Lost Beauties of the English Language
        defined "mung" as follows: "Preterite of ming, to ming or mingle;
        when the substantive meaning of mingled food of bread, potatoes,
        etc. thrown to poultry. In America, `mung news' is a common
        expression applied to false news, but probably having its derivation
        from mingled (or mung) news, in which the true and the false are so
        mixed up together that it is impossible to distinguish one from
        another."

:munge: /muhnj/, vt.

        1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information.

        2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole
        program.

        3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn't need to go into
        right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare {mumble}).

        4. To add {spamblock} to an email address.

        This term is often confused with {mung}, which probably was derived
        from it. However, it also appears the word munge was in common use
        in Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb,
        meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and as a noun, meaning
        the result of munging something up (the parallel with the
        {kluge}/{kludge} pair is amusing). The OED reports "munge" as an
        archaic verb meaning "to wipe (a person's nose)".

:Murphy's Law: prov.

        The correct, original Murphy's Law reads: "If there are two or more
        ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a
        catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of
        defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant
        forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for {luser}s. For
        example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it
        "THIS WAY UP"; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you
        make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under {magic
        smoke}).

        Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of McDonnell-Douglas's test engineers
        on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force
        in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981).
        One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to
        different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each
        sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically
        installed all 16 in a replacement set the wrong way around. Murphy
        then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test
        subject (Major John Paul Stapp) mis-quoted (apparently in the more
        general form "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong)" at a news
        conference a few days later.

        Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical
        cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years
        had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination,
        changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that
        can go wrong, will"; this is more correctly referred to as
        {Finagle's Law}. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly
        demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!

:music: n.

        A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare
        {science-fiction fandom}, {oriental food}; see also {filk}). Hackish
        folklore has long claimed that musical and programming abilities are
        closely related, and there has been at least one large-scale
        statistical study that supports this. Hackers, as a rule, like music
        and often develop musical appreciation in unusual and interesting
        directions. Folk music is very big in hacker circles; so is
        electronic music, and the sort of elaborate instrumental jazz/rock
        that used to be called `progressive' and isn't recorded much any
        more. The hacker's musical range tends to be wide; many can listen
        with equal appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Gentle Giant,
        Pat Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, King
        Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the Brandenburg
        Concerti. It is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much
        higher concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would
        expect from a similar-sized control group of {mundane} types.

:mutter: vt.

        To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or fingers
        of ordinary mortals. Often used in "mutter an {incantation}". See
        also {wizard}.

  N

   N

   nadger

   nagware

   nailed to the wall

   nailing jelly

   naive

   naive user

   NAK

   NANA

   nano

   nano-

   nanoacre

   nanobot

   nanocomputer

   nanofortnight

   nanotechnology

   narg

   nasal demons

   nastygram

   Nathan Hale

   nature

   neat hack

   neats vs. scruffies

   neep-neep

   neophilia

   nerd

   nerd knob

   net.-

   net.god

   net.personality

   net.police

   netburp

   netdead

   nethack

   netiquette

   netlag

   netnews

   Netscrape

   netsplit

   netter

   network address

   network meltdown

   New Jersey

   New Testament

   newbie

   newgroup wars

   newline

   NeWS

   newsfroup

   newsgroup

   nick

   nickle

   night mode

   Nightmare File System

   NIL

   Ninety-Ninety Rule

   nipple mouse

   NMI

   no-op

   noddy

   non-optimal solution

   nonlinear

   nontrivial

   not entirely unlike X

   not ready for prime time

   notwork

   NP-

   NSA line eater

   NSP

   nude

   nugry

   nuke

   number-crunching

   numbers

   NUXI problem

   nybble

   nyetwork

:N: /N/, quant.

        1. A large and indeterminate number of objects: "There were N bugs
        in that crock!" Also used in its original sense of a variable name:
        "This crock has N bugs, as N goes to infinity." (The true number of
        bugs is always at least N + 1; see {Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic
        Entomology}.)

        2. A variable whose value is inherited from the current context. For
        example, when a meal is being ordered at a restaurant, N may be
        understood to mean however many people there are at the table. From
        the remark "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner
        for N - 1" you can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat
        only soup, even though you don't know how many people there are (see
        {great-wall}).

        3. Nth: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N, senses 1 and 2.

        4. "Now for the Nth and last time..." In the specific context
        "Nth-year grad student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4,
        and is usually 5 or more (see {tenured graduate student}). See also
        {random numbers}, {two-to-the-N}.

:nadger: /nad'jr/, v.

        [UK, from rude slang noun nadgers for testicles; compare American &
        British bollixed] Of software or hardware (not people), to twiddle
        some object in a hidden manner, generally so that it conforms better
        to some format. For instance, string printing routines on 8-bit
        processors often take the string text from the instruction stream,
        thus a print call looks like jsr print:"Hello world". The print
        routine has to nadger the saved instruction pointer so that the
        processor doesn't try to execute the text as instructions when the
        subroutine returns. See {adger}.

:nagware: /nag'weir/, n.

        [Usenet] The variety of {shareware} that displays a large screen at
        the beginning or end reminding you to register, typically requiring
        some sort of keystroke to continue so that you can't use the
        software in batch mode. Compare {annoyware}, {crippleware}.

:nailed to the wall: adj.

        [like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted,
        and even heroic, effort.

:nailing jelly: vi.

        See {like nailing jelly to a tree}.

:naive: adj.

        1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or
        system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather
        than the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most
        designs aren't `really good' in the appropriate sense). This trait
        is completely unrelated to general maturity or competence, or even
        competence at any other specific program. It is a sad commentary on
        the primitive state of computing that the natural opposite of this
        term is often claimed to be experienced user but is really more like
        cynical user.

        2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't take advantage of some superior
        but advanced technique, e.g., the {bubble sort}. It may imply
        naivete on the part of the programmer, although there are situations
        where a naive algorithm is preferred, because it is more important
        to keep the code comprehensible than to go for maximum performance.
        "I know the linear search is naive, but in this case the list
        typically only has half a dozen items." Compare {brute force}.

:naive user: n.

        A {luser}. Tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to
        inexperience. When this is applied to someone who has experience,
        there is a definite implication of stupidity.

:NAK: /nak/, interj.

        [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0010101]

        1. On-line joke answer to {ACK}?: "I'm not here."

        2. On-line answer to a request for chat: "I'm not available."

        3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you don't
        understand their point or that they have suddenly stopped making
        sense. See {ACK}, sense

        3. "And then, after we recode the project in COBOL...." "Nak, Nak,
        Nak! I thought I heard you say COBOL!"

        4. A negative answer. "OK if I boot the server?" "NAK!"

:NANA: //

        [Usenet] The newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, devoted to fighting
        {spam} and network abuse. Each individual newsgroup is often
        referred to by adding a letter to NANA. For example, NANAU would
        refer to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.

        When spam began to be a serious problem around 1995, and a loose
        network of anti-spammers formed to combat it, spammers immediately
        accused them of being the {backbone cabal}, or the Cabal reborn.
        Though this was not true, spam-fighters ironically accepted the
        label and the tag line "There is No Cabal" reappeared (later, and
        now commonly, abbreviated to "TINC"). Nowadays "the Cabal" is
        generally understood to refer to the NANA regulars.

:nano: /nan'oh/, n.

        [CMU: from nanosecond] A brief period of time. "Be with you in a
        nano" means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies what
        mainstream people mean by "in a jiffy" (whereas the hackish use of
        `jiffy' is quite different -- see {jiffy}).

:nano-: pref.

        [SI: the next quantifier below {micro-}; meaning  10^-9] Smaller
        than {micro-}, and used in the same rather loose and connotative
        way. Thus, one has {nanotechnology} (coined by hacker K. Eric
        Drexler) by analogy with microtechnology; and a few machine
        architectures have a nanocode level below microcode. Tom Duff at
        Bell Labs has also pointed out that "Pi seconds is a nanocentury".
        See also {quantifiers}, {pico-}, {nanoacre}, {nanobot},
        {nanocomputer}, {nanofortnight}.

:nanoacre: /nan'ohay`kr/, n.

        A unit (about 2 mm square) of real estate on a VLSI chip. The term
        gets its giggle value from the fact that VLSI nanoacres have costs
        in the same range as real acres once one figures in design and
        fabrication-setup costs.

:nanobot: /nan'ohbot/, n.

        A robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means of
        {nanotechnology}. As yet, only used informally (and speculatively!).
        Also called a nanoagent.

:nanocomputer: /nan'ohk@mpyootr/, n.

        A computer with molecular-sized switching elements. Designs for
        mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods for
        their logic have been proposed. The controller for a {nanobot} would
        be a nanocomputer.

:nanofortnight: n.

        [Adelaide University] 1 fortnight  10^-9, or about 1.2 msec. This
        unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals.
        See {microfortnight}, {attoparsec}, and {micro-}.

:nanotechnology: /nan'ohtekno`l@jee/, n.

        A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed
        and built with the individual specification and placement of each
        separate atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments
        took place in 1990, for example with the deposition of individual
        xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain
        very large computer company. Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in
        the hacker subculture ever since the term was coined by K. Eric
        Drexler in his book Engines of Creation (Anchor/Doubleday, ISBN
        0-385-19973-2), where he predicted that nanotechnology could give
        rise to replicating assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of
        productivity and personal wealth (there's an authorized
        transcription at http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html). See also
        {blue goo}, {gray goo}, {nanobot}.

:narg:

        [Cambridge] Short for "Not A Real Gentleman", i.e. one who
        excessively talks shop out of hours.

:nasal demons: n.

        Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group comp.std.c for any
        unexpected behavior of a C compiler on encountering an undefined
        construct. During a discussion on that group in early 1992, a
        regular remarked "When the compiler encounters [a given undefined
        construct] it is legal for it to make demons fly out of your nose"
        (the implication is that the compiler may choose any arbitrarily
        bizarre way to interpret the code without violating the ANSI C
        standard). Someone else followed up with a reference to "nasal
        demons", which quickly became established. The original post is
        web-accessible at
        http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=10195%40ksr.com.

:nastygram: /nas'teegram/, n.

        1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a
        {letterbomb}) that takes advantage of misfeatures or security holes
        on the target system to do untoward things.

        2. Disapproving mail, esp. from a {net.god}, pursuant to a violation
        of {netiquette} or a complaint about failure to correct some mail-
        or news-transmission problem. Compare {shitogram}, {mailbomb}.

        3. A status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer.
        "What'd Corporate say in today's nastygram?"

        4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a {daemon}; in
        particular, a {bounce message}.

:Nathan Hale: n.

        An asterisk (see also {splat}, {ASCII}). Oh, you want an etymology?
        Notionally, from "I regret that I have only one asterisk for my
        country!", a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale
        just before he was hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in
        the American War of Independence.

:nature: n.

        See {has the X nature}.

:neat hack: n.

        [very common]

        1. A clever technique.

        2. A brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with
        cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech
        Rose Bowl card display switch (see Appendix A for discussion). See
        also {hack}.

:neats vs. scruffies: n.

        The label used to refer to one of the continuing {holy wars} in AI
        research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is
        the relationship between human reasoning and AI; `neats' tend to try
        to build systems that `reason' in some way identifiably similar to
        the way humans report themselves as doing, while `scruffies' profess
        not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the
        least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe
        that logic is king, while scruffies favor looser, more ad-hoc
        methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods
        appear promiscuous, successful only by accident, and not productive
        of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy,
        neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the
        hard-to-capture `common sense' of living intelligences.

:neep-neep: /neep neep/, n.

        [onomatopoeic, widely spread through SF fandom but reported to have
        originated at Caltech in the 1970s] One who is fascinated by
        computers. Less specific than {hacker}, as it need not imply more
        skill than is required to play games on a PC. The derived noun
        neeping applies specifically to the long conversations about
        computers that tend to develop in the corners at most SF-convention
        parties (the term neepery is also in wide use). Fandom has a related
        proverb to the effect that "Hacking is a conversational black
        hole!".

:neophilia: /nee`ohfil'ee@/, n.

        The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among most
        hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected
        leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology `Whole Earth'
        wing of the ecology movement, space activists, many members of
        Mensa, and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground (see {geek}). All
        these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem
        to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction,
        {music}, and {oriental food}. The opposite tendency is neophobia.

:nerd: n.

        1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an
        above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social
        rituals.

        2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to
        sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and
        interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and
        silly status games. Compare {geek}.

        The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to
        show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a
        Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the
        Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950). (The spellings `nurd' and
        `gnurd' also used to be current at MIT, where `nurd' is reported
        from as far back as 1957; however, {knurd} appears to have a
        separate etymology.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is
        unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early
        1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly
        "annoying misfit" without the connotation of intelligence.

        Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later,
        and some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At
        MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors
        bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.

:nerd knob: n.

        [Cisco] A command in a complex piece of software which is more
        likely to be used by an extremely experienced user to tweak a
        setting of one sort or another - a setting which the average user
        may not even know exists. Nerd knobs tend to be toggles, turning on
        or off a particular, specific, narrowly defined behavior. Special
        case of {knobs}.

:net.-: /net dot/, pref.

        [Usenet] Prefix used to describe people and events related to
        Usenet. From the time before the {Great Renaming}, when most
        non-local newsgroups had names beginning "net.". Includes
        {net.god}s, net.goddesses (various charismatic net.women with
        circles of on-line admirers), net.lurkers (see {lurker}),
        net.person, net.parties (a synonym for {boink}, sense 2), and many
        similar constructs. See also {net.police}.

:net.god: /net god/, n.

        Accolade referring to anyone who satisfies some combination of the
        following conditions: has been visible on Usenet for more than 5
        years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated an
        important newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows Gene, Mark, Rick,
        Mel, Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See {demigod}. Net.goddesses
        such as Rissa or the Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished
        more by personality than by authority.

:net.personality: /net per`snal'@tee/, n.

        Someone who has made a name for him or herself on {Usenet}, through
        either longevity or attention-getting posts, but doesn't meet the
        other requirements of {net.god}hood.

:net.police: /netp@lees'/, n.

        (var.: net.cops) Those Usenet readers who feel it is their
        responsibility to pounce on and {flame} any posting which they
        regard as offensive or in violation of their understanding of
        {netiquette}. Generally used sarcastically or pejoratively. Also
        spelled `net police'. See also {net.-}, {code police}.

:netburp: n.

        [IRC] When {netlag} gets really bad, and delays between servers
        exceed a certain threshold, the {IRC} network effectively becomes
        partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people seem
        to be signing off at the same time and then signing back on again
        when things get better. An instance of this is called a netburp (or,
        sometimes, {netsplit}).

:netdead: n.

        [IRC] The state of someone who signs off {IRC}, perhaps during a
        {netburp}, and doesn't sign back on until later. In the interim, he
        is "dead to the net". Compare {link-dead}.

:nethack: /net'hak/, n.

        [Unix] A dungeon game similar to {rogue} but more elaborate,
        distributed in C source over {Usenet} and very popular at Unix sites
        and on PC-class machines (nethack is probably the most widely
        distributed of the freeware dungeon games). The earliest versions,
        written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably enhanced by Andries
        Brouwer, were simply called `hack'. The name changed when
        maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers originally
        organized by Mike Stephenson. There is now an official site at
        http://www.nethack.org/. See also {moria}, {rogue}, {Angband}.

:netiquette: /net'eeket/, /netiket/, n.

        [Coined by Chuq von Rospach c.1983] [portmanteau, network +
        etiquette] The conventions of politeness recognized on {Usenet},
        such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups and
        refraining from commercial pluggery outside the biz groups.

:netlag: n.

        [IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the {IRC}
        network or on a {MUD} become severe enough that servers briefly lose
        and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in
        bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (Note that this term
        has nothing to do with mainstream "jet lag", a condition which
        hackers tend not to be much bothered by.) Often shortened to just
        `lag'.

:netnews: /net'n[y]ooz/, n.

        1. The software that makes {Usenet} run.

        2. The content of Usenet. "I read netnews right after my mail most
        mornings."

:Netscrape: n.

        [sometimes elaborated to Netscrape Fornicator, also Nutscrape]
        Standard name-of-insult for Netscape Navigator/Communicator,
        Netscape's overweight Web browser. Compare {Internet Exploiter}.

:netsplit: n.

        Syn. {netburp}.

:netter: n.

        1. Loosely, anyone with a {network address}.

        2. More specifically, a {Usenet} regular. Most often found in the
        plural. "If you post that in a technical group, you're going to be
        flamed by angry netters for the rest of time!"

:network address: n.

        (also net address) As used by hackers, means an address on `the'
        network (see {the network}; this used to include {bang path}
        addresses but now always implies an Internet address). Net addresses
        are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for
        personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite
        well by network names without ever learning each others' `legal'
        monikers. Display of a network address (e.g. on business cards) used
        to function as an important hacker identification signal, like lodge
        pins among Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In
        the day of pervasive Internet this is less true, but you can still
        be fairly sure that anyone with a network address handwritten on his
        or her convention badge is a hacker.

:network meltdown: n.

        A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of
        {thrash}ing. This may be induced by a {Chernobyl packet}. See also
        {broadcast storm}, {kamikaze packet}.

        Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are
        optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don't cope well
        with the very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world. One
        amusing instance of this is triggered by the popular and very bloody
        shoot-'em-up game Doom on the PC. When used in multiplayer mode over
        a network, the game uses broadcast packets to inform other machines
        when bullets are fired. This causes problems with weapons like the
        chain gun which fire rapidly -- it can blast the network into a
        meltdown state just as easily as it shreds opposing monsters.

:New Jersey: adj.

        [primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor design.
        This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C,
        C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New
        Jersey). "This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from
        a compiler designed in New Jersey?" Compare {Berkeley Quality
        Software}. See also {Unix conspiracy}.

:New Testament: n.

        [C programmers] The second edition of K&R's The C Programming
        Language (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI
        Standard C. See {K&R}; this version is also called `K&R2'.

:newbie: /n[y]oo'bee/, n.

        [very common; orig. from British public-school and military slang
        variant of `new boy'] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced in the
        {newsgroup} talk.bizarre but is now in wide use (the combination
        "clueless newbie" is especially common). Criteria for being
        considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in
        one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The
        label newbie is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person
        who has been around Usenet for a long time but who carefully hides
        all evidence of having a clue. See {B1FF}; see also {gnubie}.
        Compare {chainik}, {luser}.

:newgroup wars: /n[y]oo'groop worz/, n.

        [Usenet] The salvos of dueling newgroup and rmgroup messages
        sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over
        whether a {newsgroup} should be created net-wide, or (even more
        frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually
        settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the
        group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times,
        especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of
        newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the
        group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork which originated as a birthday
        joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized abuse groups
        named after particularly notorious {flamer}s, e.g., alt.weemba.

:newline: /n[y]oo'li:n/, n.

        1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character (0001010),
        used under {Unix} as a text line terminator. Though the term newline
        appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general
        computing world before Unix.

        2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or
        operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a
        text record or separate lines. See {crlf}.

:NeWS: /nee'wis/, /n[y]oois/, /n[y]ooz/, n.

        [acronym; the "Network Window System"] The road not taken in window
        systems, an elegant {PostScript}-based environment that would almost
        certainly have won the standards war with {X} if it hadn't been
        {proprietary} to Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that too
        many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the
        two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS
        from Usenet news (the {netnews} software).

:newsfroup: //, n.

        [Usenet] Silly synonym for {newsgroup}, originally a typo but now in
        regular use on Usenet's talk.bizarre, and other lunatic-fringe
        groups. Compare {hing}, {grilf}, {pr0n} and {filk}.

:newsgroup: n.

        [Usenet] One of {Usenet}'s huge collection of topic groups or
        {fora}. Usenet groups can be unmoderated (anyone can post) or
        moderated (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator,
        who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups
        have parallel {mailing list}s for Internet people with no netnews
        access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the
        list and vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which
        are actually gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as
        digests, with groups of postings periodically collected into a
        single large posting with an index.

        Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum),
        comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.unix.wizards (for Unix
        wizards), rec.arts.sf.written and siblings (for science-fiction
        fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions
        and {flamage}).

:nick: n.

        [IRC; very common] Short for nickname. On {IRC}, every user must
        pick a nick, which is sometimes the same as the user's real name or
        login name, but is often more fanciful. Compare {handle}, {screen
        name}.

:nickle: /ni'kl/, n.

        [from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] A {nybble} +
        1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the
        Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but
        10-bit-wide ROM. See also {deckle}, and {nybble} for names of other
        bit units.

:night mode: n.

        See {phase} (of people).

:Nightmare File System: n.

        Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any
        nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS
        cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up.
        Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response)
        repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages
        (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should
        have been a brief excursion to a higher {spl} level). Then another
        machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down
        machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to
        discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and
        to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach.
        This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network
        of machines is frozen -- worst of all, the user can't even abort the
        file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are
        excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its
        statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of
        course, call it a great {misfeature}). (ITS partisans are apt to
        cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working
        NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early
        1970s.) See also {broadcast storm}.

:NIL: /nil/

        No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the
        `-P' convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from LISP
        terminology for `false' (see also {T}), but NIL as a negative reply
        was well-established among radio hams decades before the advent of
        LISP. The historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham
        radio world was strong enough that this may have been an influence.

:Ninety-Ninety Rule: n.

        "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the
        development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the
        other 90% of the development time." Attributed to Tom Cargill of
        Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985
        Bumper-Sticker Computer Science column in Communications of the ACM.
        It was there called the "Rule of Credibility", a name which seems
        not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include the law
        attributed to the early British computer scientist Douglas Hartree:
        "The time from now until the completion of the project tends to
        become constant."

:nipple mouse: n.

        Var. clit mouse, clitoris Common term for the pointing device used
        on IBM ThinkPads and a few other laptop computers. The device, which
        sits between the `g' and `h' keys on the keyboard, indeed resembles
        a rubber nipple intended to be tweaked by a forefinger. Many hackers
        consider these superior to the glide pads found on most laptops,
        which are harder to control precisely.

:NMI: /NMI/, n.

        Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the {PDP-11} or 680[01234]0; the
        NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with a {priority interrupt}
        (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is never
        ignored. Except, that is, on {clone} boxes, where NMI is often
        ignored on the motherboard because flaky hardware can generate many
        spurious ones.

:no-op: /noh'op/, n.,v.

        alt.: NOP /nop/ [no operation]

        1. A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in
        assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to
        overwrite code to be removed in binaries).

        2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing
        going on upstairs, or both. As in "He's a no-op."

        3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as
        circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money
        into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the
        coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go
        away. "Oh, well, that was a no-op." Hot-and-sour soup (see
        {great-wall}) that is insufficiently either is no-op soup; so is
        wonton soup if everybody else is having hot-and-sour.

:noddy: /nod'ee/, adj.

        [UK: from the children's books]

        1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs
        are often written by people learning a new language or system. The
        archetypal noddy program is {hello world}. Noddy code may be used to
        demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real
        hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This
        editor's a bit noddy."

        2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use,
        the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a
        {hack} sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged
        while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation.
        "I'll just throw together a noddy {awk} script to dump all the first
        fields." In North America this might be called a {mickey mouse
        program}. See {toy program}.

:non-optimal solution: n.

        (also sub-optimal solution) An astoundingly stupid way to do
        something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its
        impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely
        serious. Compare {stunning}. See also {Bad Thing}.

:nonlinear: adj.

        [scientific computation]

        1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion; unstable. When
        used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests
        that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of
        design specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable
        inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the
        computation far off from its expected course.

        2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a
        {flame}. "When you talk to Bob, don't mention the drug problem or
        he'll go nonlinear for hours." In this context, go nonlinear
        connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes
        linearity).

:nontrivial: adj.

        Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as
        an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or
        impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving P=NP is
        nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is decidedly nontrivial.
        See {trivial}, {uninteresting}, {interesting}.

:not entirely unlike X:

        Used ironically of things which are in fact almost entirely unlike
        X, except for one feature which the speaker clearly regards as
        insignificant. "That is not entirely unlike cool...at least it's
        small." Comes directly from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
        scene in which the food synthesizer on the starship Heart of Gold
        dispenses something "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".

:not ready for prime time: adj.

        Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only.
        Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be
        made more solid {Real Soon Now}. This term comes from the ensemble
        name of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, the "Not Ready for
        Prime Time Players". It has extra flavor for hackers because of the
        special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of {prime time}.
        Compare {beta}.

:notwork: /not'werk/, n.

        A network, when it is acting {flaky} or is {down}. Compare
        {nyetwork}. Said at IBM to have originally referred to a particular
        period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network ca. 1988; but
        there are independent reports of the term from elsewhere.

:NP-: /NP/, pref.

        Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality
        of difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it should be'.
        This is generalized from the computer-science terms NP-hard and
        NP-complete; NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so
        far no one has found a proof that they are. NP is the set of
        Nondeterministic-Polynomial problems, those that can be completed by
        a nondeterministic Turing machine in an amount of time that is a
        polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one
        NP-complete problem would solve all the others. "Coding a BitBlt
        implementation to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying."

        Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading;
        there are plenty of easy problems in class NP. NP-complete problems
        are hard not because they are in class NP, but because they are the
        hardest problems in class NP.

:NSA line eater: n.

        The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes assumed to
        be reading the net for the U.S. Government's spooks. Most hackers
        used to think it was mythical but believed in acting as though
        existed just in case. Since the mid-1990s it has gradually become
        known that the NSA actually does this, quite illegally, through its
        Echelon program.

        The standard countermeasure is to put loaded phrases like `KGB',
        `Uzi', `nuclear materials', `Palestine', `cocaine', and
        `assassination' in their {sig block}s in a (probably futile) attempt
        to confuse and overload the creature. The {GNU} version of {EMACS}
        actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of insidious
        anarcho-verbiage into your edited text.

        As far back as the 1970s there was a mainstream variant of this myth
        involving a `Trunk Line Monitor', which supposedly used speech
        recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This is much
        harder than noticing keywords in email, and most of the people who
        originally propagated it had no idea of then-current technology or
        the storage, signal-processing, or speech recognition needs of such
        a project. On the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have
        been cheaper to hire 50 high-school students and just let them
        listen in.

        Twenty years and several orders of technological magnitude later,
        however, there are clear indications that the NSA has actually
        deployed such filtering (again, very much against U.S. law). In
        2000, the FBI wants to get into this act with its `Carnivore'
        surveillance system.

:NSP: /NSP/, n.

        Common abbreviation for `Network Service Provider', one of the big
        national or regional companies that maintains a portion of the
        Internet backbone and resells connectivity to {ISP}s. In 1996, major
        NSPs include ANS, MCI, UUNET, and Sprint. An Internet wholesaler.

:nude: adj.

        Said of machines delivered without an operating system (compare
        {bare metal}). "We ordered 50 systems, but they all arrived nude, so
        we had to spend an extra weekend with the installation disks." This
        usage is a recent innovation reflecting the fact that most IBM-PC
        clones are now delivered with an operating system pre-installed at
        the factory. Other kinds of hardware are still normally delivered
        without OS, so this term is particular to PC support groups.

:nugry: /n[y]oo'gree/

        [Usenet, `newbie' + `-gry'] n. A {newbie} who posts a {FAQ} in the
        rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it is a variant of the
        notorious trick question: "Think of words ending in `gry'. Angry and
        hungry are two of them. There are three words in the English
        language. What is the third word?" In the newsgroup, the canonical
        answer is of course `nugry' itself. Plural is nusgry /n[y]oos'gree/.

        2. adj. Having the qualities of a nugry.

:nuke: /n[y]ook/, vt.

        [common]

        1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given directory
        or storage volume. "On Unix, rm -r /usr will nuke everything in the
        usr filesystem." Never used for accidental deletion; contrast {blow
        away}.

        2. Syn. for {dike}, applied to smaller things such as files,
        features, or code sections. Often used to express a final verdict.
        "What do you want me to do with that 80-meg session file?" "Nuke
        it."

        3. Used of processes as well as files; nuke is a frequent verbal
        alias for kill -9 on Unix.

        4. On IBM PCs, a bug that results in {fandango on core} can trash
        the operating system, including the FAT (the in-core copy of the
        disk block chaining information). This can utterly scramble attached
        disks, which are then said to have been nuked. This term is also
        used of analogous lossages on Macintoshes and other micros without
        memory protection.

:number-crunching: n.

        [common] Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make
        extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing {Fortrash}
        is good for. This term is in widespread informal use outside
        hackerdom and even in mainstream slang, but has additional hackish
        connotations: namely, that the computations are mindless and involve
        massive use of {brute force}. This is not always {evil}, esp. if it
        involves ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes
        {pretty pictures}, esp. if such pictures can be used as screen
        backgrounds. See also {crunch}.

        Hydrodynamic {number-crunching}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-12-29. The previous
        cartoon was 74-08-18.)

:numbers: n.

        [scientific computation] Output of a computation that may not be
        significant results but at least indicate that the program is
        running. May be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc.
        Making numbers means running a program because output -- any output,
        not necessarily meaningful output -- is needed as a demonstration of
        progress. See {pretty pictures}, {math-out}, {social science
        number}.

:NUXI problem: /nuk'see probl@m/, n.

        Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with
        differing byte-order. The string "UNIX" might look like "NUXI" on a
        machine with a different byte sex (e.g., when transferring data from
        a {little-endian} to a {big-endian}, or vice-versa). See also
        {middle-endian}, {swab}, and {bytesexual}.

:nybble: /nib'l/, nibble, n.

        [from v. nibble by analogy with `bite' -> `byte'] Four bits; one
        {hex} digit; a half-byte. Though `byte' is now techspeak, this
        useful relative is still jargon. Compare {byte}; see also {bit}. The
        more mundane spelling "nibble" is also commonly used. Apparently the
        `nybble' spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British
        orthography would suggest the pronunciation /ni:'bl/.

        Following `bit', `byte' and `nybble' there have been quite a few
        analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of
        other sizes. All of these are strictly jargon, not techspeak, and
        not very common jargon at that (most hackers would recognize them in
        context but not use them spontaneously). We collect them here for
        reference together with the ambiguous techspeak terms `word',
        `half-word', `double word', and `quad' or quad word; some
        (indicated) have substantial information separate entries.

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        | 2 bits:   | {crumb}, {quad}, {quarter}, tayste, tydbit, morsel   |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 4 bits:   | nybble                                               |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 5 bits:   | {nickle}                                             |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 10 bits:  | {deckle}                                             |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 16 bits:  | playte, {chawmp} (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a   |
        |           | 16-bit machine), half-word (on a 32-bit machine).    |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 18 bits:  | {chawmp} (on a 36-bit machine), half-word (on a      |
        |           | 36-bit machine)                                      |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 32 bits:  | dynner, {gawble} (on a 32-bit machine), word (on a   |
        |           | 32-bit machine), longword (on a 16-bit machine).     |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 36 bits:  | word (on a 36-bit machine)                           |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 48 bits:  | {gawble} (under circumstances that remain obscure)   |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 64 bits:  | double word (on a 32-bit machine) quad (on a 16-bit  |
        |           | machine)                                             |
        |-----------+------------------------------------------------------|
        | 128 bits: | quad (on a 32-bit machine)                           |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        The fundamental motivation for most of these jargon terms (aside
        from the normal hackerly enjoyment of punning wordplay) is the
        extreme ambiguity of the term word and its derivatives.

:nyetwork: /nyet'werk/, n.

        [from Russian `nyet' = no] A network, when it is acting {flaky} or
        is {down}. Compare {notwork}.

  O

   Ob-

   Obfuscated C Contest

   obi-wan error

   Objectionable-C

   obscure

   octal forty

   off the trolley

   off-by-one error

   offline

   ogg

   -oid

   old fart

   Old Testament

   on the gripping hand

   one-banana problem

   one-line fix

   one-liner wars

   ooblick

   OP

   op

   open

   open source

   open switch

   operating system

   operator headspace

   optical diff

   optical grep

   optimism

   Oracle, the

   Orange Book

   oriental food

   orphan

   orphaned i-node

   orthogonal

   OS

   OS/2

   OSS

   OT

   OTOH

   out-of-band

   overclock

   overflow bit

   overrun

   overrun screw

   owned

:Ob-: /ob/, pref.

        Obligatory. A piece of {netiquette} acknowledging that the author
        has been straying from the newsgroup's charter topic. For example,
        if a posting in alt.sex is a response to a part of someone else's
        posting that has nothing particularly to do with sex, the author may
        append `ObSex' (or `Obsex') and toss off a question or vignette
        about some unusual erotic act. It is considered a sign of great
        {winnitude} when one's Obs are more interesting than other people's
        whole postings.

:Obfuscated C Contest: n.

        (in full, the `International Obfuscated C Code Contest', or IOCCC)
        An annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and
        friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable,
        creative, and bizarre (but working) C program; various other prizes
        are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and
        macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering
        room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously (a)
        funny, (b) breathtaking works of art, and (c) horrible examples of
        how not to code in C.

        This relatively short and sweet entry might help convey the flavor
        of obfuscated C:

        /*
         * HELLO WORLD program
         * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985
         * (Note: depends on being able to modify elements of argv[],
         * which is not guaranteed by ANSI and often not possible.)
         */
        main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)";
        (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));
        **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}

        Here's another good one:

        /*
         * Program to compute an approximation of pi
         * by Brian Westley, 1988
         * (requires pcc macro concatenation; try gcc -traditional-cpp)
         */

        #define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;
        int F=00,OO=00;
        main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
        {
                    _-_-_-_
               _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
            _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
          _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
         _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
         _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
        _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
        _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
        _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
        _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
         _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
         _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
          _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
            _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
                _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
                    _-_-_-_
        }

        Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more
        digits, write a bigger program. See also {hello world}.

        The IOCCC has an official home page at http://www.ioccc.org/.

:obi-wan error: /oh'beewon` er'@r/, n.

        [RPI, from off-by-one and the Obi-Wan Kenobi character in Star Wars]
        A loop of some sort in which the index is off by one.

        1. Common when the index should have started from 0 but instead
        started from 1.

        2. A kind of {off-by-one error}. See also {zeroth}.

:Objectionable-C: n.

        Hackish take on "Objective-C", the name of an object-oriented
        dialect of C in competition with the better-known C++ (it is used to
        write native applications on the NeXT machine). Objectionable-C uses
        a Smalltalk-like syntax, but lacks the flexibility of Smalltalk
        method calls, and (like many such efforts) comes frustratingly close
        to attaining the {Right Thing} without actually doing so.

:obscure: adj.

        Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply total
        incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure."
        "The find(1) command's syntax is obscure!" The phrase moderately
        obscure implies that something could be figured out but probably
        isn't worth the trouble. The construction obscure in the extreme is
        the preferred emphatic form.

:octal forty: /ok'tl fortee/, n.

        Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a blank." Octal 40 is the {ASCII}
        space character, 0100000; by an odd coincidence, {hex} 40 (01000000)
        is the {EBCDIC} space character. See {wall}.

:off the trolley: adj.

        Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes
        catatonic, but doesn't actually {crash} or abort. See {glitch},
        {bug}, {deep space}, {wedged}.

        This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang
        elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs
        against, the heavy wire that carries the current to run a streetcar.
        It's at the end of the long pole (the trolley pole) that reaches
        from the roof of the streetcar to the overhead line. When the
        trolley stops making contact with the wire (from passing through a
        switch, going over bumpy track, or whatever), the streetcar comes to
        a halt, (usually) without crashing. The streetcar is then said to be
        off the trolley, or off the wire. Later on, trolley came to mean the
        streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common in the 1890s, the
        term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are only seen on
        historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs to
        contact the wire.

:off-by-one error: n.

        [common] Exceedingly common error induced in many ways, such as by
        starting at 0 when you should have started at 1 or vice-versa, or by
        writing < N instead of <= N or vice-versa. Also applied to giving
        something to the person next to the one who should have gotten it.
        Often confounded with {fencepost error}, which is properly a
        particular subtype of it.

:offline: adv.

        Not now or not here. "Let's take this discussion offline."
        Specifically used on {Usenet} to suggest that a discussion be moved
        off a public newsgroup to email.

:ogg: /og/, v.

        [CMU]

        1. In the multi-player space combat game Netrek, to execute kamikaze
        attacks against enemy ships which are carrying armies or occupying
        strategic positions. Named during a game in which one of the players
        repeatedly used the tactic while playing Orion ship G, showing up in
        the player list as "Og". This trick has been roundly denounced by
        those who would return to the good old days when the tactic of
        dogfighting was dominant, but as Sun Tzu wrote, "What is of supreme
        importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy, not his
        tactics." However, the traditional answer to the newbie question
        "What does ogg mean?" is just "Pick up some armies and I'll show
        you."

        2. In other games, to forcefully attack an opponent with the
        expectation that the resources expended will be renewed faster than
        the opponent will be able to regain his previous advantage. Taken
        more seriously as a tactic since it has gained a simple name.

        3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of the
        drain on future resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem
        set that's due tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a
        sec and almost ogged that oncoming car."

:-oid: suff.

        [from Greek suffix -oid = in the image of]

        1. Used as in mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation,
        a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers
        will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words
        that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream English. For
        example, "He's a nerdoid" means that he superficially resembles a
        nerd but can't make the grade; a modemoid might be a 300-baud box
        (Real Modems run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any {bitty
        box}. The word keyboid could be used to describe a {chiclet
        keyboard}, but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse
        the listener as to the speaker's city of origin.

        2. More specifically, an indicator for `resembling an android' which
        in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers.
        It too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably
        in the term `trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness). This is
        probably traceable to the popularization of the term {droid} in Star
        Wars and its sequels. (See also {windoid}.)

        Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at
        least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably
        been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long [though GLS and I can
        personally confirm only that they were already common in the
        mid-1970s --ESR].

:old fart: n.

        Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with remarkable frequency by
        (esp.) Usenetters who have been programming for more than about 25
        years; often appears in {sig block}s attached to Jargon File
        contributions of great archeological significance. This is a term of
        insult in the second or third person but one of pride in first
        person.

:Old Testament: n.

        [C programmers] The first edition of {K&R}, the sacred text
        describing {Classic C}.

:on the gripping hand:

        In the progression that starts "On the one hand..." and continues
        "On the other hand..." mainstream English may add "on the third
        hand..." even though most people don't have three hands. Among
        hackers, it is just as likely to be "on the gripping hand". This
        metaphor supplied the title of Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's 1993
        SF novel "The Gripping Hand" which involved a species of hostile
        aliens with three arms (the same species, in fact, referenced in
        {juggling eggs}). As with {TANSTAAFL} and {con}, this usage became
        one of the naturalized imports from SF fandom frequently observed
        among hackers.

:one-banana problem: n.

        At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine
        administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down
        on the operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job.
        It is frequently observed that the incentives that would be offered
        said monkeys can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a
        task. A one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana
        job at the most; what's taking them so long?" At IBM, folklore
        divides the world into one-, two-, and three-banana problems. Other
        cultures have different hierarchies and may divide them more finely;
        at ICL, for example, five grapes (a bunch) equals a banana. Their
        upper limit for the in-house {sysape}s is said to be two bananas and
        three grapes (another source claims it's three bananas and one
        grape, but observes "However, this is subject to local variations,
        cosmic rays and ISO"). At a complication level any higher than that,
        one asks the manufacturers to send someone around to check things.

        See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.

:one-line fix: n.

        Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a program that is thought
        to be trivial or insignificant right up to the moment it crashes the
        system. Usually `cured' by another one-line fix. See also {I didn't
        change anything!}

:one-liner wars: n.

        A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see
        {write-only language} and {line noise}). The objective is to see who
        can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of
        operators chosen from APL's exceedingly {hairy} primitive set. A
        similar amusement was practiced among {TECO} hackers and is now
        popular among {Perl} aficionados.

        Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner
        that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1
        to N inclusive. It looks like this:

                (2=0+.=T{}.|T)/T<-iN

        Here's a {Perl} program that prints primes:

                perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_'

        In the Perl world this game is sometimes called Perl Golf because
        the player with the fewest (key)strokes wins.

:ooblick: /oo'blik/, n.

        [from the Dr. Seuss title Bartholomew and the Oobleck; the spelling
        `oobleck' is still current in the mainstream] A bizarre semi-liquid
        sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who
        make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and
        extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but
        resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a
        hammer. Often found near lasers.

        Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:

          o 1 cup cornstarch

          o 1 cup baking soda

          o 3/4 cup water

          o N drops of food coloring

        This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch
        ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.

        Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick recipe is far
        too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small
        increments so that the various mixed states the cornstarch goes
        through as it becomes ooblick can be grokked in fullness by many
        hands. For optional ingredients of this experience, see the
        Ceremonial Chemicals section of Appendix B.

:OP: //

        [Usenet; common] Abbreviation for "original poster", the originator
        of a particular thread.

:op: /op/, n.

        1. In England and Ireland, common verbal abbreviation for
        `operator', as in system operator. Less common in the U.S., where
        {sysop} seems to be preferred.

        2. [IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on {IRC}, not
        limited to a particular channel. These are generally people who are
        in charge of the IRC server at their particular site. Sometimes used
        interchangeably with {CHOP}. Compare {sysop}.

:open: n.

        Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' -- used when necessary
        to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP form (DEFUN FOO
        (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open defun foo, open eks close,
        open, plus eks one, close close."

:open source: n.

        [common; also adj. open-source] Term coined in March 1998 following
        the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under
        licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and
        redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the
        hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by
        avoiding the negative connotations (to {suit}s) of the term "{free
        software}". For discussion of the follow-on tactics and their
        consequences, see the Open Source Initiative site.

        Five years after this term was invented, in 2003, it is worth noting
        the huge shift in assumptions it helped bring about, if only because
        the hacker culture's collective memory of what went before is in
        some ways blurring. Hackers have so completely refocused themselves
        around the idea and ideal of open source that we are beginning to
        forget that we used to do most of our work in closed-source
        environments. Until the late 1990s open source was a sporadic
        exception that usually had to live on top of a closed-source
        operating system and alongside closed-source tools; entire
        open-source environments like {Linux} and the *BSD systems didn't
        even exist in a usable form until around 1993 and weren't taken very
        seriously by anyone but a pioneering few until about five years
        later.

:open switch: n.

        [IBM: prob.: from railroading] An unresolved question, issue, or
        problem.

:operating system: n.

        [techspeak] (Often abbreviated `OS') The foundation software of a
        machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents
        a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities
        an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert
        an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the
        technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker
        folklore has been shaped primarily by the {Unix}, {ITS}, {TOPS-10},
        {TOPS-20}/{TWENEX}, {WAITS}, {CP/M}, {MS-DOS}, and {Multics}
        operating systems (most importantly by ITS and Unix). See also
        {timesharing}.

:operator headspace:

        [common] More fully, "operator headspace error". Synonym for {pilot
        error} -- a dumb move, especially one pulled by someone who ought to
        know better. Often used reflexively.

:optical diff: n.

        See {vdiff}.

:optical grep: n.

        See {vgrep}.

:optimism: n.

        What a programmer is full of after fixing the last bug and before
        discovering the next last bug. Fred Brooks's book The Mythical
        Man-Month (See Brooks's Law) contains the following paragraph that
        describes this extremely well:

          All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery
          especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy
          godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away
          all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is
          merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the
          young are always optimists. But however the selection process
          works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run,"
          or "I just found the last bug.".

        See also {Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology}.

:Oracle, the:

        The all-knowing, all-wise Internet Oracle rec.humor.oracle, or one
        of the foreign language derivatives of same. Newbies frequently
        confuse the Oracle with Oracle, a database vendor. As a result, the
        unmoderated rec.humor.oracle.d is frequently cross-posted to by the
        clueless, looking for advice on SQL. As more than one person has
        said in similar situations, "Don't people bother to look at the
        newsgroup description line anymore?" (To which the standard response
        is, "Did people ever read it in the first place?")

:Orange Book: n.

        The U.S. Government's (now obsolete) standards document Trusted
        Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard 5200.28-STD,
        December, 1985 which characterize secure computing architectures and
        defines levels A1 (most secure) through D (least). Modern Unixes are
        roughly C2. See also {book titles}.

:oriental food: n.

        Hackers display an intense tropism towards oriental cuisine,
        especially Chinese, and especially of the spicier varieties such as
        Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon (which has also been observed in
        subcultures that overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably
        science-fiction fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but
        is sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish
        dinner expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right at
        least three times out of four. See also {ravs}, {great-wall},
        {stir-fried random}, {laser chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. Thai,
        Indian, Korean, Burmese, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite
        popular.

:orphan: n.

        [Unix] A process whose parent has died; one inherited by init(1).
        Compare {zombie}.

:orphaned i-node: /or'f@nd i:nohd/, n.

        [Unix]

        1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in
        the directories of a filesystem.

        2. By extension, a pejorative for any person no longer serving a
        useful function within some organization, esp. {lion food} without
        subordinates.

:orthogonal: adj.

        [from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes,
        irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning
        to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector
        basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system
        and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For
        example, in architectures such as the {PDP-11} or {VAX} where all or
        nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with
        respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be
        orthogonal. Or, in logic, the set of operators not and or is
        orthogonal, but the set nand, or, and not is not (because any one of
        these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in
        comments on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the
        discussion, but...."

:OS: /OS/

        1. [Operating System] n. An abbreviation heavily used in email,
        occasionally in speech.

        2. n. obs. On ITS, an output spy. See OS and JEDGAR in Appendix A.

:OS/2: /O S too/, n.

        The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based
        micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second
        time, either. Often called `Half-an-OS'. Mentioning it is usually
        good for a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was so {baroque},
        and the implementation of 1.x so bad, that three years after
        introduction you could still count the major {app}s shipping for it
        on the fingers of two hands -- in unary. The 2.x versions were said
        to have improved somewhat, and informed hackers rated them superior
        to Microsoft Windows (an endorsement which, however, could easily be
        construed as damning with faint praise). In the mid-1990s IBM put
        OS/2 on life support, refraining from killing it outright purely for
        internal political reasons; by 1999 the success of {Linux} had
        effectively ended any possibility of a renaissance. See
        {monstrosity}, {cretinous}, {second-system effect}.

:OSS:

        Written-only acronym for "Open Source Software" (see {open source}).
        This is a rather ugly {TLA}, and the principals in the open-source
        movement don't use it, but it has (perhaps inevitably) spread
        through the trade press like kudzu.

:OT: //

        [Usenet: common] Abbreviation for "off-topic". This is used to
        respond to a question that is inappropriate for the newsgroup that
        the questioner posted to. Often used in an HTML-style modifier or
        with adverbs. See also {TAN}.

:OTOH: //

        [Usenet; very common] On The Other Hand.

:out-of-band: adj.

        [from telecommunications and network theory]

        1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its
        `natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some
        kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example,
        return a nonnegative integral value, but indicate failure with an
        out-of-band return value of  -1. Compare {hidden flag}, {green
        bytes}, {fence}.

        2. Also sometimes used to describe what communications people call
        shift characters, such as the ESC that leads control sequences for
        many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit
        Baudot codes.

        3. In personal communication, using methods other than email, such
        as telephones or {snail-mail}.

:overclock: /oh'vrklok/, vt.

        To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than
        it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put
        some {slop} into the specification to account for manufacturing
        tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent
        {crash}es, and can even burn things out, since power dissipation is
        directly proportional to {clock} frequency. People who make a hobby
        of this are sometimes called "overclockers"; they are thrilled that
        they can run their CPU a few percent faster, even though they can
        only tell the difference by running a {benchmark} program. See also
        {case mod}.

:overflow bit: n.

        1. [techspeak] A {flag} on some processors indicating an attempt to
        calculate a result too large for a register to hold.

        2. More generally, an indication of any kind of capacity overload
        condition. "Well, the Ada description was {baroque} all right, but I
        could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling ... that
        set my overflow bit."

        3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesn't get to
        make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures: "I'd better process
        an internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set."

        Crunchly and the {overflow bit}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-07-29. The previous one
        is 73-06-04.)

:overrun: n.

        1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving
        faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications.
        For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per
        millisecond, so if a {silo} can hold only two characters and the
        machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at
        least one character will be lost.

        2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to pay
        my electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four phone
        calls in 3 minutes last night and lost your message to overrun."
        When {thrash}ing at tasks, the next person to make a request might
        be told "Overrun!" Compare {firehose syndrome}.

        3. More loosely, may refer to a {buffer overflow} not necessarily
        related to processing time (as in {overrun screw}).

:overrun screw: n.

        [C programming] A variety of {fandango on core} produced by
        scribbling past the end of an array (C implementations typically
        have no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and easy
        to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to
        {smash the stack} -- often resulting in {heisenbug}s of the most
        diabolical subtlety. The term overrun screw is used esp. of
        scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with malloc(3); this
        typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the
        {arena}, producing massive lossage within malloc and often a core
        dump on the next operation to use stdio(3) or malloc(3) itself. See
        {spam}, {overrun}; see also {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {aliasing
        bug}, {precedence lossage}, {fandango on core}, {secondary damage}.

:owned:

        1. [cracker slang; often written "0wned"] Your condition when your
        machine has been cracked by a root exploit, and the attacker can do
        anything with it. This sense is occasionally used by hackers.

        2. [gamers, IRC, crackers] To be dominated, controlled, mastered.
        For example, if you make a statement completely and utterly false,
        and someone else corrects it in a way that humiliates or removes
        you, you are said to "have been owned" by that person. When
        referring to games, "I own0r UT GOTYE" means that one has mastered
        Unreal Tournament, Game of the Year Edition to such a level that
        even the hardest AI characters are mere lunchmeat, and that no
        ordinary mortal player would even receive a point in competition.
        There are several spelling variants: 0wned, 0wn0r3d, even pwn0r3d.
        Hackers do not use this sense.

  P

   P.O.D.

   packet over air

   padded cell

   page in

   page out

   pain in the net

   paper-net

   param

   PARC

   parent message

   parity errors

   Parkinson's Law of Data

   parm

   parse

   Pascal

   PascalCasing

   pastie

   patch

   patch pumpkin

   patch space

   path

   pathological

   payware

   PBD

   PD

   PDP-10

   PDP-11

   PDP-20

   PEBKAC

   peek

   pencil and paper

   Pentagram Pro

   Pentium

   peon

   percent-S

   perf

   perfect programmer syndrome

   Perl

   person of no account

   pessimal

   pessimizing compiler

   peta-

   pffft

   PFY

   phage

   phase

   phase of the moon

   phase-wrapping

   PHB

   phreaker

   phreaking

   pico-

   pig-tail

   pilot error

   ping

   Ping O' Death

   ping storm

   pink contract

   pink wire

   pipe

   pistol

   pixel sort

   pizza box

   plaid screen

   plain-ASCII

   Plan 9

   plan file

   platinum-iridium

   playpen

   playte

   plokta

   plonk

   plug-and-pray

   plugh

   plumbing

   PM

   point release

   point-and-drool interface

   pointy hat

   pointy-haired

   poke

   poll

   polygon pusher

   POM

   ponytail

   pop

   poser

   post

   postcardware

   Postel's Prescription

   posting

   postmaster

   PostScript

   pound on

   power cycle

   power hit

   pr0n

   precedence lossage

   pred

   prepend

   prestidigitization

   pretty pictures

   prettyprint

   pretzel key

   priesthood

   prime time

   print

   printing discussion

   priority interrupt

   profile

   progasm

   proggy

   proglet

   program

   Programmer's Cheer

   programming

   programming fluid

   propeller head

   propeller key

   proprietary

   protocol

   provocative maintenance

   prowler

   pseudo

   pseudoprime

   pseudosuit

   psychedelicware

   psyton

   pubic directory

   puff

   pumpkin holder

   pumpking

   punched card

   punt

   Purple Book

   purple wire

   push

   Python

:P.O.D.: /POD/

        [rare; sometimes `POD' without the periods] Acronym for `Piece Of
        Data' or `Plain Old Data' (as opposed to a code section, or a
        section containing mixed code and data). The latter expansion was in
        use by the C++ standards committee, for which it indicated a struct
        or class which only contains data (as in C), distinguished from one
        which has a constructor and member functions. There are things which
        you can do with a P.O.D. which you can't with a more general class.

:packet over air:

        [common among backbone ISPs] The protocol notionally being used by
        Internet data attempting to traverse a physical gap or break in the
        network, such as might be caused by a {fiber-seeking backhoe}. "I
        see why you're dropping packets. You seem to have a packet over air
        problem."

:padded cell: n.

        Where you put {luser}s so they can't hurt anything. A program that
        limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities
        of the host system (for example, the rsh(1) utility on USG Unix).
        Note that this is different from an {iron box} because it is overt
        and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others
        (and the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless
        naivete (see {naive}). Also padded cell environment.

:page in: v.

        [MIT]

        1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged
        out (see {page out}). Usually confined to the sarcastic comment:
        "Eric pages in, {film at 11}!"

        2. Syn. swap in; see {swap}.

:page out: vi.

        [MIT]

        1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to
        daydreaming or preoccupation. "Can you repeat that? I paged out for
        a minute." See {page in}. Compare {glitch}, {thinko}.

        2. Syn. swap out; see {swap}.

:pain in the net: n.

        A {flamer}.

:paper-net: n.

        Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a
        very slow, low-reliability network. Usenet {sig block}s sometimes
        include a "Paper-Net:" header just before the sender's postal
        address; common variants of this are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note
        that the standard {netiquette} guidelines discourage this practice
        as a waste of bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to
        casually use postal addresses. Compare {voice-net}, {snail-mail}.

:param: /p@ram'/, n.

        [common] Shorthand for parameter. See also {parm}; compare {arg},
        {var}.

:PARC: n.

        See {XEROX PARC}.

:parent message: n.

        What a {followup} follows up.

:parity errors: pl.n.

        Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness,
        usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next
        day hacking. "I need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot
        of parity errors." Derives from a relatively common but nearly
        always correctable transient error in memory hardware. It predates
        RAM; in fact, this term is reported to have already have been in use
        in its jargon sense back in the 1960s when magnetic cores ruled.
        Parity errors can also afflict mass storage and serial communication
        lines; this is more serious because not always correctable.

:Parkinson's Law of Data: prov.

        "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more
        memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. (The
        original 1958 Parkinson's Law described the structural tendency of
        bureaucracies to make work for themselves.) It has been observed
        since the mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends
        to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density
        available for constant dollars also tends to about double once every
        18 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the laws of physics
        guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.

:parm: /parm/, n.

        Further-compressed form of {param}. This term is an IBMism, and
        written use is almost unknown outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is
        more widely distributed, but the synonym {arg} is favored among
        hackers. Compare {arg}, {var}.

:parse: vt.

        1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other
        utterance (close to the standard English meaning). "That was the one
        I saw you." "I can't parse that."

        2. More generally, to understand or comprehend. "It's very simple;
        you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz." "I can't parse
        that."

        3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. "I object to
        parsing fish", means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced
        one is okay". A parsed fish has been deboned. There is some
        controversy over whether unparsed should mean `bony', or also mean
        `deboned'.

:Pascal: n.

        An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the CDC
        6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for elementary
        programming. This language, designed primarily to keep students from
        shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely restrictive from
        a general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a
        general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large
        family of languages including Modula-2 and Ada (see also
        {bondage-and-discipline language}). The hackish point of view on
        Pascal was probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its
        deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of
        {K&R} fame) entitled Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming
        Language, which was turned down by the technical journals but
        circulated widely via photocopies. It was eventually published in
        Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages, edited by Alan Feuer
        and Narain Gehani (Prentice-Hall, 1984). Part of his discussion is
        worth repeating here, because its criticisms are still apposite to
        Pascal itself after many years of improvement and could also stand
        as an indictment of many other bondage-and-discipline languages.
        (The entire essay is available at
        http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html.) At the end of a
        summary of the case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:

          9. There is no escape

          This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
          inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape
          its limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking
          when necessary. There is no way to replace the defective run-time
          environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler
          that defines the "standard procedures". The language is closed.

          People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal
          trap. Because the language is impotent, it must be extended. But
          each group extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it look
          like whatever language they really want. Extensions for separate
          compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types, internal
          static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit operators,
          etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but
          destroy its portability to others.

          I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond
          its original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language,
          suitable for teaching but not for real programming.

        Pascal has since been entirely displaced (mainly by {C}) from the
        niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems
        programming, and from its role as a teaching language by Java.

:PascalCasing:

        The practice of marking all word boundaries in long identifiers
        (such as ThisIsASampleVariable) (including the first letter of the
        identifier) with uppercase. Constrasts with camelCasing, in which
        the first character of the identifier is left in lowercase
        (thisIsASampleVariable), and with the traditional C style of short
        all-lower-case names with internal word breaks marked by an
        underscore (sample_var).

        Where these terms are used, they usually go with advice to use
        PascalCasing for public interfaces and camelCasing for private ones.
        They may have originated at Microsoft, but are in more general use
        in ECMA standards, among Java programmers, and elsewhere.

:pastie: /pay'stee/, n.

        An adhesive-backed label designed to be attached to a key on a
        keyboard to indicate some non-standard character which can be
        accessed through that key. Pasties are likely to be used in APL
        environments, where almost every key is associated with a special
        character. A pastie on the R key, for example, might remind the user
        that it is used to generate the r character. The term properly
        refers to nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in
        concession to indecent-exposure laws; compare {tits on a keyboard}.

:patch:

        1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a
        {quick-and-dirty} remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch
        may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated
        permanently into the program. Distinguished from a {diff} or {mod}
        by the fact that a patch is generated by more primitive means than
        the rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions
        modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made
        directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in
        an {HLL}. Compare {one-line fix}.

        2. vt. To insert a patch into a piece of code.

        3. [in the Unix world] n. A {diff} (sense 2).

        4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching
        program. IBM operating systems often receive updates to the
        operating system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. If you
        have modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the
        source. The patches might later be corrected by other patches on top
        of them (patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was
        often a convoluted {patch space} and headaches galore.

        5. [Unix] the patch(1) program, written by Larry Wall, which
        automatically applies a patch (sense 3) to a set of source code.

        There is a classic story of a {tiger team} penetrating a secure
        military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary
        patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't -- or don't --
        inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any {trap
        door}s or any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so they made a
        site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were official military
        types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM
        stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the
        trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right
        time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying
        documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager
        very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures.

:patch pumpkin: n.

        [Perl hackers] A notional token passed around among the members of a
        project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one has the exclusive
        authority to make changes on the project's master source tree. The
        implicit assumption is that pumpkin holder status is temporary and
        rotates periodically among senior project members.

        This term comes from the Perl development community, but has been
        sighted elsewhere. It derives from a stuffed-toy pumpkin that was
        passed around at a development shop years ago as the access control
        for a shared backup-tape drive.

:patch space: n.

        An unused block of bits left in a binary so that it can later be
        modified by insertion of machine-language instructions there
        (typically, the patch space is modified to contain new code, and the
        superseded code is patched to contain a jump or call to the patch
        space). The near-universal use of compilers and interpreters has
        made this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside IBM
        shops. See {patch} (sense 4), {zap} (sense 4), {hook}.

:path: n.

        1. A {bang path} or explicitly routed Internet address; a
        node-by-node specification of a link between two machines. Though
        these are now obsolete as a form of addressing, they still show up
        in diagnostics and trace headers occasionally (e.g. in NNTP
        headers).

        2. [Unix] A filename, fully specified relative to the root directory
        (as opposed to relative to the current directory; the latter is
        sometimes called a relative path). This is also called a pathname.

        3. [Unix and MS-DOS/Windows] The search path, an environment
        variable specifying the directories in which the {shell}
        (COMMAND.COM, under MS-DOS) should look for commands. Other, similar
        constructs abound under Unix (for example, the C preprocessor has a
        search path it uses in looking for #include files).

:pathological: adj.

        1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly
        atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a weakness
        or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that can be
        broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs are
        very unlikely to occur in practice.

        2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully
        engineered as a worst case. The implication in both senses is that
        the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to
        explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order to come up with
        such a crazy example.

        3. Also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances. "If the
        network is down and comes up halfway through the execution of that
        command by root, the system may just crash." "Yes, but that's a
        pathological case." Often used to dismiss the case from discussion,
        with the implication that the consequences are acceptable, since
        they will happen so infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem
        worth going to the extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).

:payware: /pay'weir/, n.

        Commercial software. Oppose {shareware} or {freeware}.

:PBD: /PBD/, n.

        [abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage'] Applied to bug reports
        revealing places where the program was obviously broken by an
        incompetent or short-sighted programmer. Compare {UBD}; see also
        {brain-damaged}.

:PD: /PD/, adj.

        [common] Abbreviation for `public domain', applied to software
        distributed over {Usenet} and from Internet archive sites. Much of
        this software is not in fact public domain in the legal sense but
        travels under various copyrights granting reproduction and use
        rights to anyone who can {snarf} a copy. See {copyleft}.

:PDP-10: n.

        [Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine that made
        {timesharing} real. It looms large in hacker folklore because of its
        adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing facilities
        and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford, and CMU. Some
        aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field
        instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10 was
        eventually eclipsed by the {VAX} machines (descendants of the
        {PDP-11}) when {DEC} recognized that the 10 and {VAX} product lines
        were competing with each other and decided to concentrate its
        software development effort on the more profitable {VAX}. The
        machine was finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983, following the
        failure of the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a viable new model.
        (Some attempts by other companies to market clones came to nothing;
        see {Foonly} and {Mars}.) This event spelled the doom of {ITS} and
        the technical cultures that had spawned the original Jargon File,
        but by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of honorable
        old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10. See
        {TOPS-10}, {ITS}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {pop}, {push}. See
        also http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.

:PDP-11:

        Possibly the single most successful minicomputer design in history,
        a favorite of hackers for many years, and the first major Unix
        machine, The first PDP-11s (the 11/15 and 11/20) shipped in 1970
        from {DEC}; the last (11/93 and 11/94) in 1990. Along the way, the
        11 gave birth to the {VAX}, strongly influenced the design of
        microprocessors such as the Motorola 6800 and Intel 386, and left a
        permanent imprint on the C language (which has an odd preference for
        octal embedded in its syntax because of the way PDP-11 machine
        instructions were formatted). There is a history site.

:PDP-20: n.

        The most famous computer that never was. {PDP-10} computers running
        the {TOPS-10} operating system were labeled `DECsystem-10' as a way
        of differentiating them from the {PDP-11}. Later on, those systems
        running {TOPS-20} were labeled `DECSYSTEM-20' (the block capitals
        being the result of a lawsuit brought against DEC by Singer, which
        once made a computer called `system-10'), but contrary to popular
        lore there was never a `PDP-20'; the only difference between a 10
        and a 20 was the operating system and the color of the paint. Most
        (but not all) machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted `Basil
        Blue', whereas most TOPS-20 machines were painted `Chinese Red'
        (often mistakenly called orange).

:PEBKAC: /peb'kak/

        [Abbrev., "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"] Used by
        support people, particularly at call centers and help desks. Not
        used with the public. Denotes pilot error as the cause of the crash,
        especially stupid errors that even a {luser} could figure out. Very
        derogatory. Usage: "Did you ever figure out why that guy couldn't
        print?" "Yeah, he kept cancelling the operation before it could
        finish. PEBKAC". See also {ID10T}. Compare {pilot error}, {UBD}.

:peek: n.,vt.

        (and {poke}) The commands in most microcomputer BASICs for directly
        accessing memory contents at an absolute address; often extended to
        mean the corresponding constructs in any {HLL} (peek reads memory,
        poke modifies it). Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros used to
        consist of peeking around memory, more or less at random, to find
        the location where the system keeps interesting stuff. Long (and
        variably accurate) lists of such addresses for various computers
        circulated. The results of pokes at these addresses may be highly
        useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat, or (most likely) total
        {lossage} (see {killer poke}).

        Since a {real operating system} provides useful, higher-level
        services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on
        micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory
        groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is diagnostic
        of the {newbie}. (Of course, OS kernels often have to do exactly
        this; a real kernel hacker would unhesitatingly, if unportably,
        assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and indirect
        through it.)

:pencil and paper: n.

        An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by
        depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent
        developments in paper-based technology include improved `write-once'
        update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls
        to deposit colored pigment. All these devices require an operator
        skilled at so-called `handwriting' technique. These technologies are
        ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most
        hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of
        keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps
        for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and
        often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.

:Pentagram Pro: n.

        A humorous corruption of "Pentium Pro", with a Satanic reference,
        implying that the chip is inherently {evil}. Often used with "666
        MHz"; there is a T-shirt. See {Pentium}

:Pentium: n.

        The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486. The
        name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a
        number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according
        to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like titanium". Among
        hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See also {Pentagram
        Pro}.

        Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor
        the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling
        a chip with "hex" or "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been
        called Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium IV.

:peon: n.

        A person with no special ({root} or {wheel}) privileges on a
        computer system. "I can't create an account on foovax for you; I'm
        only a peon there."

:percent-S: /persent' es/, n.

        [From the code in C's printf(3) library function used to insert an
        arbitrary string argument] An unspecified person or object. "I was
        just talking to some percent-s in administration." Compare {random}.

:perf: /perf/, n.

        Syn. {chad} (sense 1). The term perfory /per'f@-ree/ is also heard.
        The term {perf} may also refer to the perforations themselves,
        rather than the chad they produce when torn (philatelists use it
        this way).

:perfect programmer syndrome: n.

        Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human
        error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native
        ability but relatively little experience (especially new graduates;
        their perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent
        performance at solving {toy problem}s). "Of course my program is
        correct, there is no need to test it." "Yes, I can see there may be
        a problem here, but I'll never type rm -r / while in {root mode}."

:Perl: /perl/, n.

        [Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically
        Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry
        Wall, author of patch(1) and rn(1)). Superficially resembles {awk},
        but is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of sed(1)
        and shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix
        sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally
        consider it one of the {languages of choice}, and it is by far the
        most widely used tool for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has
        been described, in a parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the
        {Swiss-Army chainsaw} of Unix programming. Though Perl is very
        useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or {elegant};
        people who like clean, spare design generally prefer {Python}. See
        also {Camel Book}, {TMTOWTDI}.

:person of no account: n.

        [University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring to a
        person with no {network address}, frequently to forestall confusion.
        Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no
        account, but he used to be bill@random.com". Compare {return from
        the dead}.

:pessimal: /pes'iml/, adj.

        [Latin-based antonym for optimal] Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal
        situation." Also pessimize vt. To make as bad as possible. These
        words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for optimal and optimize,
        but for some reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries,
        although `pessimize' is listed in the OED.

:pessimizing compiler: /pes'@mi:z`ing k@mpi:l'r/, n.

        [antonym of techspeak `optimizing compiler'] A compiler that
        produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or
        obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is
        actually trying to optimize the program, but through excessive
        cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have
        been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.

:peta-: /pe't@/

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:pffft: interj.

        [IRC] A metamorphic expletive which can be used to convey emotion,
        particularly shock or surprise, disgust or anger. The amplitude of
        the reaction can be measured by counting intermediary fs. For
        example:

        <jrandom> someone stole my hotdog
        <fred> pffft

        <frodo> Cthulhu stole my hotdog
        <joe> pffffffffffffft!

:PFY: n.

        [Usenet; common, originally from the {BOFH} mythos] Abbreviation for
        Pimply-Faced Youth. A {BOFH} in training, esp. one apprenticed to an
        elder BOFH aged in evil.

:phage: n.

        A program that modifies other programs or databases in unauthorized
        ways; esp. one that propagates a {virus} or {Trojan horse}. See also
        {worm}, {mockingbird}. The analogy, of course, is with phage viruses
        in biology.

:phase:

        1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to
        the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among people who often
        work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not
        uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a
        regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've been getting in about 8PM
        lately, but I'm going to {wrap around} to the day schedule by
        Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes
        said to be in night mode. (The term day mode is also (but less
        frequently) used, meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10
        to 6).) The act of altering one's cycle is called changing phase;
        phase shifting has also been recently reported from Caltech.

        2. change phase the hard way: To stay awake for a very long time in
        order to get into a different phase.

        3. change phase the easy way: To stay asleep, etc. However, some
        claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy,
        and that it is shortening your day or night that is really hard (see
        {wrap around}). The `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who cross many
        time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the
        strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers
        who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short
        period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very
        like jet lag without traveling.

:phase of the moon: n.

        Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to
        depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or
        that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been
        able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open
        in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the
        moon." See also {heisenbug}.

        True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really did
        depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that
        had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate
        an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this
        routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would
        print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally
        the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow
        onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the
        program would {barf}. The length of the first line depended on both
        the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification
        when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on
        the phase of the moon!

        The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an
        example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but
        the typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been described as the
        phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.

        However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN
        (European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors
        in experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the
        formidable amount of data generated by such devices is heavily
        processed by computers before being seen by humans, many people
        suggested the software was somehow sensitive to the phase of the
        moon. A few desperate engineers discovered the truth; the error
        turned out to be the result of a tiny change in the geometry of the
        27km circumference ring, physically caused by the deformation of the
        Earth by the passage of the Moon! This story has entered physics
        folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and as an
        example of the relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to
        the most modern science.

:phase-wrapping: n.

        [MIT] Syn. {wrap around}, sense 2.

:PHB: /PHB/

        [Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss".
        From the {Dilbert} character, the archetypal halfwitted
        middle-{management} type. See also {pointy-haired}.

:phreaker: /freek'r/, n.

        One who engages in {phreaking}. See also {blue box}.

:phreaking: /freek'ing/, n.

        [from `phone phreak']

        1. The art and science of {cracking} the phone network (so as, for
        example, to make free long-distance calls).

        2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially,
        but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see {cracking}).

        At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers;
        there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual
        game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services
        was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker
        community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground
        networks of their own through such media as the legendary TAP
        Newsletter. This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider
        dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less
        responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone
        network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way
        of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal
        acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments
        of gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few
        old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in,
        but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of
        the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.

:pico-: pref.

        [SI: a quantifier meaning  10^-12] Smaller than {nano-}; used in
        the same rather loose connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}. This
        usage is not yet common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but
        should be instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also
        {quantifiers}, {micro-}.

:pig-tail:

        [radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on each end
        for converting between one connector type and another. Common
        pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables to
        connect PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network cable.

:pilot error: n.

        [Sun: from aviation] A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece
        of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare {UBD}).
        "Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate
        bogus headers." "That's not a bug, that's pilot error. His
        sendmail.cf is hosed." Compare {PEBKAC}, {UBD}, {ID10T}.

:ping:

        [from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse]

        1. n. Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a
        computer to check for the presence and alertness of another. The
        Unix command ping(8) can be used to do this manually (note that
        ping(8)'s author denies the widespread folk etymology that the name
        was ever intended as an acronym for `Packet INternet Groper').
        Occasionally used as a phone greeting. See {ACK}, also {ENQ}.

        2. vt. To verify the presence of.

        3. vt. To get the attention of.

        4. vt. To send a message to all members of a {mailing list}
        requesting an {ACK} (in order to verify that everybody's addresses
        are reachable). "We haven't heard much of anything from Geoff, but
        he did respond with an ACK both times I pinged jargon-friends."

        5. n. A quantum packet of happiness. People who are very happy tend
        to exude pings; furthermore, one can intentionally create pings and
        aim them at a needy party (e.g., a depressed person). This sense of
        ping may appear as an exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting
        a quantum of happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of
        happiness). The form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people
        who exude pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language,
        "pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's
        a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose {blargh}.

        The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by
        Steve Hayman on the Usenet group comp.sys.next. He was trying to
        isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to a
        NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console
        after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting
        through. So he used the sound-recording feature on the NeXT, then
        wrote a script that repeatedly invoked ping(8), listened for an
        echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet. Result?
        A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over, "Ping
        ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was up. He turned the
        volume to maximum, ferreted through the building with one ear
        cocked, and found a faulty tee connector in no time.

:Ping O' Death: n.

        A notorious {exploit} that (when first discovered) could be easily
        used to crash a wide variety of machines by overrunning size limits
        in their TCP/IP stacks. First revealed in late 1996. The open-source
        Unix community patched its systems to remove the vulnerability
        within days or weeks, the closed-source OS vendors generally took
        months. While the difference in response times repeated a pattern
        familiar from other security incidents, the accompanying glare of
        Web-fueled publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors
        and so passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer
        to any nudge delivered by network wizards over the network that
        causes bad things to happen on the system being nudged. For the full
        story on the original exploit, see
        http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html. Compare {kamikaze
        packet} and 'Chernobyl packet.'

:ping storm: n.

        A form of {DoS attack} consisting of a flood of {ping} requests
        (normally used to check network conditions) designed to disrupt the
        normal activity of a system. This act is sometimes called ping
        lashing or ping flood. Compare {mail storm}, {broadcast storm}.

:pink contract:

        [spamfighters: from the color of the tinned meat] A contract from an
        Internet service provider to a spammer exempting the spammer from
        the usual terms of service prohibiting spamming. Usually pink
        contracts come about because ISPs can charge the spammer a great
        deal more than they would a normal client.

:pink wire: n.

        [from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment] As {blue wire},
        but used in military applications.

        2. vi. To add a pink wire to a board.

:pipe: n.

        [common] Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in
        context, the expansion "bit pipe" is understood. A "fat pipe" is a
        line with T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 modem might be
        heard to complain "I need a bigger pipe".

:pistol: n.

        [IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in
        the foot. "Unix rm * makes such a nice pistol!"

:pixel sort: n.

        [Commodore users] Any compression routine which irretrievably loses
        valuable data in the process of {crunch}ing it. Disparagingly used
        for `lossy' methods such as JPEG. The theory, of course, is that
        these methods are only used on photographic images in which minor
        loss-of-data is not visible to the human eye. The term pixel sort
        implies distrust of this theory. Compare {bogo-sort}.

:pizza box: n.

        [Sun] The largish thin box housing the electronics in (especially
        Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its size and shape
        and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.

        Two-meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called
        pizzas, and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to as a
        pizza oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days just the
        disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is.

:plaid screen: n.

        [XEROX PARC] A `special effect' that occurs when certain kinds of
        {memory smash}es overwrite the control blocks or image memory of a
        bit-mapped display. The term "salt and pepper" may refer to a
        different pattern of similar origin. Though the term as coined at
        PARC refers to the result of an error, some of the {X} demos induce
        plaid-screen effects deliberately as a {display hack}.

:plain-ASCII: /playnas'kee/

        Syn. {flat-ASCII}.

:Plan 9: n.

        In the late 1980s, researchers at Bell Labs (especially Rob Pike of
        Kernighan & Pike fame) got bored with the limitations of UNIX and
        decided to reimplement the entire system. The result was called Plan
        9 in "the Bell Labs tradition of selecting names that make
        marketeers wince." The developers also wished to pay homage to the
        famous film, "Plan 9 From Outer Space", considered by some to be the
        worst movie ever made. The source is available for download under
        open-source terms. The developers and a small fan base hang out at
        comp.os.plan9, where one can occasionally hear "If you want UNIX,
        you know where to find it"

:plan file: n.

        [Unix] On systems that support {finger}, the .plan file in a user's
        home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature
        was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers
        apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been
        turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes
        (like a {sig block}). See also {Hacking X for Y}.

        A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of
        "scrolling plan files" which are one-dimensional animations made
        using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and
        line feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the
        {finger} command will (for security reasons; see {letterbomb}) not
        pass the escape character.

        Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and some
        sites have started competitions to find who can create the longest
        running, funniest, and most original animations. Various animation
        characters include:

        +----------------------------------+
        | Centipede:              | mmmmme |
        |-------------------------+--------|
        | Lorry/Truck:            | oo-oP  |
        |-------------------------+--------|
        | Andalusian Video Snail: | _@/    |
        +----------------------------------+

        and a compiler (ASP) is available on Usenet for producing them. See
        also {twirling baton}.

:platinum-iridium: adj.

        Standard, against which all others of the same category are
        measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has
        actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault
        beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights
        and Measures near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960, the meter was defined
        to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar
        kept in that same vault -- this replaced an earlier definition as
        10^-7 times the distance between the North Pole and the Equator
        along a meridian through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based
        on an inexact value of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to
        1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red
        line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the
        length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time
        interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the only
        unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact.
        But this will have to change; in 2003 it was revealed that the
        reference kilogram has been shedding mass over time, and is down by
        50 micrograms.) "This garbage-collection algorithm has been tested
        against the platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare {golden}.

:playpen: n.

        [IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare {salt mines}.

:playte: /playt/

        16 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {byte}. Usage: rare and
        extremely silly. See also {dynner} and {crumb}. General discussion
        of such terms is under {nybble}.

:plokta: /plok't@/, v.

        [acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To Abort] To press random keys in an
        attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta when
        the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to
        figure out if the system is just sluggish or really hung. Plokta can
        also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for
        a particular operation. Someone going into plokta mode usually
        places both hands flat on the keyboard and mashes them down, hoping
        for some useful response.

        A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in mail
        messages or Usenet articles from new users -- the text might end
        with

                ^X^C
                q
                quit
                :q
                ^C
                end
                x
                exit
                ZZ
                ^D
                ?
                help

        as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the
        incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message....

:plonk: excl.,vt.

        [Usenet: possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for cheap
        booze, or `plonker' for someone behaving stupidly (latter is lit.
        equivalent to Yiddish schmuck)] The sound a {newbie} makes as he
        falls to the bottom of a {kill file}. While it originated in the
        {newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is
        now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public ridicule.

:plug-and-pray: adj.,vi.

        Parody of the techspeak term plug-and-play, describing a PC
        peripheral card which is claimed to have no need for hardware
        configuration via jumpers or DIP switches, and which should work as
        soon as it is inserted in the PC. Unfortunately, even the PCI bus is
        all too often not up to pulling this off reliably, and people who
        have to do installation or troubleshoot PCs soon find themselves
        longing for the jumpers and switches.

:plugh: /ploogh/, v.

        [from the {ADVENT} game] See {xyzzy}.

:plumbing: n.

        [Unix] Term used for {shell} code, so called because of the
        prevalence of pipelines that feed the output of one program to the
        input of another. Under Unix, user utilities can often be
        implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of
        pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script;
        this is much less effort than writing C every time, and the
        capability is considered one of Unix's major winning features. A few
        other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS support similar facilities. Esp.:
        used in the construction hairy plumbing (see {hairy}). "You can
        kluge together a basic spell-checker out of sort(1), comm(1), and
        tr(1) with a little plumbing." See also {tee}.

:PM: /PM/

        1. v. (from preventive maintenance) To bring down a machine for
        inspection or test purposes. See {provocative maintenance}; see also
        {scratch monkey}.

        2. n. Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an {elephantine} OS/2
        graphical user interface.

:point release: n.

        [common] A minor release of a software project, especially one
        intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features.
        The term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and is
        generally used with respect to {open source} projects being
        developed in {bazaar} mode.

:point-and-drool interface: n.

        Parody of the techspeak term point-and-click interface, describing a
        windows, icons, and mouse-based interface such as is found on the
        Macintosh. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is
        only suitable for idiots. See {for the rest of us}, {WIMP
        environment}, {Macintrash}, {drool-proof paper}. Also
        point-and-grunt interface.

:pointy hat: n.

        1. Syn. {wizard hat}. This synonym specifically refers to the
        wizards of Unseen University in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series
        of humorous fantasies; these books are extremely popular among
        hackers.

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

:pointy-haired: adj.

        [after the character in the {Dilbert} comic strip] Describes the
        extreme form of the property that separates {suit}s and
        {marketroid}s from hackers. Compare {brain-dead}; {demented}; see
        {PHB}. Always applied to people, never to ideas. The plural form is
        often used as a noun. "The pointy-haireds ordered me to use Windows
        NT, but I set up a Linux server with Samba instead."

:poke: n.,vt.

        See {peek}.

:poll: v.,n.

        1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line,
        sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has
        been registered.

        2. To repeatedly call or check with someone: "I keep polling him,
        but he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out."

        3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for a takeout order daily."

:polygon pusher: n.

        A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical
        layout level (which requires drawing lots of multi-colored
        polygons). Also rectangle slinger.

:POM: /POM/, n.

        Common abbreviation for {phase of the moon}. Usage: usually in the
        phrase POM-dependent, which means {flaky}.

:ponytail: n.

        1. A hairstyle in which long hair is held back so as to hang down
        like a pony's tail.

        2. A descriptive term for a man having a ponytail hairstyle, or such
        character traits as might be associated with having a ponytail, eg:
        effeminacy, narcissism, undue concern with fashion etc.

        3. A general term used by hackers for 'creatives': advertising
        copywriters, graphic designers, video compositors, users
        characterised by a preference for the Macintosh, recreational drug
        use, and better sex lives than programmers.

        4. A derogatory term for web designers and other persons
        peripherally associated with IT projects, devoid of programming
        skills and dismissed as being concerned with visual presentation to
        the exclusion of actual technical reality.

:pop: /pop/

        [from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact
        that procedure return addresses are usually saved on the stack]
        (also capitalized `POP')

        1. vt. To remove something from a {stack}. If a person says he/she
        has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally
        finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things
        hanging overhead.

        2. When a discussion gets to a level of detail so deep that the main
        point of the discussion is being lost, someone will shout "Pop!",
        meaning "Get back up to a higher level!" The shout is frequently
        accompanied by an upthrust arm with a finger pointing to the
        ceiling.

        3. [all-caps, as `POP'] Point of Presence, a bank of dial-in lines
        allowing customers to make (local) calls into an ISP. This is
        borderline techspeak.

:poser: n.

        [from French poseur] A {wannabee}; not hacker slang, but used among
        crackers, phreaks and {warez d00dz}. Not as negative as {lamer} or
        {leech}. Probably derives from a similar usage among punk-rockers
        and metalheads, putting down those who "talk the talk but don't walk
        the walk".

:post: v.

        To send a message to a {mailing list} or {newsgroup}. Distinguished
        in context from mail; one might ask, for example: "Are you going to
        post the patch or mail it to known users?"

:postcardware: n.

        A kind of {shareware} that borders on {freeware}, in that the author
        requests only that satisfied users send a postcard of their home
        town or something. (This practice, silly as it might seem, serves to
        remind users that they are otherwise getting something for nothing,
        and may also be psychologically related to real estate `sales' in
        which $1 changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a
        gift.)

:Postel's Prescription:

        [proposed] Several of the key Internet {RFC}s, especially 1122 and
        791 contain a piece of advice due to Jon Postel, which is most often
        stated as:

          "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
          send."

        That is, a well-engineered implementation of any of the Internet
        protocols should be willing to deal with marginal and
        imperfectly-formed inputs, but should not assume that the program on
        the other end (that is, the program dealing with the well-engineered
        implementation's output) will be anything other than rigid and
        inflexible, and perhaps even incomplete or downright buggy.

        This property is valuable because a network of programs adhering to
        it will be much more robust in the presence of any uncertainties in
        the protocol specifications, or any individual implementor's failure
        to understand those specifications perfectly. Though the policy does
        tend to accommodate broken implementations it is held to more
        important to get the communication flowing than to immediately (but
        terminally) diagnose the broken implementations at the expense of
        the people trying to use them.

        The principle is a well-known one in the design of programs that
        handle Internet wire protocols, especially network relays and
        servers, and it is regularly applied by extension in any situation
        where two or more separately-implemented pieces of software are
        supposed to interoperate even though the various implementors have
        never talked to each other and have absolutely nothing whatsoever in
        common other than having all read the same protocol specification.
        The principle travels under several different names, including "the
        Internet credo", "the IETF maxim", "the Internet Engineering
        Principle", and "the liberal/conservative rule"; the [proposed] term
        "Postel' Prescription" is a tribute to its inventor, the first RFC
        editor and (until his untimely death) probably the single most
        respected individual in the Internet engineering community.

:posting: n.

        Noun corresp. to v.: {post} (but note that {post} can be nouned).
        Distinguished from a `letter' or ordinary {email} message by the
        fact that it is broadcast rather than point-to-point. It is not
        clear whether messages sent to a small mailing list are postings or
        email; perhaps the best dividing line is that if you don't know the
        names of all the potential recipients, it is a posting.

:postmaster: n.

        The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the
        network. Often, but not always, the same as the {admin}. The
        Internet standard for electronic mail ({RFC}-822) requires each
        machine to have a `postmaster' address; usually it is aliased to
        this person.

:PostScript: n.

        A page description language, based on work originally done by John
        Gaffney at Evans and Sutherland in 1976, evolving through `JaM'
        (`John and Martin', Martin Newell) at {XEROX PARC}, and finally
        implemented in its current form by John Warnock et al. after he and
        Chuck Geschke founded Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1982. PostScript
        gets its leverage by using a full programming language, rather than
        a series of low-level escape sequences, to describe an image to be
        printed on a laser printer or other output device (in this it
        parallels {EMACS}, which exploited a similar insight about editing
        tasks). It is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly
        rasterization, from Bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality fonts
        at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that
        hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task). Hackers
        consider PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time,
        and the combination of technical merits and widespread availability
        has made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output.

:pound on: vt.

        Syn. {bang on}.

:power cycle: vt.

        (also, cycle power or just cycle) To power off a machine and then
        power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of
        {hung} or {gronk}ed state. See also {Big Red Switch}. Compare
        {Vulcan nerve pinch}, {bounce} (sense 4), and {boot}, and see the
        Some AI Koans (in Appendix A) about Tom Knight and the novice.

:power hit: n.

        A spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine; a
        power {glitch}. These can cause crashes and even permanent damage to
        your machine(s).

:pr0n: //

        [Usenet, IRC] Pornography. Originally this referred only to Internet
        porn but since then it has expanded to refer to just about any kind.
        The term comes from the {warez kiddies} tendency to replace letters
        with numbers. At some point on IRC someone mistyped, swapping the
        middle two characters, and the name stuck. It then propagated over
        into mainstream hacker usage. New versions of the Mozilla web
        browser internally refer to the image library as "libpr0n". Compare
        {filk}, {grilf}, {hing} and {newsfroup}.

:precedence lossage: /pre's@dens los'@j/, n.

        [C programmers] Coding error in an expression due to unexpected
        grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. Used
        esp. of certain common coding errors in C due to the nonintuitively
        low precedence levels of &, |, ^, <<, and >> (for this reason,
        experienced C programmers deliberately forget the language's
        {baroque} precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). Can
        always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. {LISP} fans enjoy
        pointing out that this can't happen in their favorite language,
        which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit
        parentheses everywhere. See {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory
        smash}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {overrun screw}.

:pred: //

        [Usenet; orig. fr. the Island MUD via Oxford University]
        Abbreviation for "predictable", used to signify or preempt responses
        that are extremely predictable but have to be filled in for the sake
        of form (the phrase is bracketed by <pred>...</pred>). X-Pred
        headers in mail or news serve the same end. Figuring out the
        connection between the X-Pred tagline and the thread is part of the
        entertainment. For example, it is said that any thread about
        taxation must contain a reference to Raquel Welch, if only to stop
        other people from mentioning her. This is allegedly due to a Monty
        Python sketch where a character declares that he would tax Raquel
        Welch, and he has a feeling she would tax him.

:prepend: /pree`pend'/, vt.

        [by analogy with `append'] To prefix. As with `append' (but not
        `prefix' or `suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always the
        thing being added and not the original word (or character string, or
        whatever). "If you prepend a semicolon to the line, the translation
        routine will pass it through unaltered."

:prestidigitization: /pres`t@di`j@ti:zay'sh@n/, n.

        1. The act of putting something into digital notation via sleight of
        hand.

        2. Data entry through legerdemain.

:pretty pictures: n.

        [scientific computation] The next step up from {numbers}.
        Interesting graphical output from a program that may not have any
        sensible relationship to the system the program is intended to
        model. Good for showing to {management}.

:prettyprint: /prit'eeprint/, v.

        (alt.: pretty-print)

        1. To generate `pretty' human-readable output from a {hairy}
        internal representation; esp. used for the process of {grind}ing
        (sense 1) program code, and most esp. for LISP code.

        2. To format in some particularly slick and nontrivial way.

:pretzel key: n.

        [Mac users] See {feature key}.

:priesthood: n.

        [TMRC; obs.] The select group of system managers responsible for the
        operation and maintenance of a batch computer system. On these
        computers, a user never had direct access to a computer, but had to
        submit his/her data and programs to a priest for execution. Results
        were returned days or even weeks later.

:prime time: n.

        [from TV programming] Normal high-usage hours on a system or
        network. Back in the days of big timesharing machines `prime time'
        was when lots of people were competing for limited cycles, usually
        the day shift. Avoidance of prime time was traditionally given as a
        major reason for {night mode} hacking. The term fell into disuse
        during the early PC era, but has been revived to refer to times of
        day or evening at which the Internet tends to be heavily loaded,
        making Web access slow. The hackish tendency to late-night {hacking
        run}s has changed not a bit.

:print: v.

        To output, even if to a screen. If a hacker says that a program
        "printed a message", he means this; if he refers to printing a file,
        he probably means it in the conventional sense of writing to a
        hardcopy device (compounds like `print job' and `printout', on the
        other hand, always refer to the latter). This very common term is
        likely a holdover from the days when printing terminals were the
        norm, perpetuated by programming language constructs like {C}'s
        printf(3). See senses 1 and 2 of {tty}.

:printing discussion: n.

        [XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally
        pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to
        all.

:priority interrupt: n.

        [from the hardware term] Describes any stimulus compelling enough to
        yank one right out of {hack mode}. Classically used to describe
        being dragged away by an {SO} for immediate sex, but may also refer
        to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the
        near vicinity. Also called an {NMI} (non-maskable interrupt),
        especially in PC-land.

:profile: n.

        1. A control file for a program, esp. a text file automatically read
        from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified
        by the user in order to customize the program's behavior. Used to
        avoid {hardcoded} choices (see also {dot file}, {rc file}).

        2. [techspeak] A report on the amounts of time spent in each routine
        of a program, used to find and {tune} away the {hot spot}s in it.
        This sense is often verbed. Some profiling modes report units other
        than time (such as call counts) and/or report at granularities other
        than per-routine, but the idea is similar. 3.[techspeak] A subset of
        a standard used for a particular purpose. This sense confuses
        hackers who wander into the weird world of ISO standards no end!

:progasm: /proh'gazm/, n.

        [University of Wisconsin] The euphoria experienced upon the
        completion of a program or other computer-related project. For
        example, the rush you get when you finally run the code you've been
        hacking for the past week and it works first time. (The quality of
        the experience is directly proportional to the complexity of the
        code and inversely proportional to the amount of debugging it took
        to get the code working.) Compare {geekasm}.

:proggy: n.

        1. Any computer program that is considered a full application.

        2. Any computer program that is made up of or otherwise contains
        {proglet}s.

        3. Any computer program that is large enough to be normally
        distributed as an RPM or {tarball}.

:proglet: /prog'let/, n.

        [UK] A short extempore program written to meet an immediate,
        transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more than a dozen
        lines long, and containing no subroutines. The largest amount of
        code that can be written off the top of one's head, that does not
        need any editing, and that runs correctly the first time (this
        amount varies significantly according to one's skill and the
        language one is using). Compare {toy program}, {noddy}, {one-liner
        wars}.

:program: n.

        1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's
        input into error messages.

        2. An exercise in experimental epistemology.

        3. A form of art, ostensibly intended for the instruction of
        computers, which is nevertheless almost inevitably a failure if
        other programmers can't understand it.

:Programmer's Cheer:

        "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte!
        Byte! Byte!" A joke so old it has hair on it.

:programming: n.

        1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of
        on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). "Bloody
        instructions which, being taught, return to plague their inventor"
        (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7)

        2. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with
        fewer opportunities for reward.

        3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on.

        4. The least fun you can have with your clothes off.

:programming fluid: n.

        1. Coffee.

        2. Cola.

        3. Any caffeinacious stimulant. Many hackers consider these
        essential for those all-night hacking runs. See {wirewater}.

:propeller head: n.

        Used by hackers, this is syn. with {geek}. Non-hackers sometimes use
        it to describe all techies. Prob. derives from SF fandom's tradition
        (originally invented by old-time fan Ray Faraday Nelson) of
        propeller beanies as fannish insignia (though nobody actually wears
        them except as a joke).

:propeller key: n.

        [Mac users] See {feature key}.

:proprietary: adj.

        1. In {marketroid}-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with
        exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's own
        hardware or software designers.

        2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product
        not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the
        customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service
        and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer
        in. Often used in the phrase "proprietary crap".

        3. Synonym for closed-source or non-free, e.g. software issued
        without license rights permitting the public to independently
        review, develop and redistribute it.

        Proprietary software should be distinguished from commercial
        software. It is possible for software to be commercial (that is,
        intended to make a profit for the producers) without being
        proprietary. The reverse is also possible, for example in
        binary-only freeware.

:protocol: n.

        As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper
        form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in
        which one should use the forks in a Russian-style place setting;
        hackers don't care about such things. It is used instead to describe
        any set of rules that allow different machines or pieces of software
        to coordinate with each other without ambiguity. So, for example, it
        does include niceties about the proper form for addressing packets
        on a network or the order in which one should use the forks in the
        Dining Philosophers Problem. It implies that there is some common
        message format and an accepted set of primitives or commands that
        all parties involved understand, and that transactions among them
        follow predictable logical sequences. See also {handshaking}, {do
        protocol}.

:provocative maintenance: n.

        [common ironic mutation of preventive maintenance] Actions performed
        upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the
        system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too
        often performed by a {field servoid} who doesn't know what he is
        doing; such `maintenance' often induces problems, or otherwise
        results in the machine's remaining in an unusable state for an
        indeterminate amount of time. See also {scratch monkey}.

:prowler: n.

        [Unix] A {daemon} that is run periodically (typically once a week)
        to seek out and erase {core} files, truncate administrative
        logfiles, nuke lost+found directories, and otherwise clean up the
        {cruft} that tends to pile up in the corners of a file system. See
        also {reaper}, {skulker}.

:pseudo: /soo'doh/, n.

        [Usenet: truncation of `pseudonym']

        1. An electronic-mail or {Usenet} persona adopted by a human for
        amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of
        one's net.behavior; a `nom de Usenet', often associated with forged
        postings designed to conceal message origins. Perhaps the best-known
        and funniest hoax of this type is {B1FF}. See also {tentacle}.

        2. Notionally, a {flamage}-generating AI program simulating a Usenet
        user. Many flamers have been accused of actually being such
        entities, despite the fact that no AI program of the required
        sophistication yet exists. However, in 1989 there was a famous
        series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based
        travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known
        flamers; it was based on large samples of their back postings
        (compare {Dissociated Press}). A significant number of people were
        fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was
        settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the
        hoax.

:pseudoprime: n.

        A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point
        missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from number theory: a
        number that passes a certain kind of "primality test" may be called
        a pseudoprime (all primes pass any such test, but so do some
        composite numbers), and any number that passes several is, in some
        sense, almost certainly prime. The hacker backgammon usage stems
        from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it
        will do the same job unless you are unlucky.

:pseudosuit: /soo'dohs[y]oot`/, n.

        A {suit} wannabee; a hacker who has decided that he wants to be in
        management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats,
        and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. It's his funeral. See also
        {lobotomy}.

:psychedelicware: /si:`k@del'ikweir/, n.

        [UK] Syn. {display hack}. See also {smoking clover}.

:psyton: /si:'ton/, n.

        [TMRC] The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The
        probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of
        psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is
        why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching.
        [This term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see
        also {quantum bogodynamics}. --ESR]

:pubic directory: /pyoob'ik d@rekt@ree/, n.

        [NYU] (also pube directory /pyoob' d@rek't@ree/) The pub (public)
        directory on a machine that allows FTP access. So called because it
        is the default location for {SEX} (sense 1). "I'll have the source
        in the pube directory by Friday."

:puff: vt.

        To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At
        least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually
        named `PUFF', but these days it is usually packaged with the
        encoder. Oppose {huff}, see {inflate}.

:pumpkin holder: n.

        See {patch pumpkin}.

:pumpking: n.

        Syn. for {pumpkin holder}; see {patch pumpkin}.

:punched card:

        [techspeak] (alt.: punch card) The signature medium of computing's
        {Stone Age}, now obsolescent. The punched card actually predated
        computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for
        mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith and used with
        mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece
        of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm. There is a widespread myth that
        it was designed to fit in the currency trays used for that era's
        larger dollar bills, but recent investigations have falsified this.

        IBM (which originated as a tabulating-machine manufacturer) married
        the punched card to computers, encoding binary information as
        patterns of small rectangular holes; one character per column, 80
        columns per card. Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole
        shapes were tried at various times.

        The 80-column width of most character terminals is a legacy of the
        IBM punched card; so is the size of the quick-reference cards
        distributed with many varieties of computers even today. See {chad},
        {chad box}, {eighty-column mind}, {green card}, {dusty deck}, {code
        grinder}.

:punt: v.

        [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football:
        "Drop back 15 yards and punt!"]

        1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. "Let's
        punt the movie tonight." "I was going to hack all night to get this
        feature in, but I decided to punt" may mean that you've decided not
        to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going
        to put in the feature.

        2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the {Right
        Thing} is and resort to an inefficient hack.

        3. A design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because
        one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an
        algorithmic solution. "No way to know what the right form to dump
        the graph in is -- we'll punt that for now."

        4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section
        of the design. "It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's
        punt to the runtime system."

        5. To knock someone off an Internet or chat connection; a punter
        thus, is a person or program that does this.

:Purple Book: n.

        1. The System V Interface Definition. The covers of the first
        editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender.

        2. Syn. {Wizard Book}. Donald Lewine's POSIX Programmer's Guide
        (O'Reilly, 1991, ISBN 0-937175-73-0). See also {book titles}.

:purple wire: n.

        [IBM] Wire installed by Field Engineers to work around problems
        discovered during testing or debugging. These are called `purple
        wires' even when (as is frequently the case) their actual physical
        color is yellow.... Compare {blue wire}, {yellow wire}, and {red
        wire}.

:push:

        [from the operation that puts the current information on a stack,
        and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack]
        (Also PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push'J/, the latter based on the PDP-10
        procedure call instruction.)

        1. To put something onto a {stack}. If one says that something has
        been pushed onto one's stack, it means that the Damoclean list of
        things hanging over ones's head has grown longer and heavier yet.
        This may also imply that one will deal with it before other pending
        items; otherwise one might say that the thing was `added to my
        queue'.

        2. vi. To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion
        for later. Antonym of {pop}; see also {stack}.

:Python: /pi:'thon/

        In the words of its author, "the other scripting language" (other
        than {Perl}, that is). Python's design is notably clean, elegant,
        and well thought through; it tends to attract the sort of
        programmers who find Perl grubby and exiguous. Some people revolt at
        its use of whitespace to define logical structure by indentation,
        objecting that this harks back to the horrible old fixed-field
        languages of the 1960s. Python's relationship with Perl is rather
        like the {BSD} community's relationship to {Linux} -- it's the
        smaller party in a (usually friendly) rivalry, but the average
        quality of its developers is generally conceded to be rather higher
        than in the larger community it competes with. There's a Python
        resource page at http://www.python.org. See also {Guido}, {BDFL}.

  Q

   quad

   quadruple bucky

   quantifiers

   quantum bogodynamics

   quarter

   ques

   quick-and-dirty

   quine

   Quirk objection

   quote chapter and verse

   quotient

   quux

   qux

   QWERTY

:quad: n.

        1. Two bits; syn. for {quarter}, {crumb}, {tayste}.

        2. A four-pack of anything (compare {hex}, sense 2).

        3. The rectangle or box glyph used in the APL language for various
        arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and
        Oxford types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of
        dear old University.

:quadruple bucky: n. obs.

        1. On an MIT {space-cadet keyboard}, use of all four of the shifting
        keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key.

        2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in {raw mode}, use of four shift
        keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are
        the control and meta keys on both sides of the keyboard. This was
        very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the
        left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the
        right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the
        fifth key with your nose.

        Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice,
        because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to
        some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a
        program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say
        something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while
        whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle."
        See {double bucky}, {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}.

:quantifiers:

        In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI
        (Systme International) conventions for scientific measurement have
        dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10,
        such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by
        powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or other things that
        naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by
        powers of 1024 = 2^10.

        Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding
        binary interpretations in common use:

        prefix  decimal  binary
        kilo-   1000^1   1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
        mega-   1000^2   1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
        giga-   1000^3   1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
        tera-   1000^4   1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
        peta-   1000^5   1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
        exa-    1000^6   1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
        zetta-  1000^7   1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
        yotta-  1000^8   1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

        Here are the SI fractional prefixes:

        prefix  decimal     jargon usage
        milli-  1000^-1     (seldom used in jargon)
        micro-  1000^-2     small or human-scale (see {micro-})
        nano-   1000^-3     even smaller (see {nano-})
        pico-   1000^-4     even smaller yet (see {pico-})
        femto-  1000^-5     (not used in jargon--yet)
        atto-   1000^-6     (not used in jargon--yet)
        zepto-  1000^-7     (not used in jargon--yet)
        yocto-  1000^-8     (not used in jargon--yet)

        The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included
        in these tables purely for completeness and giggle value; they were
        adopted in 1990 by the 19th Conference Generale des Poids et
        Mesures. The binary peta- and exa- loadings, though well
        established, are not in jargon use either -- yet. The prefix milli-,
        denoting multiplication by 1/1000, has always been rare in jargon
        (there is, however, a standard joke about the millihelen --
        notionally, the amount of beauty required to launch one ship). See
        the entries on {micro-}, {pico-}, and {nano-} for more information
        on connotative jargon use of these terms. `Femto' and `atto' (which,
        interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish) have not yet
        acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what those
        will be once computing technology enters the required realms of
        magnitude (however, see {attoparsec}).

        There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of 10.
        In the following table, the `prefix' column is the international
        standard prefix for the appropriate power of ten; the `binary'
        column lists jargon abbreviations and words for the corresponding
        power of 2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used for byte
        quantities; the words `meg' and `gig' are nouns that may (but do not
        always) pluralize with `s'.

        prefix   decimal   binary       pronunciation}
        kilo-       k      K, KB,       kay
        mega-       M      M, MB, meg   meg
        giga-       G      G, GB, gig   gig,jig

        Confusingly, hackers often use K or M as though they were suffix or
        numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus "2K dollars", "2M of
        disk space". This is also true (though less commonly) of G.

        Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is `k'; some use this
        strictly, reserving `K' for multiplication by 1024 (KB is thus
        `kilobytes').

        K, M, and G used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, 64G is 64
        gigabytes and `a K' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of `a G'
        as short for `a grand', that is, $1000). Whether one pronounces
        `gig' with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks the proper
        pronunciation of `giga-' is.

        Confusing 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in
        magnitude) -- for example, describing a memory in units of 500K or
        524K instead of 512K -- is a sure sign of the {marketroid}. One
        example of this: it is common to refer to the capacity of 3.5"
        floppies as `1.44 MB' In fact, this is a completely {bogus} number.
        The correct size is 1440 KB, that is, 1440 * 1024 = 1474560 bytes.
        So the `mega' in `1.44 MB' is compounded of two `kilos', one of
        which is 1024 and the other of which is 1000. The correct number of
        megabytes would of course be 1440 / 1024 = 1.40625. Alas, this fine
        point is probably lost on the world forever. [1993 update: hacker
        Morgan Burke has proposed, to general approval on Usenet, the
        following additional prefixes:

        +------------------+
        | groucho | 10^-30 |
        |---------+--------|
        | harpo   | 10^-27 |
        |---------+--------|
        | harpi   | 10^27  |
        |---------+--------|
        | grouchi | 10^30  |
        +------------------+

        We observe that this would leave the prefixes zeppo-, gummo-, and
        chico- available for future expansion. Sadly, there is little
        immediate prospect that Mr. Burke's eminently sensible proposal will
        be ratified.]

:quantum bogodynamics: /kwon'tm boh`gohdi:namiks/, n.

        A theory that characterizes the universe in terms of bogon sources
        (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and {suit}s
        in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and
        bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption, of course, causes human
        beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause
        both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of
        the bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood and remain to
        be elucidated. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain
        the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence
        of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See
        {bogon}, {computron}, {suit}, {psyton}.

        Here is a representative QBD theory: The bogon is a boson (integral
        spin, +1 or -1), and has zero rest mass. In this respect it is very
        much like a photon. However, it has a much greater momentum, thus
        explaining its destructive effect on computer electronics and human
        nervous systems. The corollary to this is that bogons also have
        tremendous inertia, and therefore a bogon beam is deflected only
        with great difficulty. When the bogon encounters its antiparticle,
        the cluon, they mutually annihilate each other, releasing magic
        smoke. Furthermore 1 Lenat = 1 mole (6.022E23) of bogons (see
        {microLenat}).

:quarter: n.

        Two bits. This in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in
        pirate movies -- Spanish silver crowns that could be broken into
        eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in American
        history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each
        of these `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. {tayste},
        {crumb}, {quad}. Usage: rare. General discussion of such terms is
        under {nybble}.

:ques: /kwes/

        1. n. The question mark character (?, ASCII 0111111).

        2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See
        {wall}.

:quick-and-dirty: adj.

        [common] Describes a {crock} put together under time or user
        pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think the fast
        way might lead to trouble further down the road. "I can have a
        quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the
        whole module to solve the underlying design problem." See also
        {kluge}.

:quine: /kwi:n/, n.

        [from the name of the logician Willard van Orman Quine, via Douglas
        Hofstadter] A program that generates a copy of its own source text
        as its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some
        given programming language is a common hackish amusement. (We ignore
        some variants of BASIC in which a program consisting of a single
        empty string literal reproduces itself trivially.) Here is one
        classic quine:

        ((lambda (x)
          (list x (list (quote quote) x)))
         (quote
            (lambda (x)
              (list x (list (quote quote) x)))))

        This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write
        quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily handle
        programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in
        languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for ASCII
        machines:

        char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
        {printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
        main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}

        For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
        breaks. Here is another elegant quine in ANSI C:

        #define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");}
        q(#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");})

        Some infamous {Obfuscated C Contest} entries have been quines that
        reproduced in exotic ways. There is an amusing Quine Home Page.

:Quirk objection: interj.

        [Named for Captain Gym Z. Quirk, the first to raise it.] "Objection!
        Assumes organ not in evidence!" Used in news.admin.net-abuse.email
        to point out that a comment assumes the presence of something whose
        existence has not been proven, such as a spammer's brain or gonads.
        This is not used to refer to things that are definitely proven not
        to exist, such as a spammer's ethics. It's applicable to enough
        postings there that a poster wishing to raise the objection often
        need merely say "ObQuirk!", an instance of the {Ob-} convention.

:quote chapter and verse: v.

        [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant excerpt
        from an appropriate {bible}. "I don't care if rn gets it wrong;
        `Followup-To: poster' is explicitly permitted by {RFC}-1036. I'll
        quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me." See also
        {legalese}, {language lawyer}, {RTFS} (sense 2).

:quotient: n.

        See {coefficient of X}.

:quux: /kwuhks/, n.

        [Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare,
        quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces',
        anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is `quuxuum',
        for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all the `u' letters
        in Scrabble).]

        1. Originally, a {metasyntactic variable} like {foo} and {foobar}.
        Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young
        and naive and not yet interacting with the real computing community.
        Many people invent such words; this one seems simply to have been
        lucky enough to have spread a little. In an eloquent display of
        poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a
        nickname.

        2. interj. See {foo}; however, denotes very little disgust, and is
        uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it.

        3. Guy Steele in his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat
        infamous for light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons.

        4. In some circles, used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah,
        that's the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is not
        crucial (compare {tip of the ice-cube}).

        5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining to a quux.

:qux: /kwuhks/

        The fourth of the standard {metasyntactic variable}, after {baz} and
        before the quu(u...)x series. See {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}. This
        appears to be a recent mutation from {quux}, and many versions
        (especially older versions) of the standard series just run {foo},
        {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, ....

:QWERTY: /kwer'tee/, adj.

        [from the keycaps at the upper left] Pertaining to a standard
        English-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the Sholes
        keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or non-US-ASCII
        layouts or a {space-cadet keyboard} or APL keyboard.

        Historical note: The QWERTY layout is a fine example of a {fossil}.
        It is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist,
        but this is wrong; it was designed to allow faster typing -- under a
        constraint now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing
        using nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the
        layout to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far
        from perfect job, though; `th', `tr', `ed', and `er', for example,
        each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of `typewriter'
        on one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and
        accuracy for {demo}s. The jamming problem was essentially solved
        soon afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout
        lives on.

        The QWERTY keyboard has also spawned some unhelpful economic myths
        about how technical standards get and stay established; see
        http://www.reasonmag.com/9606/Fe.QWERTY.html.

  R

   rabbit job

   rain dance

   rainbow series

   random

   Random Number God

   random numbers

   randomness

   rape

   rare mode

   raster blaster

   raster burn

   rasterbation

   rat belt

   rat dance

   rathole

   ratio site

   rave

   rave on!

   ravs

   raw mode

   RBL

   rc file

   RE

   read-only user

   README file

   real

   real estate

   real hack

   real operating system

   Real Programmer

   Real Soon Now

   real time

   real user

   Real World

   reality check

   reality-distortion field

   reaper

   recompile the world

   rectangle slinger

   recursion

   recursive acronym

   red wire

   regexp

   register dancing

   rehi

   reincarnation, cycle of

   reinvent the wheel

   relay rape

   religion of CHI

   religious issues

   replicator

   reply

   restriction

   retcon

   RETI

   retrocomputing

   return from the dead

   RFC

   RFE

   Right Thing

   rip

   ripoff

   RL

   roach

   robocanceller

   robot

   robust

   rococo

   rogue

   room-temperature IQ

   root

   root mode

   rootkit

   rot13

   rotary debugger

   RSN

   RTBM

   RTFAQ

   RTFB

   RTFM

   RTFS

   RTI

   RTM

   RTS

   rubber-hose cryptanalysis

   rude

   runes

   runic

   rusty iron

   rusty wire

:rabbit job: n.

        [Cambridge] A batch job that does little, if any, real work, but
        creates one or more copies of itself, breeding like rabbits. Compare
        {wabbit}, {fork bomb}.

:rain dance: n.

        1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with
        the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This especially
        applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables,
        etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do
        his rain dance."

        2. Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or
        software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually
        restricted to rituals that include both an {incantation} or two and
        physical activity or motion. Compare {magic}, {voodoo programming},
        {black art}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a dead chicken}; see
        also {casting the runes}.

:rainbow series: n.

        Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover
        color. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security manuals
        (see {Orange Book}). These are now available via the web. the term
        has also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set.
        Which books are meant by "the rainbow series" unqualified is thus
        dependent on one's local technical culture.

:random: adj.

        1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "The
        system's been behaving pretty randomly."

        2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a
        bunch of random business types."

        3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "He's just a
        random loser."

        4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The
        program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for
        that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."

        5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels
        are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly."

        6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file."

        7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
        reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in
        a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could
        easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly
        uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one
        else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What
        {randomness}!

        8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who
        soak up computer time and generally get in the way.

        9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to
        the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I went to the talk,
        but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".

        10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also
        {J. Random}, {some random X}.

        11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
        out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This sense equates
        to `hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger Irrelevant
        - He's completely Hatstand."

:Random Number God:

        [rec.games.roguelike.angband; often abbreviated `RNG'] The malign
        force which lurks behind the random number generator in {Angband}
        (and by extension elsewhere). A dark god that demands sacrifices and
        toys with its victims. "I just found a really great item; I suppose
        the RNG is about to punish me..." Apparently, Angband's random
        number generator occasionally gets locked in a repetition, so you
        get something with a 3% chance happening 8 times in a row.
        Improbable, but far too common to be pure chance. Compare
        {Shub-Internet}.

:random numbers: n.

        When one wishes to specify a large but random number of things, and
        the context is inappropriate for {N}, certain numbers are preferred
        by hacker tradition (that is, easily recognized as placeholders).
        These include the following:

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        |     | Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see    |
        | 17  | also 23. This may be Discordian in origin, or it may be    |
        |     | related to some in-jokes about 17 and "yellow pig"         |
        |     | propagated by the mathematician Michael Spivak.            |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | 23  | Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17   |
        |     | and 5).                                                    |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | The most random two-digit number is 37, When groups of     |
        | 37  | people are polled to pick a "random number between 1 and   |
        |     | 100", the most commonly chosen number is 37.               |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        |     | The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, |
        |     | and Everything ("what is 6 times 9", correct in base 13).  |
        | 42  | (This answer is perhaps not completely fortuitous; in      |
        |     | Kabbalism, the true unspeakable name of God is said to     |
        |     | have 42 characters.)                                       |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | 69  | From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS     |
        |     | culture.                                                   |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | 105 | 69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal.          |
        |-----+------------------------------------------------------------|
        | 666 | In Christian mythology, the Number of the Beast.           |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        For further enlightenment, study the Principia Discordia, The
        Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Joy of Sex, and the Christian
        Bible (Revelation 13:18). See also {Discordianism} or consult your
        pineal gland. See also {for values of}.

:randomness: n.

        1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.

        2. A {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex combination of
        coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock
        depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can
        output characters 40--57 by putting the character in the four-bit
        accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits -- the low
        2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!"

        3. Of people, synonymous with flakiness. The connotation is that the
        person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or
        inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother
        inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena
        anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real
        complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."

        Despite the negative connotations of most jargon uses of this term
        have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable
        resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and
        elsewhere. Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have
        a hard time generating high-quality randomness, so hackers have
        sometimes felt the need to built special-purpose contraptions for
        this purpose alone. One well-known website offers random bits
        generated by radioactive decay. Another derives random bits from
        chaotic systems in analog electronics. Originally, the latter site
        got its random bits by doing photometry on lava lamps. Hackers
        invariably found this hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll
        never get it.)

:rape: vt.

        1. To {screw} someone or something, violently; in particular, to
        destroy a program or information irrecoverably. Often used in
        describing file-system damage. "So-and-so was running a program that
        did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping the master directory."

        2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts.

        3. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site. "Last
        night I raped Simtel's dskutl directory."

:rare mode: adj.

        [Unix] CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled).
        Distinguished from {raw mode} and {cooked mode}; the phrase "a sort
        of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the V7/BSD manuals to
        describe the mode. Usage: rare.

:raster blaster: n.

        [Cambridge] Specialized hardware for {bitblt} operations (a
        {blitter}). Allegedly inspired by `Rasta Blasta', British slang for
        the sort of portable stereo Americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto
        blaster'.

:raster burn: n.

        Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly
        tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See
        {terminal illness}.

:rasterbation: n.

        [portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The gratuitous use of
        computer-generated images and effects in movies and graphic art
        which would have been better without them. Especially employed as a
        term of abuse by Photoshop/GIMP users and graphic artists.

:rat belt: n.

        A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you
        can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or
        a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable
        ties are mouse belts.

:rat dance: n.

        [From the {Dilbert} comic strip of November 14, 1995] A {hacking
        run} that produces results which, while superficially coherent, have
        little or nothing to do with its original objectives. There are
        strong connotations that the coding process and the objectives
        themselves were pretty {random}. (In the original comic strip, the
        Ratbert is invited to dance on Dilbert's keyboard in order to
        produce bugs for him to fix, and authors a Web browser instead.)
        Compare {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.

        This term seems to have become widely recognized quite rapidly after
        the original strip, a fact which testifies to Dilbert's huge
        popularity among hackers. All too many find the perverse incentives
        and Kafkaesque atmosphere of Dilbert's mythical workplace reflective
        of their own experiences.

:rathole:

        [from the English idiom "down a rathole" for a waste of money or
        time] A technical subject that is known to be able to absorb
        infinite amounts of discussion time without more than an
        infinitesimal probability of arrival at a conclusion or consensus.
        "That's a rathole" (or just "Rathole!") is considered a pre-emptive
        bid to change the subject. The difference between ratholes and
        {religious issues} is that a holy war cannot be pre-empted in this
        way. Canonical examples are XML namespaces and open-source
        licensing.

:ratio site:

        [warez d00dz] An FTP site storing pirated files where one must first
        upload something before being able to download. There is a ratio,
        based on bytes or files count, between the uploads and download. For
        instance, on a 2:1 site, to download a 4 Mb file, one must first
        upload at least 2 Mb of files. The hotter the contents of the server
        are, the smaller the ratio is. More often than not, the server
        refuses uploads because its disk is full, making it useless for
        downloading -- or the connection magically breaks after one has
        uploaded a large amount of files, just before the downloading phase
        begins. See also {banner site}, {leech mode}.

:rave: vi.

        [WPI]

        1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.

        2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
        little.

        3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the
        difficulty.

        4. To purposely annoy another person verbally.

        5. To evangelize. See {flame}.

        6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as
        friendly bullshitting. `Rave' differs slightly from {flame} in that
        rave implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the
        person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat
        more strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well.

:rave on!: imp.

        Sarcastic invitation to continue a {rave}, often by someone who
        wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely.

:ravs: /ravz/, Chinese ravs, n.

        [primarily MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie
        (pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as
        dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and
        (around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term rav is short for
        `ravioli', and among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather
        than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell,
        but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a
        pork-vegetable filling (good ones include Chinese chives), and is
        cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or dumpling
        can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the pan-fried kind
        (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped
        off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." See
        also {oriental food}.

:raw mode: n.

        A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an
        I/O device (or, under {bogus} operating systems that make a
        distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or
        interpretation by the operating system. Compare {rare mode}, {cooked
        mode}. This is techspeak under Unix, jargon elsewhere.

:RBL: /RBL/

        Abbreviation: "Realtime Blackhole List". A service that allows
        people to blacklist sites for emitting {spam}, and makes the
        blacklist available in real time to electronic-mail transport
        programs that know how to use RBL so they can filter out mail from
        those sites. Drastic (and controversial) but effective. There is an
        RBL home page.

:rc file: /RC fi:l/, n.

        [Unix: from runcom files on the {CTSS} system 1962-63, via the
        startup script /etc/rc] Script file containing startup instructions
        for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually
        a text file containing commands of the sort that might have been
        invoked manually once the system was running but are to be executed
        automatically each time the system starts up. See also {dot file},
        {profile} (sense 1).

:RE: /RE/, n.

        Common spoken and written shorthand for {regexp}.

:read-only user: n.

        Describes a {luser} who uses computers almost exclusively for
        reading Usenet, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than writing
        code or purveying useful information. See {twink}, {terminal
        junkie}, {lurker}.

:README file: n.

        Hacker's-eye introduction traditionally included in the top-level
        directory of a Unix source distribution, containing a pointer to
        more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision
        history, notes, etc. In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not
        usually distributed in source form, and the README is more likely to
        contain user-oriented material like last-minute documentation
        changes, error workarounds, and restrictions. When asked, hackers
        invariably relate the README convention to the famous scene in Lewis
        Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland in which Alice confronts
        magic munchies labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".

        The file may be named README, or READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or
        readme.txt or some other variant. The all-upper-case spellings,
        however, are universal among Unix programmers. By ancient tradition,
        real source files have all-lowercase names and all-uppercase is
        reserved for metadata, comments, and grafitti. This is functional;
        because 'A' sorts before 'a' in ASCII, the README will appear in
        directory listings before any source file.

:real: adj.

        Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to {virtual} in any
        of its jargon senses.

:real estate: n.

        May be used for any critical resource measured in units of area.
        Most frequently used of chip real estate, the area available for
        logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see also {nanoacre}).
        May also be used of floor space in a {dinosaur pen}, or even space
        on a crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic).

:real hack: n.

        A {crock}. This is sometimes used affectionately; see {hack}.

:real operating system: n.

        The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic
        community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you
        use a real operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial
        Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a real
        operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you
        use a real operating system?" Only {MS-DOS} is universally
        considered unreal. See {holy wars}, {religious issues},
        {proprietary}, {Get a real computer!}

:Real Programmer: n.

        [indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche] A particular
        sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward
        complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The
        archetypal Real Programmer likes to program on the {bare metal} and
        is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine
        he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a
        debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps.
        Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been tuned
        into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture. Real Programmers
        never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to
        write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand."
        Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in
        their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless
        doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish
        brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real Programmers live
        on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and
        terrify the crap out of other programmers -- because someday,
        somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to
        change it. Their successors generally consider it a {Good Thing}
        that there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a
        famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer,
        see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A. The term itself was popularized
        by a letter to the editor in the July 1983 Datamation titled Real
        Programmers Don't Use Pascal by Ed Post, still circulating on Usenet
        and Internet in on-line form.

        Typing Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal into a web search engine
        should turn up a copy.

:Real Soon Now: adv.

        [orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's
        column in BYTE]

        1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real
        soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.

        2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to
        get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often
        abbreviated RSN. Compare {copious free time}.

:real time:

        1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a
        program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of
        response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at
        a chemical plant is the {canonical} example. Such applications often
        require special operating systems (because everything else must take
        a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware.

        2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are
        watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling
        procedure's program counter on the stack and she came up with an
        algorithm in real time."

:real user: n.

        1. A commercial user. One who is paying real money for his computer
        usage.

        2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a
        research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See
        {user}. Hackers who are also students may also be real users. "I
        need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out
        of randomness, but as a real user." See also {luser}.

:Real World: n.

        1. Those institutions at which `programming' may be used in the same
        sentence as `FORTRAN', `{COBOL}', `RPG', `{IBM}', `DBASE', etc.
        Places where programs do such commercially necessary but
        intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and
        invoices.

        2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to
        programming.

        3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie
        and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see
        {code grinder}).

        4. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and
        gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in
        residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered
        the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is
        also noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in
        England, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label
        `REALITY CHECKPOINT'. It marks the boundary between university and
        the Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. This
        joke is funnier because the Cambridge `campus' is actually
        coextensive with the center of Cambridge town. See also {fear and
        loathing}, {mundane}, and {uninteresting}.

        ()

:reality check: n.

        1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the
        equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get 4. The
        software equivalent of a {smoke test}.

        2. The act of letting a {real user} try out prototype software.
        Compare {sanity check}.

:reality-distortion field: n.

        An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers
        like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to
        describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers
        become passionately committed to possibly insane projects, without
        regard to the practicality of their implementation or competitive
        forces in the marketplace.

:reaper: n.

        A {prowler} that removes files. A file removed in this way is said
        to have been reaped.

:recompile the world:

        The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as the
        result of any small but globally visible program change. "The world"
        may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in theory refer
        to every program of a certain class in the entire known universe.
        For instance, "Add one #define to stdio.h, and you have to recompile
        the world." This means that any minor change to the standard-I/O
        header file theoretically mandates recompiling every C program in
        existence, even if only to verify that the change didn't screw
        something else up. In practice, you may not actually have to
        recompile the world, but the implication is that some human
        cleverness is required to figure out what parts can be safely left
        out.

:rectangle slinger: n.

        See {polygon pusher}.

:recursion: n.

        See {recursion}. See also {tail recursion}.

:recursive acronym: n.

        A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose
        acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to
        other acronyms/abbreviations. The original of the breed may have
        been TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"). The classic examples were two MIT
        editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE
        Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR
        (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and {GNU} (q.v., sense 1) stands
        for "GNU's Not Unix!" -- and a company with the name Cygnus, which
        expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus people say this
        is a {backronym}). The GNU recursive acronym may have been patterned
        on XINU, "XINU Is Not Unix" -- a particularly nice example because
        it is a mirror image, a backronym, and a recursive acronym. See also
        {mung}, {EMACS}.

:red wire: n.

        [IBM] Patch wires installed by programmers who have no business
        mucking with the hardware. It is said that the only thing more
        dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a {softy} with a
        soldering iron.... Compare {blue wire}, {yellow wire}, {purple
        wire}.

:regexp: /reg'eksp/, n.

        [Unix] (alt.: regex or reg-ex)

        1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for regular expression,
        one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as
        grep(1), sed(1), and awk(1). These use conventions similar to but
        more elaborate than those described under {glob}. For purposes of
        this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow
        complemented character sets using ^; thus, one can specify `any
        non-alphabetic character' with [^A-Za-z].

        2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C,
        written by revered Usenetter Henry Spencer.

:register dancing: n.

        Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of
        general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for
        compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store
        temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression
        evaluation. Some designs with this problem, like the Intel 80x86, do
        have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be pressed into
        service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side
        effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose
        register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate
        minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is
        saved and then restored just before the official function (and
        value) of the special-purpose register is again needed.

:rehi:

        [IRC, MUD] "Hello again." Very commonly used to greet people upon
        returning to an IRC channel after {channel hopping}.

:reincarnation, cycle of: n.

        See {cycle of reincarnation}.

:reinvent the wheel: v.

        To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part
        of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of
        time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand,
        automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have
        to be reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third
        hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral
        equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle.

:relay rape: n.

        The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to deliver
        {spam}.

:religion of CHI: /ki:/, n.

        [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody
        religion (see also {Church of the SubGenius}, {Discordianism}). In
        the mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at
        CWRU were taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on
        cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating
        system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual:
        whenever the worshiper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or
        she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN,
        ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions
        in the appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; note the special
        pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more common
        /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's
        arrival was {considered harmful}.

:religious issues: n.

        Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off
        {holy wars}, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor,
        language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What
        about that Heinlein guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon
        File?" See {holy wars}; see also {theology}, {bigot}, and compare
        {rathole}.

        This term is a prime example of {ha ha only serious}. People
        actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense
        attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. The
        most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the
        crossfire is mumble {Get a life!} and leave -- unless, of course,
        one's own unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are
        being slammed.

:replicator: n.

        Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a
        living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program (see {quine},
        {worm}, {wabbit}, {fork bomb}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular
        automaton (see {life}, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or
        {nanobot}. It is even claimed by some that {Unix} and {C} are the
        symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see {Unix
        conspiracy}.

:reply: n.

        See {followup}.

:restriction: n.

        A {bug} or design error that limits a program's capabilities, and
        which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work up enough
        nerve to describe it as a {feature}. Often used (esp. by
        {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though some crippling
        bogosity had been intended by the designers all along, or was forced
        upon them by arcane technical constraints of a nature no mere user
        could possibly comprehend (these claims are almost invariably
        false).

        Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever choosing a
        quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a
        power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you impose a limit of 107
        items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number -- on the
        other hand, a limit of 15 or 16 suggests some deep reason (involving
        0- or 1-based indexing in binary) and you will get less {flamage}
        for it. Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are always
        especially suspect.

:retcon: /ret'kon/

        [short for `retroactive continuity', from the Usenet newsgroup
        rec.arts.comics]

        1. n. The common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap
        operas) where a new story `reveals' things about events in previous
        stories, usually leaving the `facts' the same (thus preserving
        continuity) while completely changing their interpretation. For
        example, revealing that a whole season of Dallas was a dream was a
        retcon.

        2. vt. To write such a story about a character or fictitious object.
        "Byrne has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer
        unbreakable." "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into
        synthetic dreams." "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed
        person into a sentient vegetable."

        [This term is included because it is a good example of hackish
        linguistic innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers.
        The word retcon will probably spread through comics fandom and lose
        its association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the
        record, it started here. --ESR]

        [1993 update: some comics fans on the net now claim that retcon was
        independently in use in comics fandom before rec.arts.comics, and
        have citations from around 1981. In lexicography, nothing is ever
        simple. --ESR]

:RETI: v.

        Syn. {RTI}

:retrocomputing: /ret'rohk@mpyoo'ting/, n.

        Refers to emulations of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or
        software, or implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if
        such implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies,
        written mostly for {hack value}, of more `serious' designs. Perhaps
        the most widely distributed retrocomputing utility was the pnch(6)
        or bcd(6) program on V7 and other early Unix versions, which would
        accept up to 80 characters of text argument and display the
        corresponding pattern in {punched card} code. Other well-known
        retrocomputing hacks have included the programming language
        {INTERCAL}, a {JCL}-emulating shell for Unix, the
        card-punch-emulating editor named 029, and various elaborate
        {PDP-11} hardware emulators and RT-11 OS emulators written just to
        keep an old, sourceless {Zork} binary running.

        A tasty selection of retrocomputing programs are made available at
        the Retrocomputing Museum, http://www.catb.org/retro/.

:return from the dead: v.

        To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare {person of
        no account}.

:RFC: /RFC/, n.

        [Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of numbered
        Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by
        commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix
        communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been
        RFC-822 (the Internet mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in
        that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own
        initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than
        formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this
        reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.

        The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact
        standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has
        important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process
        typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is
        the existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually at
        least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke
        RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June
        1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April
        1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on
        Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was
        a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP
        documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of
        standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting
        Internet data packets by carrier pigeon (since actually implemented;
        see Appendix A). See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.

        The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they
        frequently manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually
        rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated
        misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a
        network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions.

:RFE: /RFE/, n.

        1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement (compare {RFC}).

        2. [from `Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet,
        a system (originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among
        Sun SPARCstations over the ethernet.

:Right Thing: n.

        That which is compellingly the correct or appropriate thing to use,
        do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always emphasized in speech as
        though capitalized. Use of this term often implies that in fact
        reasonable people may disagree. "What's the right thing for LISP to
        do when it sees (mod a 0)? Should it return a, or give a divide-by-0
        error?" Oppose {Wrong Thing}.

:rip: v.

        1. To extract the digital representation of a piece of music from an
        audio CD. Software that does this is often called a "CD ripper".

        2. [Amiga hackers] To extract sound or graphics from a program that
        they have been compiled/assembled into, or which generates them at
        run-time. In the case of older Amiga games this entails searching
        through memory shortly after a reboot. This sense has been in use
        for many years and probably gave rise to the (now more common) sense
        1.

:ripoff: n.

        Synonym for {chad}, sense 1.

:RL: //, n.

        [MUD community] Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means that Firiss's
        player is laughing. Compare {meatspace}; oppose {VR}.

:roach: vt.

        [Bell Labs] To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware gets
        {toast}ed or {fried}, software gets roached. Probably derived from
        '70s and '80s drug slang; marijuana smokers used `roach' to refer to
        the unsmokable remnant of a joint, and to `roach' a joint was
        therefore to destroy it.

:robocanceller: /rohbohkan'sel@r/

        A program that monitors Usenet feeds, attempting to detect and
        eliminate {spam} by sending appropriate cancel messages.
        Robocancellers may use the {Breidbart Index} as a trigger.
        Programming them is not a game for amateurs; see {ARMM}. See also
        {Dave the Resurrector}.

:robot: n.

        See {bot}.

:robust: adj.

        Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover
        gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations
        in a given environment. One step below {bulletproof}. Carries the
        additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful
        attention to detail. Compare {smart}, oppose {brittle}.

:rococo: adj.

        Terminally {baroque}. Used to imply that a program has become so
        encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues
        that they have completely swamped the underlying design. Called
        after the later and more extreme forms of Baroque architecture and
        decoration prevalent during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis
        said: "Every program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble."
        Compare {critical mass}.

:rogue:

        1. [Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character
        graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other
        Unix systems. The original BSD curses(3) screen-handling package was
        hacked together by Ken Arnold primarily to support games, and the
        development of rogue(6) popularized its use; it has since become one
        of Unix's most important and heavily used application libraries.
        Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an entire subgenre of computer
        dungeon games (all known as `roguelikes') all took off from the
        inspiration provided by rogue(6); the popular Windows game Diablo,
        though graphics-intensive, has very similar play logic. See also
        {nethack}, {moria}, {Angband}.

        2. [Usenet] adj. An {ISP} which permits net abuse (usually in the
        form of {spam}ming) by its customers, or which itself engages in
        such activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to {IDP}s or
        {UDP}s. Sometimes deliberately misspelled as "rouge".

:room-temperature IQ: quant.

        [IBM] 80 or below (nominal room temperature is 72 degrees
        Fahrenheit, 22 degrees Celsius). Used in describing the expected
        intelligence range of the {luser}. "Well, but how's this interface
        going to play with the room-temperature IQ crowd?" See {drool-proof
        paper}. This is a much more insulting phrase in countries that use
        Celsius thermometers.

:root: n.

        1. [Unix] The {superuser} account (with user name `root') that
        ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a Unix system. The term
        {avatar} is also used.

        2. The top node of the system directory structure; historically the
        home directory of the root user, but probably named after the root
        of an (inverted) tree.

        3. By extension, the privileged system-maintenance login on any OS.
        See {root mode}, {go root}, see also {wheel}.

:root mode: n.

        Syn. with {wizard mode} or wheel mode. Like these, it is often
        generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than
        OSes.

:rootkit: /root'kit/, n.

        [very common] A kit for maintaining {root}; an automated {cracking}
        tool. What {script kiddies} use. After a cracker has first broken in
        and gained root access, he or she will install modified binaries
        such as a modified version login with a backdoor, or a version of ps
        that will not report the cracker's processes). This is a rootkit.

:rot13: /rot ther'teen/, n.,v.

        [Usenet: from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher
        encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places
        forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!"
        becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting
        programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in
        a sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open -- e.g., for
        posting things that might offend some readers, or {spoiler}s. A
        major advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is
        self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and
        decoding. See also {spoiler space}, which has partly displaced rot13
        since non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.

:rotary debugger: n.

        [Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or
        early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the
        hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni,
        and Garbage. See {ANSI standard pizza}.

:RSN: /RSN/, adj.

        See {Real Soon Now}.

:RTBM: /RTBM/, imp.

        [Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant of {RTFM}; expands to `Read The
        Bloody Manual'. RTBM is often the entire text of the first reply to
        a question from a {newbie}; the second would escalate to "RTFM".

:RTFAQ: /RTFAQ/, imp.

        [Usenet: primarily written, by analogy with {RTFM}] Abbrev. for
        `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person addressed ought to
        read the newsgroup's {FAQ list} before posting questions.

:RTFB: /RTFB/, imp.

        [Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Binary'. Used when neither
        documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists, and the
        only thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly
        analyze the assembler or even the machine code. "No source for the
        buggy port driver? Aaargh! I hate proprietary operating systems.
        Time to RTFB."

        Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative against
        anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger
        here is directed at the absence of both source and adequate
        documentation.

:RTFM: /RTFM/, imp.

        [Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Manual'.

        1. Used by {guru}s to brush off questions they consider trivial or
        annoying. Compare {Don't do that then!}.

        2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just
        asking out of {randomness}. "No, I can't figure out how to interface
        Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use
        is considered polite. See also {FM}, {RTFAQ}, {RTFB}, {RTFS},
        {STFW}, {RTM}, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare {UTSL}.

:RTFS: /RTFS/

        [Unix]

        1. imp. Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Source'. Variant form of
        {RTFM}, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily obvious and
        not answerable from the manuals -- or the manuals are not yet
        written and maybe never will be. For even trickier situations, see
        {RTFB}. Unlike RTFM, the anger inherent in RTFS is not usually
        directed at the person asking the question, but rather at the people
        who failed to provide adequate documentation.

        2. imp. `Read The Fucking Standard'; this oath can only be used when
        the problem area (e.g., a language or operating system interface)
        has actually been codified in a ratified standards document. The
        existence of these standards documents (and the technically
        inappropriate but politically mandated compromises that they
        inevitably contain, and the impenetrable {legalese} in which they
        are invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic
        process by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who
        are used to a certain amount of ambiguity in the specifications of
        the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such ambiguities are
        acceptable as long as the {Right Thing} to do is obvious to any
        thinking observer; sadly, this casual attitude towards
        specifications becomes unworkable when a system becomes popular in
        the {Real World}.) Since a hacker is likely to feel that a standards
        document is both unnecessary and technically deficient, the
        deprecation inherent in this term may be directed as much against
        the standard as against the person who ought to read it.

:RTI: /RTI/, interj.

        The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many
        computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant RETI is found
        among Z80 hackers. Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end
        a conversational digression. See {pop}.

:RTM: /RTM/

        1. [Usenet: abbreviation for `Read The Manual'] Politer variant of
        {RTFM}.

        2. Robert Tappan Morris, perpetrator of the great Internet worm of
        1988 (see {Great Worm}); villain to many, naive hacker gone wrong to
        a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its
        knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result
        of a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that
        followed this blunder, Morris's username on ITS was hacked from RTM
        to {RTFM}.

:RTS: /RTS/, imp.

        Abbreviation for `Read The Screen'. Mainly used by hackers in the
        microcomputer world. Refers to what one would like to tell the
        {suit} one is forced to explain an extremely simple application to.
        Particularly appropriate when the suit failed to notice the `Press
        any key to continue' prompt, and wishes to know `why won't it do
        anything'. Also seen as `RTFS' in especially deserving cases.

:rubber-hose cryptanalysis: n.

        [sci.crypt newsgroup] The technique of breaking a code or cipher by
        finding someone who has the key and applying a rubber hose
        vigorously and repeatedly to the soles of that luckless person's
        feet until the key is discovered. Shorthand for any method of
        coercion: the originator of the term drily noted that it "can take a
        surprisingly short time and is quite computationally inexpensive"
        relative to other cryptanalysis methods. Compare {social
        engineering}, {brute force}.

:rude: adj.

        1. (of a program) Badly written.

        2. Functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use
        because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. Oppose
        {cuspy}.

        3. Anything that manipulates a shared resource without regard for
        its other users in such a way as to cause a (non-fatal) problem.
        Examples: programs that change tty modes without resetting them on
        exit, or windowing programs that keep forcing themselves to the top
        of the window stack.

:runes: pl.n.

        1. Anything that requires {heavy wizardry} or {black art} to
        {parse}: core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language you
        haven't a clue how to read. Not quite as bad as {line noise}, but
        close. Compare {casting the runes}, {Great Runes}.

        2. Special display characters (for example, the high-half graphics
        on an IBM PC).

        3. [borderline techspeak] 16-bit characters from the Unicode
        multilingual character set.

:runic: adj.

        Syn. {obscure}. VMS fans sometimes refer to Unix as `Runix'; Unix
        fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Very Messy Syntax'
        or `Vachement Mauvais Systme' (French idiom, "Hugely Bad System").

:rusty iron: n.

        Syn. {tired iron}. It has been claimed that this is the inevitable
        fate of {water MIPS}.

:rusty wire: n.

        [Amateur Packet Radio] Any very noisy network medium, in which the
        packets are subject to frequent corruption. Most prevalent in
        reference to wireless links subject to all the vagaries of RF noise
        and marginal propagation conditions. "Yes, but how good is your
        whizbang new protocol on really rusty wire?".

  S

   S/N ratio

   sacred

   saga

   sagan

   SAIL

   salescritter

   salt

   salt mines

   salt substrate

   same-day service

   samizdat

   samurai

   sandbender

   sandbox

   sanity check

   Saturday-night special

   say

   scag

   scanno

   scary devil monastery

   schroedinbug

   science-fiction fandom

   SCNR

   scram switch

   scratch

   scratch monkey

   scream and die

   screaming tty

   screen

   screen name

   screen scraping

   screw

   screwage

   scribble

   script kiddies

   scrog

   scrool

   scrozzle

   scruffies

   SCSI

   SCSI voodoo

   search-and-destroy mode

   second-system effect

   secondary damage

   security through obscurity

   SED

   See figure 1

   segfault

   seggie

   segment

   segmentation fault

   segv

   self-reference

   selvage

   semi

   semi-automated

   semi-infinite

   senior bit

   September that never ended

   server

   SEX

   sex changer

   shambolic link

   shar file

   sharchive

   Share and enjoy!

   shareware

   sharing violation

   shebang

   shelfware

   shell

   shell out

   shift left (or right) logical

   shim

   shitogram

   shotgun debugging

   shovelware

   showstopper

   shriek

   Shub-Internet

   SIG

   sig block

   sig quote

   sig virus

   sigmonster

   signal-to-noise ratio

   silicon

   silly walk

   silo

   since time T equals minus infinity

   sitename

   skrog

   skulker

   slab

   slack

   slash

   slashdot effect

   sleep

   slim

   slop

   slopsucker

   Slowlaris

   slurp

   slurp the robot

   smart

   smart terminal

   smash case

   smash the stack

   smiley

   smoke

   smoke and mirrors

   smoke test

   smoking clover

   smoot

   SMOP

   smurf

   SNAFU principle

   snail

   snail-mail

   snap

   snarf

   snarf & barf

   snarf down

   snark

   sneaker

   sneakernet

   sniff

   snippage

   SO

   social engineering

   social science number

   sock puppet

   sodium substrate

   soft boot

   softcopy

   software bloat

   software hoarding

   software laser

   software rot

   softwarily

   softy

   some random X

   sorcerer's apprentice mode

   source

   source of all good bits

   space-cadet keyboard

   spaceship operator

   SPACEWAR

   spaghetti code

   spaghetti inheritance

   spam

   spam bait

   spamblock

   spamhaus

   spamvertize

   spangle

   spawn

   special-case

   speed of light

   speedometer

   spell

   spelling flame

   spider

   spider food

   spiffy

   spike

   spin

   Spinning Pizza of Death

   spl

   splash screen

   splat

   splat out

   splork!

   spod

   spoiler

   spoiler space

   sponge

   spoof

   spool

   spool file

   sporgery

   sport death

   spungle

   spyware

   squirrelcide

   stack

   stack puke

   stale pointer bug

   Stanford Bunny

   star out

   state

   stealth manager

   steam-powered

   steved

   STFW

   stir-fried random

   stomp on

   Stone Age

   stone knives and bearskins

   stoppage

   store

   STR

   strided

   stroke

   strudel

   stubroutine

   studly

   studlycaps

   stunning

   stupid-sort

   Stupids

   Sturgeon's Law

   sucking mud

   sufficiently small

   suit

   suitable win

   suitably small

   Sun

   sun lounge

   sun-stools

   sunspots

   super source quench

   superloser

   superprogrammer

   superuser

   support

   surf

   Suzie COBOL

   swab

   swap

   swap space

   swapped in

   swapped out

   Swiss-Army chainsaw

   swizzle

   sync

   syntactic salt

   syntactic sugar

   sys-frog

   sysadmin

   sysape

   sysop

   system

   system mangler

   systems jock

:S/N ratio: //, n.

        (also s/n ratio, s:n ratio). Syn. {signal-to-noise ratio}. Often
        abbreviated SNR.

:sacred: adj.

        Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the
        standard meaning). Often means that anyone may look at the sacred
        object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. The
        comment "Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler" appearing in
        a program would be interpreted by a hacker to mean that if any other
        part of the program changes the contents of register 7, dire
        consequences are likely to ensue.

:saga: n.

        [WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken people.

        Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L.
        Steele:

          Jon L. White (login name JONL) and I (GLS) were office mates at
          MIT for many years. One April, we both flew from Boston to
          California for a week on research business, to consult
          face-to-face with some people at Stanford, particularly our mutual
          friend Richard P. Gabriel (RPG).

          RPG picked us up at the San Francisco airport and drove us back to
          Palo Alto (going {logical} south on route 101, parallel to {El
          Camino Bignum}). Palo Alto is adjacent to Stanford University and
          about 40 miles south of San Francisco. We ate at The Good Earth, a
          `health food' restaurant, very popular, the sort whose milkshakes
          all contain honey and protein powder. JONL ordered such a shake --
          the waitress claimed the flavor of the day was "lalaberry". I
          still have no idea what that might be, but it became a running
          joke. It was the color of raspberry, and JONL said it tasted
          rather bitter. I ate a better tostada there than I have ever had
          in a Mexican restaurant.

          After this we went to the local Uncle Gaylord's Old Fashioned Ice
          Cream Parlor. They make ice cream fresh daily, in a variety of
          intriguing flavors. It's a chain, and they have a slogan: "If you
          don't live near an Uncle Gaylord's -- MOVE!" Also, Uncle Gaylord
          (a real person) wages a constant battle to force big-name ice
          cream makers to print their ingredients on the package (like air
          and plastic and other non-natural garbage). JONL and I had first
          discovered Uncle Gaylord's the previous August, when we had flown
          to a computer-science conference in Berkeley, California, the
          first time either of us had been on the West Coast. When not in
          the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the
          length of Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in
          Cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and
          interesting little shops. On that street we discovered Uncle
          Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very good.
          During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to
          speak) over one particular flavor, ginger honey.

          Therefore, after eating at The Good Earth -- indeed, after every
          lunch and dinner and before bed during our April visit -- a trip
          to Uncle Gaylord's (the one in Palo Alto) was mandatory. We had
          arrived on a Wednesday, and by Thursday evening we had been there
          at least four times. Each time, JONL would get ginger honey ice
          cream, and proclaim to all bystanders that "Ginger was the spice
          that drove the Europeans mad! That's why they sought a route to
          the East! They used it to preserve their otherwise off-taste
          meat." After the third or fourth repetition RPG and I were getting
          a little tired of this spiel, and began to paraphrase him: "Wow!
          Ginger! The spice that makes rotten meat taste good!" "Say! Why
          don't we find some dog that's been run over and sat in the sun for
          a week and put some ginger on it for dinner?!" "Right! With a
          lalaberry shake!" And so on. This failed to faze JONL; he took it
          in good humor, as long as we kept returning to Uncle Gaylord's. He
          loves ginger honey ice cream.

          Now RPG and his then-wife KBT (Kathy Tracy) were putting us up
          (putting up with us?) in their home for our visit, so to thank
          them JONL and I took them out to a nice French restaurant of their
          choosing. I unadventurously chose the filet mignon, and KBT had je
          ne sais quoi du jour, but RPG and JONL had lapin (rabbit).
          (Waitress: "Oui, we have fresh rabbit, fresh today." RPG: "Well,
          JONL, I guess we won't need any ginger!")

          We finished the meal late, about 11PM, which is 2AM Boston time,
          so JONL and I were rather droopy. But it wasn't yet midnight. Off
          to Uncle Gaylord's!

          Now the French restaurant was in Redwood City, north of Palo Alto.
          In leaving Redwood City, we somehow got onto route 101 going north
          instead of south. JONL and I wouldn't have known the difference
          had RPG not mentioned it. We still knew very little of the local
          geography. I did figure out, however, that we were headed in the
          direction of Berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested that we
          continue north and go to Uncle Gaylord's in Berkeley.

          RPG said "Fine!" and we drove on for a while and talked. I was
          drowsy, and JONL actually dropped off to sleep for 5 minutes. When
          he awoke, RPG said, "Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the way
          over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning San Francisco
          Bay. Just then we came to a sign that said "University Avenue". I
          mumbled something about working our way over to Telegraph Avenue;
          RPG said "Right!" and maneuvered some more. Eventually we pulled
          up in front of an Uncle Gaylord's.

          Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so
          sleepy, and I didn't really understand what was happening until
          RPG let me in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert
          enough to notice that we had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle
          Gaylord's after all.

          JONL noticed the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but hadn't
          caught on. (The place is lit with red and yellow lights at night,
          and looks much different from the way it does in daylight.) He
          said, "This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to in Berkeley! It
          looked like a barn! But this place looks just like the one back in
          Palo Alto!"

          RPG deadpanned, "Well, this is the one I always come to when I'm
          in Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too. Remember,
          they're a chain."

          JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally ignorant
          -- he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in Berkeley,
          not far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was that there
          is a completely different University Avenue in Palo Alto.

          JONL went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. The guy at
          the counter asked whether JONL would like to taste it first,
          evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as not too
          many people like it.

          JONL said, "I'm sure I like it. Just give me a cone." The guy
          behind the counter insisted that JONL try just a taste first.
          "Some people think it tastes like soap." JONL insisted, "Look, I
          love ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots. I already
          went through this hassle with the guy back in Palo Alto. I know I
          like that flavor!"

          At the words "back in Palo Alto" the guy behind the counter got a
          very strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught his
          eye and winked. Through my stupor I still hadn't quite grasped
          what was going on, and thought RPG was rolling on the floor
          laughing and clutching his stomach just because JONL had launched
          into his spiel ("makes rotten meat a dish for princes") for the
          forty-third time. At this point, RPG clued me in fully.

          RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our
          chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream
          with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream
          shops and generally having a good old time.

          At length the g.b.t.c.: said, "How's the ginger honey?" JONL said,
          "Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it?" Now Uncle Gaylord
          publishes all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make
          his ice cream at home. So the g.b.t.c.: got out the recipe, and he
          and JONL pored over it for a while. But the g.b.t.c.: could
          contain his curiosity no longer, and asked again, "You really like
          that stuff, huh?" JONL said, "Yeah, I've been eating it constantly
          back in Palo Alto for the past two days. In fact, I think this
          batch is about as good as the cones I got back in Palo Alto!"

          G.b.t.c.: looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're in Palo
          Alto!"

          JONL turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a
          fit of giggles. He clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed,
          "I've been hacked!"

        [My spies on the West Coast inform me that there is a close relative
        of the raspberry found out there called an `ollalieberry' --ESR]

        [Ironic footnote: the {meme} about ginger vs. rotting meat is an
        urban legend. It's not borne out by an examination of medieval
        recipes or period purchase records for spices, and appears
        full-blown in the works of Samuel Pegge, a gourmand and notorious
        flake case who originated numerous food myths. The truth seems to be
        that ginger was used to cover not rot but the extreme salt taste of
        meat packed in brine, which was the best method available before
        refrigeration. --ESR]

:sagan: /say'gn/, n.

        [from Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos; think "billions and billions"]
        A large quantity of anything. "There's a sagan different ways to
        tweak EMACS." "The U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and
        welfare -- hard to say which is more destructive."

:SAIL: /sayl/, /SAIL/, n.

        1. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in
        the early development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, XEROX
        PARC, and the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings of
        technical innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the {WAITS}
        entry for details). The SAIL machines were shut down in late May
        1990, scant weeks after the MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster was officially
        decommissioned.

        2. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used at SAIL (sense
        1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with a coroutining facility and
        some new data types intended for building search trees and
        association lists.

:salescritter: /sayls'kri`tr/, n.

        Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the
        following joke:

        Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a
           computer salesman?
        A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying.  [Some versions add:
           ...and probably knows how to drive.]

        This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are
        self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the
        inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms
        salesthing and salesdroid are also common. Compare {marketroid},
        {suit}, {droid}.

:salt: n.

        A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much regularity
        would be undesirable; a data {frob} (sense 1). For example, the Unix
        crypt(3) man page mentions that "the salt string is used to perturb
        the DES algorithm in one of 4096 different ways."

:salt mines: n.

        Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long
        hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the
        tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine. Compare
        {playpen}, {sandbox}.

:salt substrate: n.

        [MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels,
        saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a
        carrier for sodium chloride. Also sodium substrate. From the
        technical term chip substrate, used to refer to the silicon on the
        top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are deposited.

:same-day service: n.

        Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with
        respect to {MS-DOS} and Windows system calls (which ought to require
        only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such response time is
        a major incentive for programmers to write programs that are not
        {well-behaved}.

:samizdat: /sahmizdaht/, n.

        [Russian, literally "self publishing"] The process of disseminating
        documentation via underground channels. Originally referred to
        underground duplication and distribution of banned books in the
        Soviet Union; now refers by obvious extension to any
        less-than-official promulgation of textual material, esp. rare,
        obsolete, or never-formally-published computer documentation.
        Samizdat is obviously much easier when one has access to
        high-bandwidth networks and high-quality laser printers. Note that
        samizdat is properly used only with respect to documents which
        contain needed information (see also {hacker ethic}) but which are
        for some reason otherwise unavailable, but not in the context of
        documents which are available through normal channels, for which
        unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation. See
        {Lions Book} for a historical example.

:samurai: n.

        A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for
        factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing
        privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with
        legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. In 1991,
        mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture of
        samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly bright
        teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves
        explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the "net
        cowboys" of William Gibson's {cyberpunk} novels. Those interviewed
        claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and
        to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal crackers as
        beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote Miyamoto
        Musashi's Book of Five Rings, a classic of historical samurai
        doctrine, in support of these principles. See also {sneaker},
        {Stupids}, {social engineering}, {cracker}, {hacker ethic}, and
        {dark-side hacker}.

:sandbender: n.

        [IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and the physical
        design of chips. Compare {ironmonger}, {polygon pusher}.

:sandbox: n.

        (also `sandbox, the')

        1. Common term for the R&D department at many software and computer
        companies (where hackers in commercial environments are likely to be
        found). Half-derisive, but reflects the truth that research is a
        form of creative play. Compare {playpen}.

        2. Syn. {link farm}.

        3. A controlled environment within which potentially dangerous
        programs are run. Used esp. in reference to Java implementations.

        4. A checked-out copy of a source tree, on which one may safely
        perform builds without interfereing with others.

:sanity check: n.

        [very common]

        1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a
        Usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the
        check is to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g.,
        if a piece of scientific software relied on a particular formula and
        was giving unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting
        of parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a sanity check,
        before looking at the more complex I/O or data structure
        manipulation routines, much less the algorithm itself. Compare
        {reality check}.

        2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the
        program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent
        value or state).

        3. Conversationally, saying "sanity check" means you are requesting
        a check of your assumptions. "Wait a minute, sanity check, are we
        talking about the same Kevin here?"

:Saturday-night special: n.

        [from police slang for a cheap handgun] A {quick-and-dirty} program
        or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and
        in response to pressure from a {salescritter}. Such hacks are
        dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production
        release after insufficient review.

:say: vt.

        1. To type to a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, you have
        to say ls -l." Tends to imply a {newline}-terminated command (a
        `sentence').

        2. A computer may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it
        doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a terminal
        in response to your commands. Hackers find it odd that this usage
        confuses {mundane}s.

:scag: vt.

        To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the filesystem
        or by causing media damage. "That last power hit scagged the system
        disk." Compare {scrog}, {roach}.

:scanno: /skan'oh/, n.

        An error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analogous to a
        typo or {thinko}.

:scary devil monastery: n.

        Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup
        alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated with characters that
        rather justify the reference.

:schroedinbug: /shroh'dinbuhg/, n.

        [MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in quantum
        physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't
        manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an
        unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point
        the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though
        (like {bit rot}) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs
        have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. Compare {heisenbug},
        {Bohr bug}, {mandelbug}.

:science-fiction fandom: n.

        Another voluntary subculture having a very heavy overlap with
        hackerdom; most hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and
        many go to `cons' (SF conventions) or are involved in
        fandom-connected activities such as the Society for Creative
        Anachronism. Some hacker jargon originated in SF fandom; see
        {defenestration}, {great-wall}, {cyberpunk}, {h}, {ha ha only
        serious}, {IMHO}, {mundane}, {neep-neep}, {Real Soon Now}.
        Additionally, the jargon terms {cowboy}, {cyberspace}, {de-rezz},
        {go flatline}, {ice}, {phage}, {virus}, {wetware}, {wirehead}, and
        {worm} originated in SF stories.

:SCNR: abbrev

        [common] Sorry, Could Not Resist. Normally used to semi-apologize
        for an obvious wisecrack.

:scram switch: n.

        [from the nuclear power industry] An emergency-power-off switch (see
        {Big Red Switch}), esp. one positioned to be easily hit by
        evacuating personnel. In general, this is not something you {frob}
        lightly; these often initiate expensive events (such as Halon dumps)
        and are installed in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical
        fire or in case some luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts
        across himself while {Easter egging}. (See also {molly-guard},
        {TMRC}.)

        "Scram" was in origin a backronym for "Safety Cut Rope Axe Man"
        coined by Enrico Fermi himself. The story goes that in the earliest
        nuclear power experiments the engineers recognized the possibility
        that the reactor wouldn't behave exactly as predicted by their
        mathematical models. Accordingly, they made sure that they had
        mechanisms in place that would rapidly drop the control rods back
        into the reactor. One mechanism took the form of `scram
        technicians'. These individuals stood next to the ropes or cables
        that raised and lowered the control rods. Equipped with axes or
        cable-cutters, these technicians stood ready for the (literal)
        `scram' command. If necessary, they would cut the cables, and
        gravity would expeditiously return the control rods to the reactor,
        thereby averting yet another kind of {core dump}.

        Modern reactor control rods are held in place with claw-like
        devices, held closed by current. SCRAM switches are circuit breakers
        that immediately open the circuit to the rod arms, resulting in the
        rapid insertion and subsequent bottoming of the control rods.

:scratch:

        1. [from scratchpad] adj. Describes a data structure or recording
        medium attached to a machine for testing or temporary-use purposes;
        one that can be {scribble}d on without loss. Usually in the
        combining forms scratch memory, scratch register, scratch disk,
        scratch tape, scratch volume. See also {scratch monkey}.

        2. [primarily IBM, also Commodore] vt. To delete (as in a file).

:scratch monkey: n.

        As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a {scratch
        monkey}", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with
        irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume
        hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for
        some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed.

        This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey,
        star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto.
        Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the
        university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing
        through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas
        mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one
        day when a {DEC} {field circus} engineer troubleshooting a crash on
        the program's {VAX} inadvertently interfered with some custom
        hardware that was wired to Mabel.

        It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate
        customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC
        troubleshooter called up the {field circus} manager responsible and
        asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to
        humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was
        nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless {droid}s at
        the local `humane' society. The moral is clear: When in doubt,
        always mount a scratch monkey. [The actual incident occured in 1979
        or 1980. There is a version of this story, complete with reported
        dialogue between one of the project people and DEC field service,
        that has been circulating on Internet since 1986. It is hilarious
        and mythic, but gets some facts wrong. For example, it reports the
        machine as a {PDP-11} and alleges that Mabel's demise occurred when
        DEC {PM}ed the machine. Earlier versions of this entry were based on
        that story; this one has been corrected from an interview with the
        hapless sysop. --ESR]

:scream and die: v.

        Syn. {cough and die}, but connotes that an error message was printed
        or displayed before the program crashed.

:screaming tty: n.

        [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random
        characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal
        is either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but
        still enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or
        simple bad luck can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty
        or two can seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix
        system; the arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password
        pairs and tested as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is
        designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil
        brute-force crack attacks, so although none of the logins succeeds;
        the overhead of rejecting them all can be substantial.

:screen: n.

        [Atari ST {demoscene}] One {demoeffect} or one screenful of them.
        Probably comes from old Sierra-style adventures or shoot-em-ups
        where one travels from one place to another one screenful at a time.

:screen name: n.

        A {handle} sense

        1. This term has been common among users of IRC, MUDs, and
        commercial on-line services since the mid-1990s. Hackers recognize
        the term but don't generally use it.

:screen scraping: v.

        The act of capturing data from a system or program by snooping the
        contents of some display that is not actually intended for data
        transport or inspection by programs. Around 1980 this term referred
        to tricks like reading the display memory of a smart terminal
        through its auxiliary port. Nowadays it often refers to parsing the
        HTML in generated web pages with programs designed to mine out
        particular patterns of content. In either guise screen-scraping is
        an ugly, ad-hoc, last-resort technique that is very likely to break
        on even minor changes to the format of the data being snooped.

:screw: n.

        [MIT] A {lose}, usually in software. Especially used for
        user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature. This use has
        become quite widespread outside MIT.

:screwage: /skroo'@j/, n.

        Like {lossage} but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in
        misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy or a mere bug.

:scribble: n.

        To modify a data structure in a random and unintentionally
        destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor program went
        berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was working fine
        until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low core."
        Synonymous with {trash}; compare {mung}, which conveys a bit more
        intention, and {mangle}, which is more violent and final.

:script kiddies: pl.n.

        1. [very common] The lowest form of {cracker}; script kiddies do
        mischief with scripts and {rootkit}s written by others, often
        without understanding the {exploit} they are using. Used of people
        with limited technical expertise using easy-to-operate,
        pre-configured, and/or automated tools to conduct disruptive
        activities against networked systems. Since most of these tools are
        fairly well-known by the security community, the adverse impact of
        such actions is usually minimal.

        2. People who cannot program, but who create tacky HTML pages by
        copying JavaScript routines from other tacky HTML pages. More
        generally, a script kiddie writes (or more likely cuts and pastes)
        code without either having or desiring to have a mental model of
        what the code does; someone who thinks of code as magical
        incantations and asks only "what do I need to type to make this
        happen?"

:scrog: /skrog/, vt.

        [Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or corrupt a data structure. "The list
        header got scrogged." Also reported as skrog, and ascribed to the
        comic strip The Wizard of Id. Compare {scag}; possibly the two are
        related. Equivalent to {scribble} or {mangle}.

:scrool: /skrool/, n.

        [from the pioneering Roundtable chat system in Houston ca.: 1984;
        prob.: originated as a typo for `scroll'] The log of old messages,
        available for later perusal or to help one get back in synch with
        the conversation. It was originally called the scrool monster,
        because an early version of the roundtable software had a bug where
        it would dump all 8K of scrool on a user's terminal.

:scrozzle: /skroz'l/, vt.

        Used when a self-modifying code segment runs incorrectly and
        corrupts the running program or vital data. "The damn compiler
        scrozzled itself again!"

:scruffies: n.

        See {neats vs. scruffies}.

:SCSI: n.

        [Small Computer System Interface] A bus-independent standard for
        system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices.
        Typically annotated in literature with `sexy' (/sek'see/), `sissy'
        (/sisee/), and `scuzzy' (/skuh'zee/) as pronunciation guides -- the
        last being the overwhelmingly predominant form, much to the dismay
        of the designers and their marketing people. One can usually assume
        that a person who pronounces it /S-C-S-I/ is clueless.

:SCSI voodoo: /skuz'ee voodoo/

        [common among Mac users] {SCSI} interface hardware is notoriously
        fickle of temperament. Often, the SCSI bus will fail to work unless
        the cable order of devices is re-arranged, SCSI termination is added
        or removed (sometimes double-termination or no termination will fix
        the problem), or particular devices are given particular SCSI IDs.
        The skills needed to trick the naturally skittish demons of SCSI
        into working are collectively known as SCSI voodoo. Compare {magic},
        {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {rain dance}, {cargo cult
        programming}, {wave a dead chicken}, {voodoo programming}.

        While ordinary mortals frequently experience near-terminal
        frustration when attempting to configure SCSI device chains, it is
        said that a true master of this arcane art can (through rituals
        involving chicken blood, ground rhino horn, hairs of a virgin, eye
        of newt, etc.) hook up your personal computer with three scanners, a
        Zip drive, an IDE hard drive, a home weather station, a Smith-Corona
        typewriter, and the neighbor's garage door.

:search-and-destroy mode: n.

        Hackerism for a noninteractive search-and-replace facility in an
        editor, so called because an incautiously chosen match pattern can
        cause {infinite} damage.

:second-system effect: n.

        (sometimes, more euphoniously, second-system syndrome) When one is
        designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and
        successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's
        success and design an {elephantine} feature-laden monstrosity. The
        term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical
        Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Addison-Wesley, 1975;
        ISBN 0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice,
        simple operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360
        series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see
        {Brooks's Law}, {creeping elegance}, {creeping featurism}. See also
        {Multics}, {OS/2}, {X}, {software bloat}.

        This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
        altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of
        second-system effect run amok on jargon-1....

:secondary damage: n.

        When a fatal error occurs (esp. a {segfault}) the immediate cause
        may be that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous {fandango
        on core}. However, this fandango may have been due to an earlier
        fandango, so no amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the
        damage occurred. "The data structure was clobbered, but it was
        secondary damage." By extension, the corruption resulting from N
        cascaded fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least
        one case on record in which 17 hours of {grovel}ling with adb
        actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of
        seventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished this
        near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows.

:security through obscurity:

        (alt.: security by obscurity) A term applied by hackers to most OS
        vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes -- namely,
        ignoring them, documenting neither any known holes nor the
        underlying security algorithms, trusting that nobody will find out
        about them and that people who do find out about them won't exploit
        them. This "strategy" never works for long and occasionally sets the
        world up for debacles like the {RTM} worm of 1988 (see {Great
        Worm}), but once the brief moments of panic created by such events
        subside most vendors are all too willing to turn over and go back to
        sleep. After all, actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the
        resources needed to implement the next user-interface frill on
        marketing's wish list -- and besides, if they started fixing
        security bugs customers might begin to expect it and imagine that
        their warranties of merchantability gave them some sort of right to
        a system with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese, and
        then where would we be?

        Historical note: There are conflicting stories about the origin of
        this term. It has been claimed that it was first used in the Usenet
        newsgroup comp.sys.apollo during a campaign to get HP/Apollo to fix
        security problems in its Unix-{clone} Aegis/DomainOS (they didn't
        change a thing). {ITS} fans, on the other hand, say it was coined
        years earlier in opposition to the incredibly paranoid {Multics}
        people down the hall, for whom security was everything. In the ITS
        culture it referred to (1) the fact that by the time a tourist
        figured out how to make trouble he'd generally gotten over the urge
        to make it, because he felt part of the community; and (2)
        (self-mockingly) the poor coverage of the documentation and
        obscurity of many commands. One instance of deliberate security
        through obscurity is recorded; the command to allow patching the
        running ITS system (escape escape control-R) echoed as $$^D. If you
        actually typed alt alt ^D, that set a flag that would prevent
        patching the system even if you later got it right.

:SED: /SED/, n.

        [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] Smoke-emitting diode. A {friode}
        that lost the war. See also {LER}. [Not to be confused with sed(1),
        the Unix stream editor. --ESR]

:See figure 1:

        Metaphorically, "Get stuffed." From the title of a famous parody
        that can easily be found with a web search on this phrase; figure 1,
        in fact, depicts the digitus impudicus.

:segfault: n.,vi.

        Syn. {segment}, {segmentation fault}.

:seggie: /seg'ee/, n.

        [Unix] Shorthand for {segmentation fault} reported from Britain.

:segment: /seg'ment/, vi.

        To experience a {segmentation fault}. Confusingly, this is often
        pronounced more like the noun `segment' than like mainstream v.
        segment; this is because it is actually a noun shorthand that has
        been verbed.

:segmentation fault: n.

        [Unix]

        1. [techspeak] An error in which a running program attempts to
        access memory not allocated to it and {core dump}s with a
        segmentation violation error. This is often caused by improper usage
        of pointers in the source code, dereferencing a null pointer, or (in
        C) inadvertently using a non-pointer variable as a pointer. The
        classic example is:

           int i;
           scanf ("%d", i);  /* should have used &i */

        2. To lose a train of thought or a line of reasoning. Also uttered
        as an exclamation at the point of befuddlement.

:segv: /seg'vee/, n.,vi.

        Yet another synonym for {segmentation fault} (actually, in this
        case, `segmentation violation').

:self-reference: n.

        See {self-reference}.

:selvage: /sel'v@j/, n.

        [from sewing and weaving] See {chad} (sense 1).

:semi: /se'mee/, /semi:/

        1. n. Abbreviation for `semicolon', when speaking. "Commands to
        {grind} are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is
        ;;*, not 1/4 of a star.

        2. A prefix used with words such as `immediately' as a qualifier.
        "When is the system coming up?" "Semi-immediately." (That is, maybe
        not for an hour.) "We did consider that possibility semi-seriously."
        See also {infinite}.

:semi-automated: adj.

        [US Geological Survey] A procedure that has yet to be completely
        automated; it still requires a smidge of clueful human interaction.
        Semi-automated programs usually come with written-out operator
        instructions that are worth their weight in gold -- without them,
        very nasty things can happen. At USGS semi-automated programs are
        often referred to as "semi-automated weapons".

:semi-infinite: n.

        See {infinite}.

:senior bit: n.

        [IBM; rare] Syn. {meta bit}.

:September that never ended:

        All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the
        Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies
        who, lacking any sense of {netiquette}, made a general nuisance of
        themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting
        their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to
        learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies
        could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL
        users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the
        old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically
        recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in
        the quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September.
        See also {AOL!}.

:server: n.

        A kind of {daemon} that performs a service for the requester and
        which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the
        requestor/client runs. A particularly common term on the Internet,
        which is rife with web servers, name servers, domain servers, `news
        servers', finger servers, and the like.

:SEX: /seks/

        [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n.

        1. Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae
        hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which
        had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular
        among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to
        exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a {Good
        Thing}, but unprotected SEX can propagate a {virus}. See also {pubic
        directory}.

        2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a
        machine instruction found in the {PDP-11} and many other
        architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf
        personal computers had a `SEt X register' SEX instruction, but this
        seems to have had little folkloric impact. The Data General
        instruction set also had SEX.

        {DEC}'s engineers nearly got a {PDP-11} assembler that used the SEX
        mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't
        asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this happened,
        either. The author of The Intel 8086 Primer, who was one of the
        original designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a
        SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel
        management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus
        the instruction was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was being
        extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in
        IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or
        and logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.

        The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in
        U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal computer, actually had an official SEX
        instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed did
        not. British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after
        all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level)
        have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.

:sex changer: n.

        Syn. {gender mender}.

:shambolic link: /shambol'ik link/, n.

        A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to
        nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some completely
        unexpected part of the filesystem....

:shar file: /shar' fi:l/, n.

        Syn. {sharchive}.

:sharchive: /sharki:v/, n.

        [Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A {flatten}ed representation
        of a set of one or more files, with the unique property that it can
        be unflattened (the original files restored) by feeding it through a
        standard Unix shell; thus, a sharchive can be distributed to anyone
        running Unix, and no special unpacking software is required.
        Sharchives are also intriguing in that they are typically created by
        shell scripts; the script that produces sharchives is thus a script
        which produces self-unpacking scripts, which may themselves contain
        scripts. Sharchives are also commonly referred to as `shar files'
        after the name of the most common program for generating them.

        The downsides of sharchives are that they are an ideal venue for
        {Trojan horse} attacks and that, for recipients not running Unix, no
        simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can and do
        make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features. For these reasons,
        this technique has largely fallen out of use since the mid-1990s.

:Share and enjoy!: imp.

        1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and
        {README file}s, this phrase indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic
        of free information sharing (see {hacker ethic}, sense 1).

        2. The motto of the complaints division of Sirius Cybernetics
        Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent {suit}s) in Douglas
        Adams's Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The irony of using this
        as a cultural recognition signal appeals to hackers.

:shareware: /sheir'weir/, n.

        A kind of {freeware} for which the author requests some payment,
        usually in the accompanying documentation files or in an
        announcement made by the software itself. Such payment may or may
        not buy additional support or functionality. See also {careware},
        {charityware}, {crippleware}, {FRS}, {guiltware}, {postcardware},
        and {-ware}; compare {payware}.

:sharing violation:

        [From a file error common to several {OS}es] A response to receiving
        information, typically of an excessively personal nature, that you
        were probably happier not knowing. "You know those little noises
        that Pat makes in bed?" "Whoa! Sharing violation!" In contrast to
        the original file error, which indicated that you were not being
        given data that you did want.

:shebang: /sh@bang/, n.

        [possibly a portmanteau of "sharp bang"] The character sequence "#!"
        that frequently begins executable shell scripts under Unix. Probably
        derived from "shell bang" under the influence of American slang "the
        whole shebang" (everything, the works).

:shelfware: /shelf'weir/, n.

        Software purchased on a whim (by an individual user) or in
        accordance with policy (by a corporation or government agency), but
        not actually required for any particular use. Therefore, it often
        ends up on some shelf.

:shell: n.

        [orig. {Multics} techspeak, widely propagated via Unix]

        1. [techspeak] The command interpreter used to pass commands to an
        operating system; so called because it is the part of the operating
        system that interfaces with the outside world.

        2. More generally, any interface program that mediates access to a
        special resource or {server} for convenience, efficiency, or
        security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually a shell
        around whatever. This sort of program is also called a wrapper.

        3. A skeleton program, created by hand or by another program (like,
        say, a parser generator), which provides the necessary
        {incantation}s to set up some task and the control flow to drive it
        (the term {driver} is sometimes used synonymously). The user is
        meant to fill in whatever code is needed to get real work done. This
        usage is common in the AI and Microsoft Windows worlds, and confuses
        Unix hackers.

        Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense 1)
        was so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user programs
        not by starting up separate processes, but by dynamically linking
        the programs into its own code, calling them as subroutines, and
        then dynamically de-linking them on return. The VMS command
        interpreter still does something very like this.

:shell out: vi.

        [Unix] To {spawn} an interactive subshell from within a program
        (e.g., a mailer or editor). "Bang foo runs foo in a subshell, while
        bang alone shells out."

:shift left (or right) logical:

        [from any of various machines' instruction sets]

        1. vi. To move oneself to the left (right). To move out of the way.

        2. imper. "Get out of my seat! You can shift to that empty one to
        the left (right)." Often used without the logical, or as left shift
        instead of shift left. Sometimes heard as LSH /lish/, from the
        {PDP-10} instruction set. See {Programmer's Cheer}.

:shim: n.

        1. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired
        memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the
        {PDP-11} Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode,
        inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data
        object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null
        pointer). See also {loose bytes}.

        2. A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML documents by
        certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of elements
        meant to have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision.
        Hackers who work on the HTML code of such pages afterwards
        invariably curse these for their crocky dependence on the particular
        spacing of original image file, the editor that generated them, and
        the version of the browser used to view them. Worse, they are a
        poorly designed {kludge} which the advent of Cascading Style Sheets
        makes wholly unnecessary; Any fool can plainly see that use of
        borders, layers and positioned elements is the Right Thing (or would
        be if adequate support for CSS were more common).

:shitogram: /shit'ohgram/, n.

        A really nasty piece of email. Compare {nastygram}, {flame}.

:shotgun debugging: n.

        The software equivalent of {Easter egging}; the making of relatively
        undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be
        perturbed out of existence. This almost never works, and usually
        introduces more bugs.

:shovelware: /shuh'v@lweir`/, n.

        1. Extra software dumped onto a CD-ROM or tape to fill up the
        remaining space on the medium after the software distribution it's
        intended to carry, but not integrated with the distribution.

        2. A slipshod compilation of software dumped onto a CD-ROM without
        much care for organization or even usability.

:showstopper: n.

        A hardware or (especially) software bug that makes an implementation
        effectively unusable; one that absolutely has to be fixed before
        development can go on. Opposite in connotation from its original
        theatrical use, which refers to something stunningly good.

:shriek: n.

        See {excl}. Occasional CMU usage, also in common use among APL fans
        and mathematicians, especially category theorists.

:Shub-Internet: /shuhb' int@rnet/, n.

        [MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath,
        the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of
        the Internet: Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters,
        Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous
        multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the
        net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects
        and praying for good connections. To no avail -- its purpose is
        malign and evil, and it is the cause of all network slowdown. Often
        heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing
        her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of:
        "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also
        cursed by users of the Web, FTP and telnet when the network lags.
        The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is
        said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake,
        deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon. Compare {Random Number
        God}.

        [January 1996: It develops that one of the computer administrators
        in the basement of the Pentagon read this entry and fell over
        laughing. As a result, you too can now poke Shub-Internet by
        {ping}ing shub-internet.ims.disa.mil. Compare {kremvax}. --ESR]

        [April 1999: shub-internet.ims.disa.mil is no more, alas. But
        Shub-Internet lives, and even has a home page. --ESR]

:SIG: /sig/, n.

        (also common as a prefix in combining forms) A Special Interest
        Group, in one of several technical areas, sponsored by the
        Association for Computing Machinery; well-known ones include SIGPLAN
        (the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages), SIGARCH (the
        Special Interest Group for Computer Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the
        Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics). Hackers, not
        surprisingly, like to overextend this naming convention to less
        formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM conferences) and SIGFOOD
        (at University of Illinois).

:sig block: /sig blok/, n.

        [Internet and Usenet; often written `.sig' there] Short for
        `signature', used specifically to refer to the electronic signature
        block that most Unix mail- and news-posting software will
        {automagically} append to outgoing mail and news. The composition of
        one's sig can be quite an art form, including an ASCII logo, one's
        choice of witty sayings (see {sig quote}, {fool file}), or even
        source code for small programs about which the author wishes to make
        a statement; but many consider large sigs a waste of {bandwidth},
        and it has been observed that the size of one's sig block is usually
        inversely proportional to one's longevity and level of prestige on
        the net. See also {doubled sig}, {McQuary limit}.

:sig quote: /sig kwoht/, n.

        [Usenet] A maxim, quote, proverb, joke, or slogan embedded in one's
        {sig block} and intended to convey something of one's philosophical
        stance, pet peeves, or sense of humor. "Calm down, it's only ones
        and zeroes."

:sig virus: n.

        A parasitic {meme} embedded in a {sig block}. There was a {meme
        plague} or fad for these on Usenet in late 1991. Most were
        equivalents of "I am a .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your .sig
        block.". Of course, the .sig virus's memetic hook is the giggle
        value of going along with the gag; this, however, was a
        self-limiting phenomenon as more and more people picked up on the
        idea. There were creative variants on it; some people stuck `sig
        virus antibody' texts in their sigs, and there was at least one
        instance of a sig virus eater.

:sigmonster: n.

        [common] A beast that randomly chooses one of a selection of
        signatures for appending to mail and news messages. The creature is
        most often mentioned directly when it has been in particularly good
        form and selected a signature appropriate to the topic being
        discussed; the construction "P.S.: good sigmonster, have a cookie"
        is not uncommon. While the are sigmonster programs floating around
        on the net, most hackers who keep one use a silly little Perl or
        Python script that they threw together in the middle of the night
        under the influence of far too much caffeine.

:signal-to-noise ratio: n.

        [from analog electronics] Used by hackers in a generalization of its
        technical meaning. `Signal' refers to useful information conveyed by
        some communications medium, and `noise' to anything else on that
        medium. Hence a low ratio implies that it is not worth paying
        attention to the medium in question. Figures for such metaphorical
        ratios are never given. The term is most often applied to {Usenet}
        newsgroups during {flame war}s. Compare {bandwidth}. See also
        {coefficient of X}, {lost in the noise}.

:silicon: n.

        Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based computer systems (compare
        {iron}). Contrasted with software. See also {sandbender}.

:silly walk: vi.

        [from Monty Python's Flying Circus]

        1. A ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. Like
        {grovel}, but more {random} and humorous. "I had to silly-walk
        through half the /usr directories to find the maps file."

        2. Syn. {fandango on core}.

:silo: n.

        The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line card. So called
        from {DEC} terminology used on DH and DZ line cards for the {VAX}
        and {PDP-11}, presumably because it was a storage space for fungible
        stuff that went in at the top and came out at the bottom.

:since time T equals minus infinity: adv.

        A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time
        that some particular frob was first designed. Usually the word
        `time' is omitted. See also {time T}; contrast {epoch}.

:sitename: /si:t'naym/, n.

        [Unix/Internet] The unique electronic name of a computer system,
        used to identify it in email, Usenet, or other forms of electronic
        information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems
        from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a
        sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has
        to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length
        restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates
        dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and
        clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the
        official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the
        organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon
        characters, animal names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature
        are probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly
        descending order). The obligatory comment when discussing these is
        Harris's Lament: "All the good ones are taken!" See also {network
        address}.

:skrog: v.

        Syn. {scrog}.

:skulker: n.

        Syn. {prowler}.

:slab:

        1. n. A continuous horizontal line of pixels, all with the same
        color.

        2. vi. To paint a slab on an output device. Apple's QuickDraw, like
        most other professional-level graphics systems, renders polygons and
        lines not with Bresenham's algorithm, but by calculating slab points
        for each scan line on the screen in succession, and then slabbing in
        the actual image pixels.

:slack: n.

        1. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store
        useful information. The techspeak equivalent is `internal
        fragmentation'. Antonym: {hole}.

        2. In the theology of the {Church of the SubGenius}, a mystical
        substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all human
        happiness.

        Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable
        wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that "Unix
        has no slack". See {ha ha only serious}.

:slash: n.

        Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See
        {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:slashdot effect: n.

        1. Also spelled "/. effect"; what is said to have happened when a
        website becoming virtually unreachable because too many people are
        hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting article on
        the popular Slashdot news service. The term is quite widely used by
        /. readers, including variants like "That site has been slashdotted
        again!"

        2. In a perhaps inevitable generation, the term is being used to
        describe any similar effect from being listed on a popular site.
        This would better be described as a {flash crowd}. Differs from a
        {DoS attack} in being unintentional.

:sleep: vi.

        1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a process on a multitasking
        system) for service; to indicate to the scheduler that a process may
        be deactivated until some given event occurs or a specified time
        delay elapses.

        2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. {block}; also in sleep on,
        syn.: with block on. Often used to indicate that the speaker has
        relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly
        unspecified) external event: "They can't get the fix I've been
        asking for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep on it until
        the release, then start hassling them again."

:slim: n.

        A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).

:slop: n.

        1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an allowance for error but
        in only one of two directions. For example, if you need a piece of
        wire 10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it, you make very
        sure to cut it too long, by a large amount if necessary, rather than
        too short by even a little bit, because you can always cut off the
        slop but you can't paste it back on again. When discrete quantities
        are involved, slop is often introduced to avoid the possibility of
        being on the losing side of a {fencepost error}.

        2. The percentage of `extra' code generated by a compiler over the
        size of equivalent assembler code produced by {hand-hacking}; i.e.,
        the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it
        yourself. This number is often used as a measure of the goodness of
        a compiler; slop below 5% is very good, and 10% is usually
        acceptable. With modern compiler technology, esp. on RISC machines,
        the compiler's slop may actually be negative; that is, humans may be
        unable to generate code as good. This is one of the reasons
        assembler programming is no longer common.

:slopsucker: /slop'suhkr/, n.

        A lowest-priority task that waits around until everything else has
        `had its fill' of machine resources. Only when the machine would
        otherwise be idle is the task allowed to ``suck up the slop'. Also
        called a hungry puppy or bottom feeder. One common variety of
        slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare {background}.

:Slowlaris: /slo'lahris/, n.

        [Usenet; poss. from the variety of prosimian called a "slow loris".
        The variant `Slowlartus' is also common, related to {LART}] Common
        hackish term for Solaris, Sun's System VR4 version of Unix that came
        out of the standardization wars of the early 1990s. So named because
        especially on older hardware, responsiveness was much less crisp
        than under the preceding SunOS. Early releases of Solaris (that is,
        Solaris 2, as some {marketroid}s at Sun retroactively rechristened
        SunOS as Solaris 1) were quite buggy, and Sun was forced by customer
        demand to support SunOS for quite some time. Newer versions are
        acknowledged to be among the best commercial Unix variants in 1998,
        but still lose single-processor benchmarks to Sparc {Linux}. Compare
        {HP-SUX}, {sun-stools}.

:slurp: vt.

        To read a large data file entirely into {core} before working on it.
        This may be contrasted with the strategy of reading a small piece at
        a time, processing it, and then reading the next piece. "This
        program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT." See also
        {sponge}.

:slurp the robot:

        See {STR}.

:smart: adj.

        Said of a program that does the {Right Thing} in a wide variety of
        complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a
        program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do
        not exist any intelligent programs (yet -- see {AI-complete}).
        Compare {robust} (smart programs can be {brittle}).

:smart terminal: n.

        1. A terminal that has enough computing capability to render
        graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the
        computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal
        computers has made this term and the product it describes
        semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase act
        like a smart terminal used to describe the behavior of workstations
        or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of
        a remote {server}'s storage, using local devices as displays.

        2. obs. Any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a
        {glass tty}. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor,
        but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned in sense 1, is
        called a {dumb terminal}.

        There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the {blit}
        terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather
        a terminal you can educate." This illustrates a common design
        problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else)
        intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid `special features'
        that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in
        any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and
        programmability, on the other hand, are really smart. Compare
        {hook}.

:smash case: vi.

        To lose or obliterate the uppercase/lowercase distinction in text
        input. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the
        files you create." Compare {fold case}.

:smash the stack: n.

        [C programming] To corrupt the execution stack by writing past the
        end of a local array or other data structure. Code that smashes the
        stack can cause a return from the routine to jump to a random
        address, resulting in some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs
        known to mankind. Variants include trash the stack, {scribble} the
        stack, {mangle} the stack; the term **{mung} the stack is not used,
        as this is never done intentionally. See {spam}; see also {aliasing
        bug}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {precedence
        lossage}, {overrun screw}.

:smiley: n.

        See {emoticon}.

:smoke: vi.

        1. To {crash} or blow up, usually spectacularly. "The new version
        smoked, just like the last one." Used for both hardware (where it
        often describes an actual physical event), and software (where it's
        merely colorful).

        2. [from automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. "That processor
        really smokes." Compare {magic smoke}.

:smoke and mirrors: n.

        Marketing deceptions. The term is mainstream in this general sense.
        Among hackers it's strongly associated with bogus demos and crocked
        {benchmark}s (see also {MIPS}, {machoflops}). "They claim their new
        box cranks 50 MIPS for under $5000, but didn't specify the
        instruction mix -- sounds like smoke and mirrors to me." The phrase,
        popularized by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin c.1975, has been
        said to derive from carnie slang for magic acts and `freak show'
        displays that depend on trompe l'oeil effects, but also calls to
        mind the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit. "Smoking Mirror") for
        whom the hearts of huge numbers of human sacrificial victims were
        regularly cut out. Upon hearing about a rigged demo or yet another
        round of fantasy-based marketing promises, hackers often feel
        analogously disheartened. See also {stealth manager}.

:smoke test: n.

        1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic equipment
        following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is applied and
        the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other dramatic signs of
        fundamental failure. See {magic smoke}.

        2. By extension, the first run of a piece of software after
        construction or a critical change. See and compare {reality check}.

        There is an interesting semi-parallel to this term among
        typographers and printers: When new typefaces are being punch-cut by
        hand, a smoke test (hold the letter in candle smoke, then press it
        onto paper) is used to check out new dies.

:smoking clover: n.

        [ITS] A {display hack} originally due to Bill Gosper. Many
        convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor in such a way that
        every pixel struck has its color incremented. The lines all have one
        endpoint in the middle of the screen; the other endpoints are spaced
        one pixel apart around the perimeter of a large square. The color
        map is then repeatedly rotated. This results in a striking,
        rainbow-hued, shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked about
        keeping it hidden from the FDA (the U.S.'s Food and Drug
        Administration) lest its hallucinogenic properties cause it to be
        banned.

:smoot: /smoot/, n.

        [MIT] A unit of length equal five feet seven inches. The length of
        the Harvard Bridge in Boston is famously 364.4 smoots plus an ear
        (the ear is allegedly the width of the earhole in the side of the
        football helmet the victim was wearing when he was rolled over the
        bridge). This legend began with a fraternity prank in 1958 during
        which the body length of Oliver Smoot (class of '62) was actually
        used to measure out that distance. It is commemorated by smoot marks
        that MIT students repaint every few years; the tradition even
        survived the demolition and rebuilding of the bridge in the late
        1980s. The Boston police have been known to use smoot markers to
        indicate accident locations on the bridge. Apparently Smoot's
        experience as a unit of measurement led to a life-long career; he
        eventually became Chairman of the Board of the American National
        Standards Institute, and later President of the International
        Organization for Standardization.

:SMOP: /SMOP/, n.

        [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming]

        1. A piece of code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is
        significantly greater than its complexity. Used to refer to a
        program that could obviously be written, but is not worth the
        trouble. Also used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can
        be easily solved because a program can be written to do it; the
        irony is that it is very clear that writing such a program will be a
        great deal of work. "It's easy to enhance a FORTRAN compiler to
        compile COBOL as well; it's just a SMOP."

        2. Often used ironically by the intended victim when a suggestion
        for a program is made which seems easy to the suggester, but is
        obviously (to the victim) a lot of work. Compare {minor detail}.

:smurf: /smerf/, n.

        1. [from the soc.motss newsgroup on Usenet, after some obnoxiously
        gooey cartoon characters] A newsgroup regular with a habitual style
        that is irreverent, silly, and cute. Like many other hackish terms
        for people, this one may be praise or insult depending on who uses
        it. In general, being referred to as a smurf is probably not going
        to make your day unless you've previously adopted the label yourself
        in a spirit of irony. Compare {old fart}.

        2. [techspeak] A ping packet with a forged source address sent to
        some other network's broadcast address. All the machines on the
        destination network will send a ping response to the forged source
        address (the victim). This both overloads the victim's network and
        hides the location of the attacker.

:SNAFU principle: /sna'foo prinsipl/, n.

        [from a WWII Army acronym for `Situation Normal, All Fucked Up']
        "True communication is possible only between equals, because
        inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors
        pleasant lies than for telling the truth.:" -- a central tenet of
        {Discordianism}, often invoked by hackers to explain why
        authoritarian hierarchies screw up so reliably and systematically.
        The effect of the SNAFU principle is a progressive disconnection of
        decision-makers from reality. This lightly adapted version of a
        fable dating back to the early 1960s illustrates the phenomenon
        perfectly:

        In the beginning was the plan,
               and then the specification;
        And the plan was without form,
               and the specification was void.

        And darkness
               was on the faces of the implementors thereof;
        And they spake unto their leader,
               saying:
        "It is a crock of shit,
               and smells as of a sewer."

        And the leader took pity on them,
               and spoke to the project leader:
        "It is a crock of excrement,
               and none may abide the odor thereof."

        And the project leader
               spake unto his section head, saying:
        "It is a container of excrement,
               and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."

        The section head then hurried to his department manager,
               and informed him thus:
        "It is a vessel of fertilizer,
               and none may abide its strength."

        The department manager carried these words
              to his general manager,
        and spoke unto him
              saying:
        "It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants,
              and it is very strong."

        And so it was that the general manager rejoiced
              and delivered the good news unto the Vice President.
        "It promoteth growth,
              and it is very powerful."

        The Vice President rushed to the President's side,
              and joyously exclaimed:
        "This powerful new software product
              will promote the growth of the company!"

        And the President looked upon the product,
              and saw that it was very good.

        After the subsequent and inevitable disaster, the {suit}s protect
        themselves by saying "I was misinformed!", and the implementors are
        demoted or fired. Compare {Conway's Law}.

:snail: vt.

        To {snail-mail} something. "Snail me a copy of those graphics, will
        you?"

:snail-mail: n.

        Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. Sometimes written as the
        single word `SnailMail'. One's postal address is, correspondingly, a
        snail address. Derives from earlier coinage `USnail' (from `U.S.
        Mail'), for which there have even been parody posters and stamps
        made. Also (less commonly) called P-mail, from `paper mail' or
        `physical mail'. Oppose {email}.

        (Note: Actual garden snails progress at about 10 meters per hour,
        which is about 25-50 times slower than the U.K.'s Royal Mail;
        comparable measurements for other countries have not yet been made.
        More biologically apt terms might be "sloth-mail" at 250 m/hr or
        "tortoise-mail" at 270 m/hr. See
        http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/answers/789communication.jsp?tp=communication
        for details.)

:snap: v.

        To replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer; to replace
        an old address with the forwarding address found there. If you
        telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a
        particular person by name, the operator may tell you that person's
        extension before connecting you, in the hopes that you will snap
        your pointer and dial direct next time. The underlying metaphor may
        be that of a rubber band stretched through a number of intermediate
        points; if you remove all the thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps
        into a straight line from first to last. See {chase pointers}.

        Often, the behavior of a {trampoline} is to perform an error check
        once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as henceforth to
        bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). In this
        context one also speaks of snapping links. For example, in a LISP
        implementation, a function interface trampoline might check to make
        sure that the caller is passing the correct number of arguments; if
        it is, and if the caller and the callee are both compiled, then
        snapping the link allows that particular path to use a direct
        procedure-call instruction with no further overhead.

:snarf: /snarf/, vt.

        1. To grab, esp. to grab a large document or file for the purpose of
        using it with or without the author's permission. See also {BLT}.

        2. [in the Unix community] To fetch a file or set of files across a
        network. See also {blast}. This term was mainstream in the late
        1960s, meaning `to eat piggishly'. It may still have this
        connotation in context. "He's in the snarfing phase of hacking --
        FTPing megs of stuff a day."

        3. To acquire, with little concern for legal forms or politesse (but
        not quite by stealing). "They were giving away samples, so I snarfed
        a bunch of them."

        4. Syn. for {slurp}. "This program starts by snarfing the entire
        database into core, then...."

        5. [GEnie] To spray food or {programming fluid}s due to laughing at
        the wrong moment. "I was drinking coffee, and when I read your post
        I snarfed all over my desk." "If I keep reading this topic, I think
        I'll have to snarf-proof my computer with a keyboard {condom}."
        [This sense appears to be widespread among mundane teenagers --ESR]
        The sound of snarfing is {splork!}.

:snarf & barf: /snarf'nbarf`/, n.

        Under a {WIMP environment}, the act of grabbing a region of text and
        then stuffing the contents of that region into another region (or
        the same one) to avoid retyping a command line. In the late 1960s,
        this was a mainstream expression for an `eat now, regret it later'
        cheap-restaurant expedition.

:snarf down: v.

        To {snarf}, with the connotation of absorbing, processing, or
        understanding. "I'll snarf down the latest version of the {nethack}
        user's guide -- it's been a while since I played last and I don't
        know what's changed recently."

:snark: n.

        [Lewis Carroll, via the Michigan Terminal System]

        1. A system failure. When a user's process bombed, the operator
        would get the message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!"

        2. More generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a
        computer (especially if it might be a boojum). Often used to refer
        to an event or a log file entry that might indicate an attempted
        security violation.

        3. UUCP name of snark.thyrsus.com, home site of the Jargon File
        versions from 2.*.* on (i.e., this lexicon).

:sneaker: n.

        An individual hired to break into places in order to test their
        security; analogous to {tiger team}. Compare {samurai}.

:sneakernet: /snee'kernet/, n.

        Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic
        information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media
        from one machine to another. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a
        station wagon filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs."
        Also called `Tennis-Net', `Armpit-Net', `Floppy-Net' or `Shoenet';
        in the 1990s, `Nike network' after a well-known sneaker brand.

:sniff: v.,n.

        1. To watch packets traversing a network. Most often in the phrase
        packet sniffer, a program for doing same. 2. Synonym for {poll}.

:snippage: n.

        Synonym for {deletia}; the fact that something has been snipped when
        quoting is often indicated with the pseudo-HTML <snip>.

:SO: /SO/, n.

        1. (also S.O.) Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost invariably
        written abbreviated and pronounced /SO/ by hackers. Used to refer
        to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not
        married. See {MOTAS}, {MOTOS}, {MOTSS}.

        2. [techspeak] The Shift Out control character in ASCII (Control-N,
        0001110).

:social engineering: n.

        Term used among {cracker}s and {samurai} for cracking techniques
        that rely on weaknesses in {wetware} rather than software; the aim
        is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information
        that compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include
        phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a
        field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access
        problem. See also the {tiger team} story in the {patch} entry, and
        {rubber-hose cryptanalysis}.

:social science number: n., //

        [IBM] A statistic that is {content-free}, or nearly so. A measure
        derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a dubious
        and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science number in
        hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be considerably
        worse. As a rule, {management} loves them. See also {numbers},
        {math-out}, {pretty pictures}.

:sock puppet: n.

        [Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and talking
        to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet parlance, a
        {pseudo} through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own
        original message to give the appearance that a number of people
        support the views held in the original message. See also
        {astroturfing}, {tentacle}.

:sodium substrate: n.

        Syn {salt substrate}.

:soft boot: n.

        See {boot}.

:softcopy: /soft'kopee/, n.

        [by analogy with hardcopy] A machine-readable form of corresponding
        hardcopy. See {bits}.

:software bloat: n.

        The results of {second-system effect} or {creeping featuritis}.
        Commonly cited examples include ls(1), {X}, {BSD}, and {OS/2}.

:software hoarding: n.

        Pejorative term employed by members and adherents of the {GNU}
        project to describe the act of holding software proprietary, keeping
        it under trade secret or license terms which prohibit free
        redistribution and modification. Used primarily in Free Software
        Foundation propaganda. For a summary of related issues, see {GNU}
        and {free software}.

:software laser: n.

        An optical laser works by bouncing photons back and forth between
        two mirrors, one totally reflective and one partially reflective. If
        the lasing material (usually a crystal) has the right properties,
        photons scattering off the atoms in the crystal will excite cascades
        of more photons, all in lockstep. Eventually the beam will escape
        through the partially-reflective mirror. One kind of {sorcerer's
        apprentice mode} involving {bounce message}s can produce closely
        analogous results, with a {cascade} of messages escaping to flood
        nearby systems. By mid-1993 there had been at least two publicized
        incidents of this kind.

:software rot: n.

        Term used to describe the tendency of software that has not been
        used in a while to {lose}; such failure may be semi-humorously
        ascribed to {bit rot}. More commonly, software rot strikes when a
        program's assumptions become out of date. If the design was
        insufficiently {robust}, this may cause it to fail in mysterious
        ways. Syn. code rot. See also {link rot}.

        For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of
        COBOL programs, a good number of them succumbed to software rot when
        their 2-digit year counters underwent {wrap around} at the beginning
        of the year 2000. Actually, related lossages often afflict
        centenarians who have to deal with computer software designed by
        unimaginative clods. One such incident became the focus of a minor
        public flap in 1990, when a gentleman born in 1889 applied for a
        driver's license renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina. The new system
        refused to issue the card, probably because with 2-digit years the
        ages 101 and 1 cannot be distinguished.

        Historical note: Software rot in an even funnier sense than the
        mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g.,
        the R1; see {grind crank}). If a program that depended on a peculiar
        instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might
        discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once
        did. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. We
        can {snarf} this opcode, right? No one uses it.") Another classic
        example of this sprang from the time an MIT hacker found a simple
        way to double the speed of the unconditional jump instruction on a
        PDP-6, so he patched the hardware. Unfortunately, this broke some
        fragile timing software in a music-playing program, throwing its
        output out of tune. This was fixed by adding a defensive
        initialization routine to compare the speed of a timing loop with
        the real-time clock; in other words, it figured out how fast the
        PDP-6 was that day, and corrected appropriately.

        Compare {bit rot}.

:softwarily: /softweir'ilee/, adv.

        In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily
        unreliable." The adjective **`softwary' is not used. See
        {hardwarily}.

:softy: n.

        [IBM] Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely
        ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.

:some random X: adj.

        Used to indicate a member of class X, with the implication that Xs
        are interchangeable. "I think some random cracker tripped over the
        guest timeout last night." See also {J. Random}.

:sorcerer's apprentice mode: n.

        [from Goethe's Der Zauberlehrling via Paul Dukas's L'apprenti
        sorcier in the film Fantasia.] A bug in a protocol where, under some
        circumstances, the receipt of a message causes multiple messages to
        be sent, each of which, when received, triggers the same bug. Used
        esp. of such behavior caused by {bounce message} loops in {email}
        software. Compare {broadcast storm}, {network meltdown}, {software
        laser}, {ARMM}.

:source: n.

        [very common] In reference to software, source is invariably
        shorthand for `source code', the preferred human-readable and
        human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to object
        code, the derived binary executable form of a program. This
        shorthand readily takes derivative forms; one may speak of "the
        sources of a system" or of "having source".

:source of all good bits: n.

        A person from whom (or a place from which) useful information may be
        obtained. If you need to know about a program, a {guru} might be the
        source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a
        particularly competent secretary.

:space-cadet keyboard: n.

        A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired
        several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of
        {EMACS}. It was equipped with no fewer than seven shift keys: four
        keys for {bucky bits} (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and
        three regular shift keys, called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many
        keys had three symbols on them: a letter and a symbol on the top,
        and a Greek letter on the front. For example, the `L' key had an `L'
        and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the
        front. By pressing this key with the right hand while playing an
        appropriate `chord' with the left hand on the shift keys, you could
        get the following results:

        +---------------------------------------------------+
        | L             | lowercase l                       |
        |---------------+-----------------------------------|
        | shift-L       | uppercase L                       |
        |---------------+-----------------------------------|
        | front-L       | l                                 |
        |---------------+-----------------------------------|
        | front-shift-L | L                                 |
        |---------------+-----------------------------------|
        | top-L         | <=> (front and shift are ignored) |
        +---------------------------------------------------+

        And of course each of these might also be typed with any combination
        of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyboard, you
        could type over 8000 different characters! This allowed the user to
        type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands
        of single-character commands at his disposal. The keyboard of the
        Symbolics Lisp machine was a simplified version, lacking Top and
        Front keys, that could only send about 2000 characters.

        Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings
        of that many characters if it reduced typing time (this attitude
        obviously shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however,
        thought having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that
        such a keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. See
        {bucky bits}, {cokebottle}, {double bucky}, {meta bit}, {quadruple
        bucky}.

        Simplified Symbolics version of the space-cadet keyboard

        (Some relatively bad photographs of the earlier, more elaborate
        version are available on the Web.).

        Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the
        space-cadet keyboard with the Knight keyboard. Though both were
        designed by Tom Knight, the latter term was properly applied only to
        a keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and modeled on the Stanford
        keyboard (as described under {bucky bits}). The true space-cadet
        keyboard evolved from the first Knight keyboard.

        An early {space-cadet keyboard}

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 73-05-20. The previous one
        is 73-05-18.)

:spaceship operator: n.

        The glyph <=>, so-called apparently because in the low-resolution
        constant-width font used on many terminals it vaguely resembles a
        flying saucer. {Perl} uses this to denote the signum-of-difference
        operation.

:SPACEWAR: n.

        A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's
        Lensman books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun,
        shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace.
        This game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. In
        1968-69, a descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build,
        in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that
        became {Unix}. Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was
        commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are
        still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere.

:spaghetti code: n.

        Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using
        many GOTOs, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching
        constructs. Pejorative. The synonym kangaroo code has been reported,
        doubtless because such code has so many jumps in it.

:spaghetti inheritance: n.

        [encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use
        inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass graph,
        often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other
        classes just for the sake of reusing their code. Coined in a
        (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through
        guilt-by-association with {spaghetti code}.

:spam: vt.,vi.,n.

        [from Monty Python's Flying Circus]

        1. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with
        excessively large input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun
        screw}, {smash the stack}.

        2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or
        inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as
        one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking "What do you think
        of abortion?" on soc.women). This is often done with {cross-post}ing
        (e.g. any message which is cross-posted to alt.rush-limbaugh and
        alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups).
        This overlaps with {troll} behavior; the latter more specific term
        has become more common.

        3. To send many identical or nearly-identical messages separately to
        a large number of Usenet newsgroups. This is more specifically
        called ECP, Excessive Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to
        infuriate nearly everyone on the Net. See also {velveeta} and
        {jello}.

        4. To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This is
        more specifically called EMP, Excessive Multi-Posting.

        5. To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email
        messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used
        when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or
        databases without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include
        {UCE}, {UBE}. As a noun, `spam' refers to the messages so sent.

        6. Any large, annoying, quantity of output. For instance, someone on
        IRC who walks away from their screen and comes back to find 200
        lines of text might say "Oh no, spam".

        The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the
        Internet has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4
        and 5 are now primary. All three behaviors are considered abuse of
        the net, and are almost universally grounds for termination of the
        originator's email account or network connection. In these senses
        the term `spam' has gone mainstream, though without its original
        sense or folkloric freight -- there is apparently a widespread myth
        among {luser}s that "spamming" is what happens when you dump cans of
        Spam into a revolving fan. Hormel, the makers of Spam, have
        published a surprisingly enlightened position statement on the
        Internet usage.

:spam bait: n.

        Email addresses included in, or comprising the entirety of, a Usenet
        message so that spammers mining a newsgroup with an {address
        harvester} will collect them. These addresses can be people who have
        offended or annoyed the poster, or who are included so that a
        spammer will spam an official, thereby causing himself trouble. One
        particularly effective form of spam bait is the address of a
        {teergrube}.

:spamblock: /spam'blok/, n.

        [poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email address to
        render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For example, the
        address <jrandom@hacker.org> might be transformed to
        <jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org>. Adding spamblock to an address is often
        referred to as munging it (see {munge}). This evasion tactic depends
        on the fact that most spammers collect names with some sort of
        {address harvester} on volumes too high to de-mung by hand, but
        individual humans reading an email message can readily spot and
        remove a spamblock in the From address.

        Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already
        be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life.
        In both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart
        address harvester from mining out the addresses in the message
        header and trace lines. Therefore the only people who can be
        protected are third parties mentioned by email address in the
        message -- not a common enough case to interest spammers.

:spamhaus: spam'hows, n.

        Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits or
        even encourages {spam} mailings from its systems. The plural is
        spamhausen. There is a web page devoted to tracking spamhausen.

        The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber
        Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The
        anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam Freedom
        Day, but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky
        corners of the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine
        under the junk-fax laws and statues specifically targeting spam,
        spamhausen have declined in relative importance; today, hit-and-run
        attacks by spammers using {relay rape} and {throwaway account}s on
        reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the flow.

:spamvertize: v.

        To advertise using {spam}. Pejorative.

:spangle: n.

        [UK] The singular of {bells and whistles}. See also {spungle}.

:spawn: n.,vi.

        1. [techspeak] In Unix parlance, to create a child process from
        within a process. Technically this is a `fork'; the term `spawn' is
        a bit more general and is used for threads (lightweight processes)
        as well as traditional heavyweight processes.

        2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (spawn-point) and when a
        player comes to life (or re-spawns) after being killed. Opposite of
        {frag}.

:special-case: vt.

        To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in a
        program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This
        would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt
        characters in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text
        entry or normal commands), or for processing of {hidden flag}s in
        the input of a batch program or {filter}.

:speed of light:

        The absolutely fastest a particular algorithm or application could
        be implemented, given a set of constraints that are assumed to be
        unchangeable. For example, "This would take 60 microseconds without
        any processing whatsoever, so that's the speed of light." However,
        as one brilliant hacker once commented: "Remember that the speed of
        light only is constant if you can't redesign the universe."

:speedometer: n.

        A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today) or
        nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is
        shifted left every N times the operating system goes through its
        {main loop}. A swiftly moving pattern indicates that the system is
        mostly idle; the speedometer slows down as the system becomes
        overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems hardware bounces
        back and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the wretched
        Battlestar Galactica TV series.

        Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell 6000)
        actually had an analog speedometer on the front panel, calibrated in
        instructions executed per second.

:spell: n.

        Syn. {incantation}.

:spelling flame: n.

        [Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's
        spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was
        trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point
        (compare {dictionary flame}). Of course, people who are more than
        usually slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a
        spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that
        spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.

:spider:

        The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for
        indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a {bot}. The
        best-known spider is Scooter, the web-walker for the Alta Vista
        search engine.

:spider food: n.

        Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web page to attract
        search engines (spiders). The intended result of including spider
        food in one's web page is to insure that the page appears high on
        the list of matching entries to a search engine query. There are
        right and wrong ways to do this; the right way is a discreet `meta
        keywords' tag, the wrong way is to embed many repeats of a keyword
        in comments (and many search engines now detect and ignore the
        latter).

:spiffy: /spi'fee/, adj.

        1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally
        well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy {X} version of
        {empire} yet?"

        2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little
        more than a flashy interface going for it. Which meaning should be
        drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was
        common mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to 1.

:spike: v.

        1. To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes
        temporary) device that forces a specific result. The word is used in
        several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a relay by
        inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed or open
        state, and railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so that it
        cannot be moved. In programming environments it normally refers to a
        temporary change, usually for testing purposes (as opposed to a
        permanent change, which would be called {hardwired}).

        2. [borderline techspeak] A visible peak in an otherwise rather
        constant graph (e.g. a sudden surge in line voltage, an unexpected
        short "high" on a logical line in a circuit). Hackers frequently use
        this for a sudden short increase in some quantity such as system
        load or network traffic.

:spin: vi.

        Equivalent to {buzz}. More common among C and Unix programmers. See
        the discussion of `spinlock' under {busy-wait}.

:Spinning Pizza of Death: n.

        [OS X; common] The quartered-circle busy indicator on Mac OS X
        versions before 10.2, after which it was replaced by a sort of
        rainbow pinwheel thingy. It was analogous to the Microsoft Windows
        hourglass, but OS X 10.0's legendary slowness under the Aqua toolkit
        made this term rather more evocative. See {Death, X of}.

:spl: /SPL/

        [abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way traditional Unix kernels
        implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt levels.
        Used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in or tuning out
        ordinary communication. Classically, spl levels run from 1 to 7;
        "Fred's at spl 6 today" would mean that he is very hard to
        interrupt. "Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then." See also
        {interrupts locked out}.

:splash screen: n.

        [Mac users] Syn. {banner}, sense 3.

:splat: n.

        1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk
        (*) character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive from the
        `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line
        printers.

        2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the # character (ASCII
        0100011).

        3. The {feature key} on a Mac (same as {alt}, sense 2).

        4. obs. Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII
        (x) character. This character is also called blobby and frob, among
        other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation
        for tensor product.

        5. obs. Name for the semi-mythical Stanford extended ASCII (+)
        character. See also {ASCII}.

:splat out: v.

        [Usenet; syn. disemvowel] To partially obscure a potentially
        provocative word by substituting {splat} characters for some of its
        letters (usually, but not always, the vowels). The purpose is not to
        make the word unrecognizable but to make it a mention rather than a
        use, so that no flamewar ensues. Words often splatted out include
        N*z* (see {Godwin's Law}), k*bo* (see {KIBO}, sense 2), *v*l*t**n
        (anywhere fundamentalists might be lurking), *b*rt**n, and g*n
        c*ntr*l. Compare {UN*X}.

:splork!:

        [Usenet; common] The sound of coffee (or other beverage) hitting the
        monitor and/or keyboard after being forced out of the mouth via the
        nose (also "splorf"). It usually follows an unexpectedly funny thing
        in a Usenet post. Compare {snarf}, {C|N>K}.

:spod: n.

        [UK]

        1. A lower form of life found on {talker system}s and {MUD}s. The
        spod has few friends in {RL} and uses talkers instead, finding
        communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the
        negative traits of the computer geek without having any interest in
        computers per se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how
        networks work, and considering his access a God-given right, he is a
        major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new
        MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto
        Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not
        allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation
        with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "Got any good
        numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically
        present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same
        machine that he is using and enter talk mode. 2. An experienced
        talker user. As with the defiant adoption of the term geek in the
        mid-1990s by people who would previously have been stigmatized by
        it, the term "spod" is now used as a mark of distinction by talker
        users who've accumulated a large amount of login time. Such spods
        tend to be very knowledgeable about talkers and talker coding, as
        well as more general hacker activites. An unusually high proportion
        of spods work in the ISP sector, a profession which allows for
        lengthy periods of login time and for under-the-desk servers, or
        "spodhosts", upon which talker systems are hosted. Compare {newbie},
        {tourist}, {weenie}, {twink}, {terminal junkie}, {warez d00dz}.

        2. A {backronym} for "Sole Purpose, Obtain a Degree"; according to
        some self-described spods, this term is used by indifferent students
        to condemn their harder-working fellows.

        3. [Glasgow University] An otherwise competent hacker who spends way
        too much time on talker systems.

        4. [obs.] An ordinary person; a {random}. This is the meaning with
        which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us he has
        himself accepted sense 1.

:spoiler: n.

        [Usenet]

        1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or
        movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense
        when reading the book or watching the movie.

        2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle,
        thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct
        answer (see also {interesting}). Either sense readily forms
        compounds like total spoiler, quasi-spoiler and even pseudo-spoiler.

        By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense should
        contain the word `spoiler' in the Subject: line, or guarantee via
        various tricks that the answer appears only after several
        screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via
        {rot13}, {spoiler space} or some combination of these techniques.

:spoiler space:

        [also spoiler spoo or spoiler protection] A screenful of blank or
        spacer lines deliberately inserted in a message following a
        {spoiler} warning, so the actual spoiler can't be seen without
        hitting a key. Formfeeds used to be used for this, but are now rare
        because so many people read news through Web interfaces on which
        they have no good interpretation.

:sponge: n.

        [Unix] A special case of a {filter} that reads its entire input
        before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility.
        Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input
        file with the output data stream. If a file system has versioning
        (as ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses
        its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a
        new version. See also {slurp}.

:spoof: vi.

        To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way
        that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially
        to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header
        data in order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has
        become very widespread and is borderline techspeak. Interestingly,
        it was already in use in its modern sense more than a century ago
        among Victorian telegraphers; it shows up in Kipling.

:spool: vi.

        [from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line', but is
        widely thought to be a {backronym}] To send files to some device or
        program (a spooler) that queues them up and does something useful
        with them later. Without qualification, the spooler is the print
        spooler controlling output of jobs to a printer; but the term has
        been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters
        and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. See
        also {demon}.

:spool file: n.

        Any file to which data is {spool}ed to await the next stage of
        processing. Especially used in circumstances where spooling the data
        copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or pieces of
        software. For example, when you send mail under Unix, it's typically
        copied to a spool file to await a transport {demon}'s attentions.
        This is borderline techspeak.

:sporgery:

        [portmanteau of `spam' or `spew' and `forgery'. Massive floods of
        forged articles intended to disrupt a newsgroup. Typically these
        have reasonable-looking headers but complete gibberish for content,
        making the legitimate articles too difficult to find. This tactic
        has been most notoriously used by the Church of Scientology to
        disrupt discussion on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, but is
        unfortunately not by any means confined to that group.

:sport death: n.

        [MIT] The masochistic extreme of hacking, where the body and mind
        are pushed until their limits are reached, and the body is barely
        able to support the mind. Then, once your extremes are reached, you
        push as far beyond that point as you can, far beyond normal notions
        of all-nighters and caffeine diets.

:spungle: n.

        [Durham, UK; portmanteau, {spangle} + bungle] A {spangle} of no
        actual usefulness. Example: Roger the Bent Paperclip in Microsoft
        Word '98. A spungle's only virtue is that it looks pretty, unless
        you find creeping featurism ugly.

:spyware: n.

        1. Software which, when installed by a user insufficiently
        enlightened to avoid it, enables third parties to snoop the user's
        hard drive or monitor their network transactions. Though the term
        seems to have entered use in the late 1990s, it achieved real
        popularity as applied to Microsoft Windows XP. Some {back door}
        features in XP permit Microsoft to (for example) covertly scan your
        disk directories for the names of files it might deem to be {warez}.

        2. Systems for spying on email and web traffic, such as the FBI's
        Carnivore.

:squirrelcide: n.

        [common on Usenet's comp.risks newsgroup.] (alt.: squirrelicide)
        What all too frequently happens when a squirrel decides to exercise
        its species's unfortunate penchant for shorting out power lines with
        their little furry bodies. Result: one dead squirrel, one down
        computer installation. In this situation, the computer system is
        said to have been squirrelcided.

:stack: n.

        The set of things a person has to do in the future. One speaks of
        the next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the
        stack. "I'm afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be
        pushed way down on my stack." "I haven't done it yet because every
        time I pop my stack something new gets pushed." If you are
        interrupted several times in the middle of a conversation, "My stack
        overflowed" means "I forget what we were talking about." The
        implication is that more items were pushed onto the stack than could
        be remembered, so the least recent items were lost. The usual
        physical example of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of
        plates or trays sitting on a spring in a well, so that when you put
        one on the top they all sink down, and when you take one off the top
        the rest spring up a bit. See also {push} and {pop}.

        (The Art of Computer Programming, second edition, vol. 1, p. 236)
        says:

          Many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues
          independently have given other names to these structures: stacks
          have been called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars,
          nesting stores, piles, last-in-first-out ("LIFO") lists, and even
          yo-yo lists!

        The term "stack" was originally coined by Edsger Dijkstra, who was
        quite proud of it.

:stack puke: n.

        Some processor architectures are said to `puke their guts onto the
        stack' to save their internal state during exception processing. The
        Motorola 68020, for example, regurgitates up to 92 bytes on a bus
        fault. On a pipelined machine, this can take a while.

:stale pointer bug: n.

        Synonym for {aliasing bug} used esp. among microcomputer hackers.

:Stanford Bunny:

        The successor of the {Utah Teapot}. The model is of a chocolate
        Easter bunny consisting of about 5000 polygons. It is small by 2002
        standards, but is more illustrative than the teapot of of techniques
        such as surface radiance (e.g. radiosity) and self-reflection. There
        is a history page. Compare {lenna}.

:star out: v.

        [University of York, England] To replace a user's encrypted password
        in /etc/passwd with a single asterisk. Under Unix this is not a
        legal encryption of any password; hence the user is not permitted to
        log in. In general, accounts like adm, news, and daemon are
        permanently "starred out"; occasionally a real user might have this
        inflicted upon him/her as a punishment, e.g. "Graham was starred out
        for playing Omega in working hours". Also occasionally known as The
        Order Of The Gold Star in this context. "Don't do that, or you'll be
        awarded the Order of the Gold Star..." Compare {disusered}.

:state: n.

        1. Condition, situation. "What's the state of your latest hack?"
        "It's winning away." "The system tried to read and write the disk
        simultaneously and got into a totally {wedged} state." The standard
        question "What's your state?" means "What are you doing?" or "What
        are you about to do?" Typical answers are "about to gronk out", or
        "hungry". Another standard question is "What's the state of the
        world?", meaning "What's new?" or "What's going on?". The more terse
        and humorous way of asking these questions would be "State-p?".
        Another way of phrasing the first question under sense 1 would be
        "state-p latest hack?".

        2. Information being maintained in non-permanent memory (electronic
        or human).

:stealth manager: n.

        [Corporate DP] A manager that appears out of nowhere, promises
        undeliverable software to unknown end users, and vanishes before the
        programming staff realizes what has happened. See {smoke and
        mirrors}.

:steam-powered: adj.

        Old-fashioned or underpowered; archaic. This term does not have a
        strong negative loading and may even be used semi-affectionately for
        something that clanks and wheezes a lot but hangs in there doing the
        job.

:steved: adj.,v., /steevd/

        [Apple employees and users] Terminated, said of a development
        project. Originated after Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple as acting
        CEO in 1997. Jobs immediated axed several development projects,
        including OpenDoc and Newton that had been launched by John Sculley,
        the man who had ousted Jobs in the mid 1980s. Now any project shut
        down at Apple and often at any large firm connected with Apple may
        be said to have gotten steved. It is usually spelled lowercase
        despite the origin. It is almost always past-tense and used
        quasi-adjectivally.

:STFW: imp., /STFW/

        [Usenet] Common abbreviation for "Search The Fucking Web", a
        suggestion that what you're asking for is a query better handled by
        a search engine than a human being. Usage is common and exactly
        parallel to both senses of {RTFM}. A politer equivalent is {GIYF}.

:stir-fried random: n.

        (alt.: stir-fried mumble) Term used for the best dish of many of
        those hackers who can cook. Consists of random fresh veggies and
        meat wokked with random spices. Tasty and economical. See {random},
        {great-wall}, {ravs}, {laser chicken}, {oriental food}; see also
        {mumble}.

:stomp on: vt.

        To inadvertently overwrite something important, usually
        automatically. "All the work I did this weekend got stomped on last
        night by the nightly server script." Compare {scribble}, {mangle},
        {trash}, {scrog}, {roach}.

:Stone Age: n.,adj.

        1. In computer folklore, an ill-defined period from ENIAC (ca. 1943)
        to the mid-1950s; the great age of electromechanical {dinosaur}s.
        Sometimes used for the entire period up to 1960--61 (see {Iron
        Age}); however, it is funnier and more descriptive to characterize
        the latter period in terms of a `Bronze Age' era of
        transistor-logic, pre-ferrite-{core} machines with drum or CRT mass
        storage (as opposed to just mercury delay lines and/or relays). See
        also {Iron Age}.

        How things weren't in the {Stone Age}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-07-18. The previous
        cartoon was 76-03-14:5-8.)

        2. More generally, a pejorative for any crufty, ancient piece of
        hardware or software technology. Note that this is used even by
        people who were there for the {Stone Age} (sense 1).

:stone knives and bearskins: n.

        [from the Star Trek Classic episode The City on the Edge of Forever]
        A term traditionally used to describe (and deprecate) computing
        environments that are grotesquely primitive in light of what is
        known about good ways to design things. As in "Don't get too used to
        the facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone knives and
        bearskins as far as the eye can see". Compare {steam-powered}.

:stoppage: /sto'p@j/, n.

        Extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital)
        completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a
        {fried} transformer."

:store: n.

        [prob.: from techspeak main store] In some varieties of Commonwealth
        hackish, the preferred synonym for {core}. Thus, bringing a program
        into store means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software
        but that a program is being {swap}ped in.

:STR:

        Spot the reference. Used in {scary devil monastery} to mark the
        witticism one just uttered as a quote from some work of art or
        literature, the more obscure the better. Those who know where the
        reference comes from reply in the form "You are $CHARACTER, and you
        owe me $ITEM", where $CHARACTER is a character from the story being
        referenced and $ITEM is something associated with that character.
        This acronym is never actually expanded to its proper meaning in the
        newsgroup; posters instead use obscure expansions, the most common
        being "slurp the robot", leading to comments like "I pulled my hair
        out, but couldn't figure out which robot you're slurping".

:strided: /stri:'d@d/, adj.

        [scientific computing] Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes
        to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant
        interval called the stride length. These can be a worst-case access
        pattern for the standard memory-caching schemes when the stride
        length is a multiple of the cache line size. Strided references are
        often generated by loops through an array, and (if your data is
        large enough that access-time is significant) it can be worthwhile
        to tune for better locality by inverting double loops or by
        partially unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest. This usage is
        borderline techspeak; the related term memory stride is definitely
        techspeak.

:stroke: n.

        Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111) character. See
        {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:strudel: n.

        Common (spoken) name for the at-sign (`@', ASCII 1000000) character.
        See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:stubroutine: /stuhb'rooteen/, n.

        [contraction of stub subroutine] Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for
        a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.

:studly: adj.

        Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both
        complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to {hairy}
        but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic most studly or
        as noun-form studliness. "Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most
        studly."

:studlycaps: /stuhd'leekaps/, n.

        A hackish form of silliness similar to {BiCapitalization} for
        trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than
        to trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS
        oBscuRe.

:stunning: adj.

        Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to code
        what in Ada? That's a ... stunning idea!"

:stupid-sort: n.

        Syn. {bogo-sort}.

:Stupids: n.

        Term used by {samurai} for the {suit}s who employ them; succinctly
        expresses an attitude at least as common, though usually better
        disguised, among other subcultures of hackers. There may be intended
        reference here to an SF story originally published in 1952 but much
        anthologized since, Mark Clifton's Star, Bright. In it, a
        super-genius child classifies humans into a very few `Brights' like
        herself, a huge majority of `Stupids', and a minority of `Tweens',
        the merely ordinary geniuses.

:Sturgeon's Law: prov.

        "Ninety percent of everything is crud". Derived from a quote by
        science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90%
        of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is
        crud." Sturgeon himself called this "Sturgeon's Revelation", and it
        first appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction;
        he gave Sturgeon's Law as "Nothing is always absolutely so." Oddly,
        when Sturgeon's Revelation is cited, the final word is almost
        invariably changed to `crap'. Compare {Hanlon's Razor},
        {Ninety-Ninety Rule}. Though this maxim originated in SF fandom,
        most hackers recognize it and are all too aware of its truth.

:sucking mud: adj.

        [Applied Data Research] (also pumping mud) Crashed or {wedged}.
        Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network,
        such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East
        Texas oilfield lament, "Shut 'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud".
        Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are
        you ready to suck mud?"

:sufficiently small: adj.

        Syn. {suitably small}.

:suit: n.

        1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn by
        non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation device
        that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought
        that this explains much about the behavior of suit-wearers. Compare
        {droid}.

        2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a techie or
        hacker. See {pointy-haired}, {burble}, {management}, {Stupids},
        {SNAFU principle}, {PHB}, and {brain-damaged}.

:suitable win: n.

        See {win}.

:suitably small: adj.

        [perverted from mathematical jargon] An expression used ironically
        to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected
        or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program
        came up with a correct full-screen display, and one publicly
        exclaimed: "It works!" Then, if the program dumped core on the first
        mouse click, one might add: "Well, for suitably small values of
        `works'."

:Sun: n.

        Sun Microsystems. Hackers remember that the name was originally an
        acronym, Stanford University Network. Sun started out around 1980
        with some hardware hackers (mainly) from Stanford talking to some
        software hackers (mainly) from UC Berkeley; Sun's original
        technology concept married a clever board design based on the
        Motorola 68000 to {BSD} Unix. Sun went on to lead the workstation
        industry through the 1980s, and for years afterwards remained an
        engineering-driven company and a good place for hackers to work.
        Though Sun drifted away from its techie origins after 1990 and has
        since made some strategic moves that disappointed and annoyed many
        hackers (especially by maintaining proprietary control of Java and
        rejecting Linux), it's still considered within the family in much
        the same way {DEC} was in the 1970s and early 1980s.

:sun lounge: n.

        [UK] The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor in this
        term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to
        describe a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered
        together give off an amazing amount of heat.

:sun-stools: n.

        Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment
        notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {X},
        however, is larger and (some claim) slower; see {second-system
        effect}.

:sunspots: n.

        1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly
        turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess."

        2. Also the cause of {bit rot} -- from the myth that sunspots will
        increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memory. See
        also {phase of the moon}.

:super source quench: n.

        A special packet designed to shut up an Internet host. The Internet
        Protocol (IP) has a control message called Source Quench that asks a
        host to transmit more slowly on a particular connection to avoid
        congestion. It also has a Redirect control message intended to
        instruct a host to send certain packets to a different local router.
        A "super source quench" is actually a redirect control packet,
        forged to look like it came from a local router, that instructs a
        host to send all packets to its own local loopback address. This
        will effectively tie many Internet hosts up in knots. Compare
        {Godzillagram}, {breath-of-life packet}.

:superloser: n.

        [Unix] A superuser with no clue -- someone with root privileges on a
        Unix system and no idea what he/she is doing, the moral equivalent
        of a three-year-old with an unsafetied Uzi. Anyone who thinks this
        is an uncommon situation reckons without the territorial urges of
        {management}.

:superprogrammer: n.

        A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and
        quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are.
        (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three
        orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be able to
        write an average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while
        another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This
        range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human
        endeavor.) The term superprogrammer is more commonly used within
        such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress
        naive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity,
        ingenuity, and getting the job done -- and to sidestep the question
        of whether the 3,000 lines of code do more or less useful work than
        three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the
        terms {hacker} and {wizard}.

:superuser: n.

        [Unix] Syn. {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-Unix
        environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on.
        A more specific term than {wheel}.

:support: n.

        After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but
        few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless -- because
        by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the
        software and the relevant manuals better than the support people
        (sadly, this is not a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of
        `support' is a tete--tete with the software's designer.

:surf: v.

        [from the `surf' idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels] To traverse
        the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp. if one is
        doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also common to speak
        of surfing in to a particular resource.

        Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using it
        since it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive,
        couch-potato connotations that go with TV channel surfing were never
        pleasant, and hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about "surfing
        the net" tends to make hackers feel a bit as though their home is
        being overrun by ignorami.

:Suzie COBOL: /soo'zee kohbol/

        1. [IBM: prob.: from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder
        straight out of training school who knows everything except the
        value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among
        personkind wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) `Sammy Cobol' or
        (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'.

        2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J.
        Random Hacker}.

:swab: /swob/

        [From the mnemonic for the {PDP-11} `SWAp Byte' instruction, as
        immortalized in the dd(1) option conv=swab (see {dd})]

        1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file

        2. n. The program in V7 Unix used to perform this action, or
        anything functionally equivalent to it. See also {big-endian},
        {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {bytesexual}.

:swap: vt.

        1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a
        slow-access memory (swap out), or vice versa (swap in). Often refers
        specifically to the use of disks as virtual memory. As pieces of
        data or program are needed, they are swapped into {core} for
        processing; when they are no longer needed they may be swapped out
        again.

        2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term
        memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as
        swapping in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then
        remember it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. To keep
        something swapped in means to keep it fresh in your memory: "I
        reread the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If
        someone interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say
        "Wait a moment while I swap this out", implying that a piece of
        paper is your extra-somatic memory and that if you don't swap the
        idea out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you
        talk. Compare {page in}, {page out}.

:swap space: n.

        Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move
        or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room
        for swap space."

:swapped in: n.

        See {swap}. See also {page in}.

:swapped out: n.

        See {swap}. See also {page out}.

:Swiss-Army chainsaw:

        In early Unix days, a well-known technical paper analogized the
        lexical analyzer generator lex(1) to a Swiss-army knife; this was a
        comment on the remarkable variety of more general uses discovered
        for a program originally designed as a special-purpose code
        generator for writing compilers. Two decades later, well-known
        hacker Henry Spencer described the {Perl} scripting language as a
        "Swiss-Army chainsaw", intending to convey his evaluation of the
        language as exceedingly powerful but ugly and noisy and prone to
        belch noxious fumes. This had two results: (1) Perl fans adopted the
        epithet as a badge of pride, and (2) it entered more general usage
        to describe software that is highly versatile but distressingly
        inelegant.

:swizzle: v.

        To convert external names, array indices, or references within a
        data structure into address pointers when the data structure is
        brought into main memory from external storage (also called pointer
        swizzling); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to
        simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer
        dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termed
        unswizzling. See also {snap}.

:sync: /sink/, vi.

        (var.: synch)

        1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization.

        2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see {flush},
        sense 2.

        3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or
        agents to a state that would be `safe' if the system were to crash;
        thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).

:syntactic salt: n.

        The opposite of {syntactic sugar}, a feature designed to make it
        harder to write bad code. Specifically, syntactic salt is a hoop the
        programmer must jump through just to prove that he knows what's
        going on, rather than to express a program action. Some programmers
        consider required type declarations to be syntactic salt. A
        requirement to write end if, end while, end do, etc.: to terminate
        the last block controlled by a control construct (as opposed to just
        end) would definitely be syntactic salt. Syntactic salt is like the
        real thing in that it tends to raise hackers' blood pressures in an
        unhealthy way. Compare {candygrammar}.

:syntactic sugar: n.

        [coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other
        formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, but which do not affect
        the expressiveness of the formalism (compare {chrome}). Used esp.
        when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the `sugar'
        feature into other constructs already present in the notation. C's
        a[i] notation is syntactic sugar for *(a + i). "Syntactic sugar
        causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis.

        The variants syntactic saccharin and syntactic syrup are also
        recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in that
        syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable
        to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no purpose at
        all. Compare {candygrammar}, {syntactic salt}.

:sys-frog: /sis'frog/, n.

        [the PLATO system] Playful variant of sysprog, which is in turn
        short for `systems programmer'.

:sysadmin: /sis'admin/, n.

        Common contraction of `system admin'; see {admin}.

:sysape: /sys'ayp/, n.

        A rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on {sysop}
        common at sites that use the banana hierarchy of problem complexity
        (see {one-banana problem}).

:sysop: /sis'op/, n.

        [esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a
        bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on {FidoNet} is to
        address a message to sysop in an international FidoNet board, thus
        sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world.

:system: n.

        1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer.

        2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the
        supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software.

        3. Any large-scale program.

        4. Any method or algorithm.

        5. System hacker: one who hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only;
        for sense 3 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP hacker)

:system mangler: n.

        Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss. from the fact that one
        major IBM OS had a {root} account called SYSMANGR. Refers
        specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration,
        software maintenance, and updates at some site. Unlike {admin}, this
        term emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved.

:systems jock: n.

        See {jock}, sense 2.

  T

   T

   tail recursion

   talk mode

   talker system

   TAN

   tanked

   TANSTAAFL

   tape monkey

   tar and feather

   tarball

   tardegy

   taste

   tayste

   TCB

   TCP/IP

   TECO

   tee

   teergrube

   teledildonics

   ten-finger interface

   tense

   tentacle

   tenured graduate student

   tera-

   teraflop club

   terminak

   terminal brain death

   terminal illness

   terminal junkie

   test

   TeX

   text

   thanks in advance

   That's not a bug, that's a feature!

   the literature

   the network

   the X that can be Y is not the true X

   theology

   theory

   thinko

   This can't happen

   This time, for sure!

   thrash

   thread

   three-finger salute

   throwaway account

   thud

   thumb

   thundering herd problem

   thunk

   tick

   tick-list features

   tickle a bug

   tiger team

   time bomb

   time sink

   time T

   times-or-divided-by

   timesharing

   TINC

   Tinkerbell program

   TINLC

   tip of the ice-cube

   tired iron

   tits on a keyboard

   TLA

   TMRC

   TMRCie

   TMTOWTDI

   to a first approximation

   to a zeroth approximation

   toad

   toast

   toaster

   toeprint

   TOFU

   toggle

   tool

   toolchain

   toolsmith

   toor

   top-post

   topic drift

   topic group

   TOPS-10

   TOPS-20

   TOS

   tourist

   tourist information

   touristic

   toy

   toy language

   toy problem

   toy program

   trampoline

   trap

   trap door

   trash

   trawl

   tree-killer

   treeware

   trit

   trivial

   troff

   troglodyte

   troglodyte mode

   Trojan horse

   troll

   Troll-O-Meter

   tron

   troughie

   true-hacker

   tty

   tube

   tube time

   tumbler

   tunafish

   tune

   turbo nerd

   Turing tar-pit

   turist

   Tux

   tweak

   TWENEX

   twiddle

   twilight zone

   twink

   twirling baton

   two pi

   two-to-the-N

   tyop

:T: /T/

        1. [from LISP terminology for `true'] Yes. Used in reply to a
        question (particularly one asked using The -P convention). In LISP,
        the constant T means `true', among other things. Some Lisp hackers
        use `T' and `NIL' instead of `Yes' and `No' almost reflexively. This
        sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight
        attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may absently
        respond `T', meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will be
        brought a cup of tea instead. Fortunately, most hackers
        (particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at
        least as well as coffee -- so it is not that big a problem.

        2. See {time T} (also {since time T equals minus infinity}).

        3. [techspeak] In transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation
        for the noun `transaction'.

        4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of {tee}.

        5. A dialect of {LISP} developed at Yale. (There is an intended
        allusion to NIL, "New Implementation of Lisp", another dialect of
        Lisp developed for the {VAX})

:tail recursion: n.

        If you aren't sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.

:talk mode: n.

        A feature supported by Unix and some other OSes that allows two or
        more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It
        combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and
        verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to
        communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of
        these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for
        details).

        Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing,
        which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to (and
        probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs
        since the 1920s.

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        | AFAIAC           | as far as I am concerned                      |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | AFAIK            | as far as I know                              |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | BCNU             | be seeing you                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | BTW              | by the way                                    |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | are you ready to unlink? (this is the         |
        | BYE?             | 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)  |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | are you there? (often used on unexpected      |
        | FOO?             | links, meaning also "Sorry if I butted in     |
        |                  | &ellipsis;" (linker) or "What's up?"          |
        |                  | (linkee))                                     |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | FWIW             | for what it's worth                           |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | FYI              | for your information                          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | FYA              | for your amusement                            |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | go ahead (used when two people have tried to  |
        | GA               | type simultaneously; this cedes the right to  |
        |                  | type to the other)                            |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | GRMBL            | grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement)  |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | HELLOP           | hello? (an instance of the `-P' convention)   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | IIRC             | if I recall correctly                         |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | JAM              | just a minute (equivalent to SEC.... )        |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | MIN              | same as JAM                                   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | NIL              | no (see {NIL})                                |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | NP               | no problem                                    |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | O                | over to you                                   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | OO               | over and out                                  |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | /                | another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x |
        |                  | over y")                                      |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | \                | lambda (used in discussing LISPy things)      |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | OBTW             | oh, by the way                                |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | OTOH             | on the other hand                             |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | R U THERE?       | are you there?                                |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | SEC              | wait a second (sometimes written SEC... )     |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST   |
        | SYN              | in return; this is modeled on the TCP/IP      |
        |                  | handshake sequence)                           |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | T                | yes (see the main entry for {T})              |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TNX              | thanks                                        |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TNX 1.0E6        | thanks a million (humorous)                   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TNXE6            | another form of "thanks a million"            |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TTBOMK           | to the best of my knowledge                   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | WRT              | with regard to, or with respect to.           |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | WTF              | the universal interrogative particle; WTF     |
        |                  | knows what it means?                          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | WTH              | what the hell?                                |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | When the typing party has finished, he/she    |
        |                  | types two newlines to signal that he/she is   |
        | <double newline> | done; this leaves a blank line between        |
        |                  | 'speeches' in the conversation, making it     |
        |                  | easier to reread the preceding text.          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | You Had To Be There. Used of a situation      |
        | YHTBT            | which loses significant meaning in the        |
        |                  | telling, usually because it's difficult to    |
        |                  | convey tone and timing.                       |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        |                  | When three or more terminals are linked, it   |
        |                  | is conventional for each typist to {prepend}  |
        |                  | his/her login name or handle and a colon (or  |
        |                  | a hyphen) to each line to indicate who is     |
        | <name>:          | typing (some conferencing facilities do this  |
        |                  | automatically). The login name is often       |
        |                  | shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a      |
        |                  | single letter) during a very long             |
        |                  | conversation.                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | /\/\/\           | A giggle or chuckle. On a MUD, this usually   |
        |                  | means 'earthquake fault'.                     |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | <g>              | grin                                          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | <gd&r>           | grinning, ducking, and running                |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | BBL              | be back later                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | BRB              | be right back                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | HHOJ             | ha ha only joking                             |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | HHOK             | ha ha only kidding                            |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | HHOS             | {ha ha only serious}                          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | IMHO             | in my humble opinion (see {IMHO})             |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | LOL              | laughing out loud                             |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | NHOH             | Never Heard of Him/Her (often used in         |
        |                  | {initgame})                                   |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | ROTF             | rolling on the floor                          |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | ROTFL            | rolling on the floor laughing                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | AFK              | away from keyboard                            |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | b4               | before                                        |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | CU l8tr          | see you later                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | MORF             | male or female?                               |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TTFN             | ta-ta for now                                 |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | TTYL             | talk to you later                             |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | OIC              | oh, I see                                     |
        |------------------+-----------------------------------------------|
        | rehi             | hello again                                   |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        Most of these are not used at universities or in the Unix world,
        though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and IMHO is
        common; conversely, most of the people who know these are unfamiliar
        with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, {NIL}, and {T}.

        The {MUD} community uses a mixture of Usenet/Internet emoticons, a
        few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some
        of the `social' list above; specifically, MUD respondents report use
        of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4, BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of rehi is
        also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will
        frequently rehug or rebonk (see {bonk/oif}) people. The word re by
        itself is taken as `regreet'. In general, though, MUDders express a
        preference for typing things out in full rather than using
        abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD
        cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume
        high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are reported:

        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
        | CU l8er | see you later (mutant of CU l8tr)                      |
        |---------+--------------------------------------------------------|
        | FOAD    | fuck off and die (use of this is generally OTT)        |
        |---------+--------------------------------------------------------|
        | OTT     | over the top (excessive, uncalled for)                 |
        |---------+--------------------------------------------------------|
        | ppl     | abbrev for "people"                                    |
        |---------+--------------------------------------------------------|
        | THX     | thanks (mutant of TNX; clearly this comes in batches   |
        |         | of 1138 (the Lucasian K)).                             |
        |---------+--------------------------------------------------------|
        | UOK?    | are you OK?                                            |
        +------------------------------------------------------------------+

        Some {B1FF}isms (notably the variant spelling d00d) appear to be
        passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders.

        One final note on talk mode style: neophytes, when in talk mode,
        often seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because
        they are typing rather than speaking. This is not the best approach.
        It can be very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to
        think of a word, or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and
        backs up to fix it. It is usually best just to leave typographical
        errors behind and plunge forward, unless severe confusion may
        result; in that case it is often fastest just to type "xxx" and
        start over from before the mistake.

        See also {hakspek}, {emoticon}.

:talker system: n.

        British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or {talk
        mode}.

:TAN: adj.

        [Usenet, particularly rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan] Abbrev. of
        `tangent', as in "off on a tangent", and synonym for {OT}. A number
        of hacker-humor synonyms are used for TAN in some newsgroups.
        Instances such as BEIGE, OFF-WHITE, BROWNISH-GRAY, and LIGHT BROWN
        have been observed. It is generally understood on newsgroups with
        this convention that any color descriptor is a TAN synonym if (a)
        used as the first word(s) of the topic of a Usenet post, (b) written
        in ALL CAPS, and (c) followed immediately by a colon. Usage:
        "OFF-WHITE: 2000 Presidential candidates" on an SF newsgroup.

:tanked: adj.

        Same as {down}, used primarily by Unix hackers. See also {hosed}.
        Popularized as a synonym for `drunk' by Steve Dallas in the late
        lamented Bloom County comic strip.

:TANSTAAFL: /tan'stahfl/

        [acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel The Moon is a
        Harsh Mistress.] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often
        invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an
        unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique, or at the poor quality of some
        piece of software, or at the {signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated
        Usenet newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a
        database back end to get my address book program to work!" "Well,
        TANSTAAFL you know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the
        high concentration of science-fiction fans and political
        libertarians in hackerdom (see Appendix B for discussion).

        Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such
        Thing...") is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952
        in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have
        arisen from it by mutation.

:tape monkey: n.

        A junior system administrator, one who might plausibly be assigned
        to do physical swapping of tapes and subsequent storage. When a
        backup needs to be restored, one might holler "Tape monkey!"
        (Compare {one-banana problem}) Also used to dismiss jobs not worthy
        of a highly trained sysadmin's ineffable talents: "Cable up her PC?
        You must be joking -- I'm no tape monkey."

:tar and feather: vi.

        [from Unix tar(1)] To create a transportable archive from a group of
        files by first sticking them together with tar(1) (the Tape
        ARchiver) and then compressing the result (see {compress}). The
        latter action is dubbed feathering partly for euphony and (if only
        for contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with an airplane
        propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce
        water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links
        more easily. Compare the more common {tarball}. Earlier, the phrase
        referred to a punishment in which the victims had tar being poured
        upon them and then, whilst the tar was still sticky, having a pillow
        full of feathers - or other material -- thrown at them. See
        http://www.nwta.com/Spy/spring99/tar.html.

:tarball: n.

        [very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk
        tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing
        myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the
        whole project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around
        source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it
        seems odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late
        1990s.

:tardegy: tar'djee, n.

        [deliberate mangling of tragedy] An incident in which someone who
        clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool on grounds of
        extreme stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on the Darwin list,
        which is dedicated to chronicling such incidents; but almost all
        hackers would instantly recognize the intention of the term and
        laugh.

:taste: n.

        1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional
        to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it.
        Also tasty, tasteful, tastefulness. "This feature comes in N tasty
        flavors." Although tasty and flavorful are essentially synonyms,
        taste and {flavor} are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the
        part of the creator; a program or feature can exhibit taste but
        cannot have taste. On the other hand, a feature can have {flavor}.
        Also, {flavor} has the additional meaning of `kind' or `variety' not
        shared by taste. The marked sense of {flavor} is more popular than
        taste, though both are widely used. See also {elegant}.

        2. Alt. sp. of {tayste}.

:tayste: /tayst/

        n. Two bits; also as {taste}. Syn. {crumb}, {quarter}. See {nybble}.

:TCB: /TCB/, n.

        [IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or
        difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect
        or {shotgun debugging}. Compare {heisenbug}. Not to be confused
        with:

        2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official' jargon term from the
        {Orange Book}.

:TCP/IP: /T'CP IP/, n.

        1. [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The
        wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the
        only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or
        retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as X.25,
        DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by
        actually being used, rather than being handed down from on high by a
        vendor or a heavily-politicized standards committee. Consequently,
        it (a) works, (b) actually promotes cheap cross-platform
        connectivity, and (c) annoys the hell out of corporate and
        governmental empire-builders everywhere. Hackers value all three of
        these properties. See {creationism}.

        2. [Amateur Packet Radio] Formerly expanded as "The Crap Phil Is
        Pushing". The reference is to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context was
        an ongoing technical/political war between the majority of sites
        still running AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.

:TECO: /tee'koh/, n.,v. obs.

        1. [originally an acronym for `[paper] Tape Editor and COrrector';
        later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor developed at
        MIT and modified by just about everybody. With all the dialects
        included, TECO may have been the most prolific editor in use before
        {EMACS}, to which it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful
        programming-language-like features and its unspeakably {hairy}
        syntax. It is literally the case that every string of characters is
        a valid TECO program (though probably not a useful one); one common
        game used to be mentally working out what the TECO commands
        corresponding to human names did.

        2. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its
        infinite variations (see below).

        3. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is not the editor being used!
        This usage is rare and now primarily historical.

        As an example of TECO's obscurity, here is a TECO program that takes
        a list of names such as:

        Loser, J. Random
        Quux, The Great
        Dick, Moby

        sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts the
        surname last, removing the comma, to produce the following:

        Moby Dick
        J. Random Loser
        The Great Quux

        The program is

        [1 J^P$L$$
        J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$

        (where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually an
        {alt} or escape (ASCII 0011011) character).

        In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted
        list from the first list. The first hack at it had a {bug}: GLS (the
        author) had accidentally omitted the @ in front of F^B, which as
        anyone can see is clearly the {Wrong Thing}. It worked fine the
        second time. There is no space to describe all the features of TECO,
        but it may be of interest that ^P means `sort' and J<.-Z; ... L> is
        an idiomatic series of commands for `do once for every line'.

        In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history,
        having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by {EMACS}.
        Descendants of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted
        by DEC can still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty
        {PDP-11} operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced
        MIT versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. See also
        {retrocomputing}, {write-only language}.

:tee: n.,vt.

        [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh, you're
        sending him the {bits} to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the Unix
        command tee(1), itself named after a pipe fitting (see {plumbing}).
        Can also mean `save one for me', as in "Tee a slice for me!" Also
        spelled `T'.

:teergrube: /teer'groob@/, n.

        [German for tar pit] A trap set to punish spammers who use an
        {address harvester}; a mail server deliberately set up to be really,
        really slow. To activate it, scatter addresses that look like users
        on the teergrube's host in places where the address harvester will
        be trolling (one popular way is to embed the fake address in a
        Usenet sig block next to a human-readable warning not to send mail
        to it). The address harvester will dutifully collect the address.
        When the spammer tries to mailbomb it, his mailer will get stuck.

:teledildonics: /tel`@dildo'niks/, n.

        Sex in a computer simulated virtual reality, esp. computer-mediated
        sexual interaction between the {VR} presences of two humans. This
        practice is not yet possible except in the rather limited form of
        erotic conversation on {MUD}s and the like. The term, however, is
        widely recognized in the VR community as a {ha ha only serious}
        projection of things to come. "When we can sustain a multi-sensory
        surround good enough for teledildonics, then we'll know we're
        getting somewhere." See also {hot chat}.

:ten-finger interface: n.

        The interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected
        for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two
        terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type
        into the other.

:tense: adj.

        Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often
        got that way because it was highly tuned, but sometimes it was just
        based on a great idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar,
        once a grad-student hacker at CMU: "This routine is so tense it will
        bring tears to your eyes." A tense programmer is one who produces
        tense code.

:tentacle: n.

        A covert {pseudo}, sense 1. An artificial identity created in
        cyberspace for nefarious and deceptive purposes. The implication is
        that a single person may have multiple tentacles. This term was
        originally floated in some paranoid ravings on the cypherpunks list
        (see {cypherpunk}), and adopted in a spirit of irony by other, saner
        members. It has since shown up, used seriously, in the documentation
        for some remailer software, and is now (1994) widely recognized on
        the net. Compare {astroturfing}, {sock puppet}.

:tenured graduate student: n.

        One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual maximum
        is 5 or 6): a `ten-yeared' student (get it?). Actually, this term
        may be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year.
        Students don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do,
        but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the
        university longer than any untenured professor.

:tera-: /te'r@/, pref.

        [SI] See {quantifiers}.

:teraflop club: /ter@flop kluhb/, n.

        [FLOP = Floating Point Operation] A mythical association of people
        who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce
        a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing
        techniques. Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to have been the
        founder. Compare {Knights of the Lambda Calculus}.

:terminak: /ter'minak`/, n.

        [Caltech, ca. 1979] Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A common
        failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L' key to
        produce the `K' code instead; complaints about this tended to look
        like "Terminak #3 has a bad keyboard. Pkease fix." Compare {dread
        high-bit disease}, {frogging}; see also {sun-stools}, {HP-SUX},
        {Slowlaris}.

:terminal brain death: n.

        The extreme form of {terminal illness} (sense 1). What someone who
        has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to
        be suffering from.

:terminal illness: n.

        1. Syn. {raster burn}.

        2. The `burn-in' condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a
        screen saver.

:terminal junkie: n.

        [UK] A {wannabee} or early {larval stage} hacker who spends most of
        his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing {noddy}
        programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include
        terminal jockey, console junkie, and {console jockey}. The term
        console jockey seems to imply more expertise than the other three
        (possibly because of the exalted status of the {console} relative to
        an ordinary terminal). See also {twink}, {read-only user}.
        Appropriately, this term was used in the works of William S.
        Burroughs to describe a heroin addict with an unlimited supply.

:test: n.

        1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get thoroughly
        acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup of the
        results.

        2. Some bored random user trying a couple of the simpler features
        with a developer looking over his or her shoulder, ready to pounce
        on mistakes.

        Judging by the quality of most software, the second definition is
        far more prevalent. See also {demo}.

:TeX: /tekh/, n.

        An extremely powerful {macro}-based text formatter written by Donald
        E. {Knuth}, very popular in the computer-science community (it is
        good enough to have displaced Unix {troff}, the other favored
        formatter, even at many Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the
        correct (guttural) pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all
        caps, squished together, with the E depressed below the baseline;
        the mixed-case `TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only
        devices). Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' -- such
        as TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster
        (competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also
        {CrApTeX}.

        Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
        quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monumental Art
        of Computer Programming (see {Knuth}, also {bible}). In a
        manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at
        hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting
        language. He thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978;
        he was wrong by only about 8 years. The language was finally frozen
        around 1985, but volume IV of The Art of Computer Programming is not
        expected to appear until 2007. The impact and influence of TeX's
        design has been such that nobody minds this very much. Many grand
        hackish projects have started as a bit of {toolsmith}ing on the way
        to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale
        than most.

        TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
        high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary award to anyone who
        found and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code freeze; as
        the years wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new
        ones even harder to find), the bribe went up. Though well-written,
        TeX is so large (and so full of cutting edge technique) that it is
        said to have unearthed at least one bug in every Pascal system it
        has been compiled with.

:text: n.

        1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a pure code portion shared
        between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking
        OS. Compare {English}.

        2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary
        {ASCII} or {EBCDIC} representation (see {flat-ASCII}). "Those are
        text files; you can review them using the editor."

        These two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too.

:thanks in advance:

        [Usenet] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for
        information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance' or
        `aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. See {net.-}, {netiquette}.

:That's not a bug, that's a feature!:

        The {canonical} first parry in a debate about a purported bug. The
        complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is
        then at best a {misfeature}. See also {feature}.

:the literature: n.

        Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured
        at to answer a question that the speaker believes is {trivial}.
        Thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the
        literature." Oppose {Knuth}, which has no connotation of triviality.

:the network: n.

        1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic,
        and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990
        ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and {Usenet}
        `networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
        timesharing services (such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that
        gateway to them. A site is generally considered on the network if it
        can be reached through some combination of Internet-style (@-sign)
        and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See {Internet}, {bang path},
        {network address}.

        2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and
        subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, "the network"
        is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was
        before the second wave of wide-area computer networking began around
        1980).

        3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and
        anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton
        Wilson's novel Schrdinger's Cat, to which many hackers have
        subsequently decided they belong (this is an example of {ha ha only
        serious}).

        In sense 1, the network is often abbreviated to the net. "Are you on
        the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to
        face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.

:the X that can be Y is not the true X:

        Yet another instance of hackerdom's peculiar attraction to mystical
        references -- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements
        about a class of things. The template is from the Tao te Ching: "The
        Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao." The implication is
        often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened.
        See the {trampoline} entry for an example, and compare {has the X
        nature}.

:theology: n.

        1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}.

        2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the
        resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal}
        with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used esp. around
        software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such
        as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.

:theory: n.

        The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently
        being used to inform a behavior. This usage is a generalization and
        (deliberate) abuse of the technical meaning. "What's the theory on
        fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner tonight?"
        ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory on letting lusers
        on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the
        following well-known screw...."

:thinko: /thing'koh/, n.

        [by analogy with `typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in mental
        processing, especially one involving recall of information learned
        by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. {braino}; see
        also {brain fart}. Compare {mouso}.

:This can't happen:

        Less clipped variant of {can't happen}.

:This time, for sure!: excl.

        Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging
        sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring
        up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered
        in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey,
        Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The {canonical}
        response is, of course, "But that trick never works!" See {hacker
        humor}.

:thrash: vi.

        To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful.
        Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their
        time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful
        computation) and are therefore said to thrash. Someone who keeps
        changing his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be
        thrashing. A person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at
        once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be
        described as thrashing. Compare {multitask}.

:thread: n.

        [Usenet, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of topic thread, a
        more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic. To
        follow a thread is to read a series of Usenet postings sharing a
        common subject or (more correctly) which are connected by Reference
        headers. The better newsreaders can present news in thread order
        automatically. Not to be confused with the techspeak sense of
        `thread', e.g. a lightweight process.

        Interestingly, this is far from a neologism. The OED says: "That
        which connects the successive points in anything, esp. a narrative,
        train of thought, or the like; the sequence of events or ideas
        continuing throughout the whole course of anything;" Citations are
        given going back to 1642!

:three-finger salute: n.

        Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

:throwaway account: n.

        1. An inexpensive Internet account purchased on a legitimate {ISP}
        for the sole purpose of spewing {spam}.

        2. An inexpensive Internet account obtained for the sole purpose of
        doing something which requires a valid email address but being able
        to ignore spam since the user will not look at the account again.

:thud: n.

        1. Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). It is reported
        that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was
        `foo', `bar', `thud', `blat'.

        2. Rare term for the hash character, `#' (ASCII 0100011). See
        {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:thumb: n.

        The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called because moving it
        allows you to browse through the contents of a text window in a way
        analogous to thumbing through a book.

:thundering herd problem:

        Scheduler thrashing. This can happen under Unix when you have a
        number of processes that are waiting on a single event. When that
        event (a connection to the web server, say) happens, every process
        which could possibly handle the event is awakened. In the end, only
        one of those processes will actually be able to do the work, but, in
        the meantime, all the others wake up and contend for CPU time before
        being put back to sleep. Thus the system thrashes briefly while a
        herd of processes thunders through. If this starts to happen many
        times per second, the performance impact can be significant.

:thunk: /thuhnk/, n.

        1. [obs.]"A piece of coding which provides an address:", according
        to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding
        actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure
        calls. If a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a
        formal parameter, the compiler generates a thunk which computes the
        expression and leaves the address of the result in some standard
        location.

        2. Later generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its
        environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to
        what in techspeak is called a closure). The process of unfreezing
        these thunks is called forcing.

        3. A {stubroutine}, in an overlay programming environment, that
        loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare {trampoline}.

        4. Microsoft and IBM have both defined, in their Intel-based
        systems, a "16-bit environment" (with bletcherous segment registers
        and 64K address limits) and a "32-bit environment" (with flat
        addressing and semi-real memory management). The two environments
        can both be running on the same computer and OS (thanks to what is
        called, in the Microsoft world, WOW which stands for Windows On
        Windows). MS and IBM have both decided that the process of getting
        from 16- to 32-bit and vice versa is called a "thunk"; for Windows
        95, there is even a tool THUNK.EXE called a "thunk compiler".

        5. A person or activity scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It
        occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by
        a thunk -- I frequently need to be forced to completion.:" --
        paraphrased from a {plan file}.

        Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths
        circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is that
        it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that
        the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator. Yet another
        suggests that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at
        argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the inventors, it
        was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of
        discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 could be
        figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought,
        simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had
        `already been thought of'; thus it was christened a thunk, which is
        "the past tense of `think' at two in the morning".

:tick: n.

        1. A {jiffy} (sense 1).

        2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between
        iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this
        amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint
        of interest is the ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is
        often pejoratively referred to as tick-tick-tick simulation,
        especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
        independent chains of causes is {handwave}d.

        3. In the FORTH language, a single quote character.

:tick-list features: n.

        [Acorn Computers] Features in software or hardware that customers
        insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort
        of thing). The American equivalent would be checklist features, but
        this jargon sense of the phrase has not been reported.

:tickle a bug: vt.

        To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some known
        series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in the
        Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set bright
        yellow reverse video."

:tiger team: n.

        [U.S. military jargon]

        1. Originally, a team (of {sneaker}s) whose purpose is to penetrate
        security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid
        professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs
        saying "bomb" in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes
        saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been)
        inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking
        security type shows up the next morning for a `security review' and
        finds the sign, note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. Serious
        successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base
        commanders and security officers (see the {patch} entry for an
        example).

        2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or
        special {firefighting} group called in to look at a problem.

        A subset of tiger teams are professional {cracker}s, testing the
        security of military computer installations by attempting remote
        attacks via networks or supposedly `secure' comm channels. Some of
        their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the
        greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial
        computer-security circles in this more specific sense.

:time bomb: n.

        A subspecies of {logic bomb} that is triggered by reaching some
        preset time, either once or periodically. There are numerous legends
        about time bombs set up by programmers in their employers' machines,
        to go off if the programmer is fired or laid off and is not present
        to perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.

        Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been pointed
        to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union in 1986! A
        disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile Plant (where the Fiat
        clones called Ladas were manufactured) planted a time bomb which, a
        week after he'd left on vacation, stopped the entire main assembly
        line for a day. The case attracted lots of attention in the Soviet
        Union because it was the first cracking case to make it to court
        there. The perpetrator got a suspended sentence of 3 years in jail
        and was barred from future work as a programmer.

:time sink: n.

        [poss.: by analogy with heat sink or current sink] A project that
        consumes unbounded amounts of time.

:time T: /ti:m T/, n.

        1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in
        conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet on campus at time T
        or at Louie's at time T+1" means, in the context of going out for
        dinner: "We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we can meet at
        Louie's itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese restaurant in
        Palo Alto that was a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been
        used instead of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel
        time from campus to Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time T is (and
        that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at
        Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time.
        See also {since time T equals minus infinity}.

:times-or-divided-by: quant.

        [by analogy with `plus-or-minus'] Term occasionally used when
        describing the uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate,
        for either humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software
        project, the scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least 2.

:timesharing:

        [now primarily historical] Timesharing is the technique of
        scheduling a computer's time so that they are shared across multiple
        tasks and multiple users, with each user having the illusion that
        his or her computation is going on continuously. John McCarthy, the
        inventor of {LISP}, first imagined this technique in the late 1950s.
        The first timesharing operating systems, BBN's "Little Hospital" and
        {CTSS}, were deplayed in 1962-63. The early hacker culture of the
        1960s and 1970s grew up around the first generation of relatively
        cheap timesharing computers, notably the {DEC} 10, 11, and {VAX}
        lines. But these were only cheap in a relative sense; though quite a
        bit less powerful than today's personal computers, they had to be
        shared by dozens or even hundreds of people each. The early hacker
        comunities nucleated around places where it was relatively easy to
        get access to a timesharing account.

        Nowadays, communications bandwidth is usually the most important
        constraint on what you can do with your computer. Not so back then;
        timesharing machines were often loaded to capacity, and it was not
        uncommon for everyone's work to grind to a halt while the machine
        scheduler thrashed, trying to figure out what to do next. Early
        hacker slang was replete with terms like cycle crunch and cycle
        drought for describing the consequences of too few
        instructions-per-second spread among too many users. As GLS has
        noted, this sort of problem influenced the tendency of many hackers
        to work odd schedules.

        One reason this is worth noting here is to make the point that the
        earliest hacker communities were physical, not distributed via
        networks; they consisted of hackers who shared a machine and
        therefore had to deal with many of the same problems with respect to
        it. A system crash could idle dozens of eager programmers, all
        sitting in the same terminal room and with little to do but talk
        with each other until normal operation resumed.

        Timesharing moved from being the luxury of a few large universities
        runing semi-experimental operating systems to being more generally
        available about 1975-76. Hackers in search of more cycles and more
        control over their programming environment began to migrate off
        timesharing machines and onto what are now called workstations
        around 1983. It took another ten years, the development of powerful
        32-bit personal micros, the {Great Internet Explosion} before the
        migration was complete. It is no coincidence that the last stages of
        this migration coincided with the development of the first
        open-source operating systems.

:TINC: //

        [Usenet] Abbreviation: "There Is No Cabal". See {backbone cabal} and
        {NANA}, but note that this abbreviation did not enter use until long
        after the dispersal of the backbone cabal.

:Tinkerbell program: n.

        [Great Britain] A monitoring program used to scan incoming network
        calls and generate alerts when calls are received from particular
        sites, or when logins are attempted using certain IDs. Named after
        `Project Tinkerbell', an experimental phone-tapping program
        developed by British Telecom in the early 1980s.

:TINLC: //

        Abbreviation: "There Is No Lumber Cartel". See {Lumber Cartel}.
        TINLC is a takeoff on {TINC}.

:tip of the ice-cube: n., //

        [IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as
        an ironic comment in situations where `tip of the iceberg' might be
        appropriate if the subject were at all important.

:tired iron: n.

        [IBM] Hardware that is perfectly functional but far enough behind
        the state of the art to have been superseded by new products,
        presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that the old
        stuff is starting to look a bit like a {dinosaur}.

:tits on a keyboard: n.

        Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep touch-typists registered.
        Usually on the 5 of a numeric keypad, and on the F and J of a
        {QWERTY} keyboard; but older Macs (like pre-PC electric typewriters)
        had them on the D and K keys (this changed in 1999).

:TLA: /TLA/, n.

        [Three-Letter Acronym]

        1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing
        terminology is infested.

        2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU,
        SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue
        that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter
        words have four letters. One also hears of `ETLA' (Extended
        Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to
        describe four-letter acronyms; the terms `SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter
        Acronym), `LFLA' (Longer Four Letter Acronym), and VLFLA (Very Long
        Five Letter Acronym) have also been reported. See also {YABA}.

        The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used
        to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the
        journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think
        will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's
        straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter
        acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably
        some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became
        a journalist.

:TMRC: /tmerk'/, n.

        The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the wellsprings of
        hacker culture. The 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language compiled by
        Peter Samson included several terms that became basics of the
        hackish vocabulary (see esp. {foo}, {mung}, and {frob}).

        By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity
        and has grown in the years since. All the features described here
        were still present when the old layout was decommissioned in 1998
        just before the demolition of MIT Building 20, and will almost
        certainly be retained when the old layout is rebuilt (expected in
        2003). The control system alone featured about 1200 relays. There
        were {scram switch}es located at numerous places around the room
        that could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur,
        such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature
        of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch board, which was
        itself something of a wonder in those bygone days before cheap LEDs
        and seven-segment displays. When someone hit a scram switch the
        clock stopped and the display was replaced with the word `FOO'; at
        TMRC the scram switches are therefore called foo switches.

        Steven Levy, in his book Hackers (see the Bibliography in Appendix
        C), gives a stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals
        and Power Committee included many of the early PDP-1 hackers and the
        people who later became the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty
        years later that connection is still very much alive, and this
        lexicon accordingly includes a number of entries from a recent
        revision of the TMRC dictionary.

        TMRC has a web page at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/. The TMRC Dictionary
        is available there, at http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/dictionary.html.

:TMRCie: /tmerk'ee/, n.

        [MIT] A denizen of {TMRC}.

:TMTOWTDI: /timtoh'dee/, abbrev.

        There's More Than One Way To Do It. This abbreviation of the
        official motto of {Perl} is frequently used on newsgroups and
        mailing lists related to that language.

:to a first approximation: adj.

        1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain numerical computations, an
        approximate solution may be computed by any of several heuristic
        methods, then refined to a final value. By using the starting point
        of a first approximation of the answer, one can write an algorithm
        that converges more quickly to the correct result.

        2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that indicates that the
        comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first
        approximation, I feel good" might indicate that deeper questioning
        would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough still
        remains after an illness).

:to a zeroth approximation:

        [from to a first approximation] A really sloppy approximation; a
        wild guess. Compare {social science number}.

:toad: vt.

        1. Notionally, to change a {MUD} player into a toad.

        2. To permanently and totally exile a player from the MUD. A very
        serious action, which can only be done by a MUD {wizard}; often
        involves a lot of debate among the other characters first. See also
        {frog}, {FOD}.

:toast:

        1. n.Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that
        has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is
        toast." (This sense went mainstream around 1993.)

        2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a
        manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the
        {firewall machine} again." Compare {fried}.

:toaster: n.

        1. The archetypal really stupid application for an embedded
        microprocessor controller; often used in comments that imply that a
        scheme is inappropriate technology (but see {elevator controller}).
        "{DWIM} for an assembler? That'd be as silly as running Unix on your
        toaster!"

        2. A very, very dumb computer. "You could run this program on any
        dumb toaster." See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy},
        {beige toaster}.

        3. A Macintosh, esp. a Mac in the original unitary case. Some hold
        that this is implied by sense 2.

        4. A peripheral device. "I bought my box without toasters, but since
        then I've added two boards and a second disk drive."

        5. A specialized computer used as an appliance. See {web toaster},
        {video toaster}.

:toeprint: n.

        A {footprint} of especially small size.

:TOFU:

        Text Over, Fullquote Under; see {top-post}.

:toggle: vt.

        To change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the other state;
        to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to

        1. This comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light
        switches, though the word toggle actually refers to the mechanism
        that keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather
        than to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four
        things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or
        zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would
        say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one
        boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking
        about toggling bits.)

:tool:

        1. n.A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify, or
        analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a
        cross-referencing program. Oppose {app}, {operating system}; see
        also {toolchain}.

        2. [Unix] An application program with a simple, `transparent'
        (typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used
        in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter},
        {plumbing}).

        3. [MIT: general to students there] vi. To work; to study (connotes
        tedium). The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to
        the grindstone". See {hack}.

        4. n. [MIT] A student who studies too much and hacks too little.
        (MIT's student humor magazine rejoices in the name Tool and Die.)

:toolchain:

        A collection of tools used to develop for a particular hardware
        target, or to work with a particular data format (thus `the Crusoe
        development toolchain', or the `DocBook toolchain'). Often used in
        the context of building software on one system which will be
        installed or run on some other device; in that case the chain of
        tools usually consists of such items as a particular version of a
        compiler, libraries, special headers, etc. May also be used of
        text-formatting, page layout, or multimedia tools which render from
        some markup to a variety of production formats. Differs from
        `toolkit' in that the former implies a collection of
        semi-independent tools with complementary functions, while
        `toolchain' implies that each of the parts is a serial stage in a
        rather tightly bound pipeline. Seems to have become current in early
        1999 and 2000; now common.

:toolsmith: n.

        The software equivalent of a tool-and-die specialist; one who
        specializes in making the {tool}s with which other programmers
        create applications. Many hackers consider this more fun than
        applications per se; to understand why, see {uninteresting}. Jon
        Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" chapter of his
        book More Programming Pearls, quotes Dick Sites from {DEC} as saying
        "I'd rather write programs to write programs than write programs".

:toor: n.

        The Bourne-Again Super-user. An alternate account with UID of 0,
        created on Unix machines where the root user has an inconvenient
        choice of shell. Compare {avatar}.

:top-post: n., v.

        [common] To put the newly-added portion of an email or Usenet
        response before the quoted part, as opposed to the more logical
        sequence of quoted portion first with original following. The
        problem with this practice is neatly summed up by the following FAQ
        entry:

        A: No.
        Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?

        This term is generally used pejoratively with the implication that
        the offending person is a {newbie}, a Microsoft addict (Microsoft
        mail tools produce a similar format by default), or simply a
        common-and-garden-variety idiot.

        One major problem with top-posting is that people who do it all too
        frequently quote the entire parent message rather than trimming it
        down to those portions relevent to their reply -- this makes threads
        bulky and unnecessarily difficult to read and arouses the righteous
        ire of experienced Internet residents (this style is called "TOFU"
        for "text over, fullquote under", or sometimes "jeopardy-style
        quoting"). Another problem is that top-posters often word their
        replies on the assumption that you just read the previous message,
        even though their perversity has put it further down the page than
        you have yet read. Oppose {bottom-post}.

:topic drift: n.

        Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other electronic fora to describe the
        tendency of a {thread} to drift away from the original subject of
        discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating
        message), or the results of that tendency. The header in each post
        can be changed to keep current with the posts, but usually isn't due
        to forgetfulness or laziness. A single post may often result in
        several posts each responding to a different point in the original.
        Some subthreads will actually be in response to some off-the-cuff
        side comment, possibly degenerating into a {flame war}, or just as
        often evolving into a separate discussion. Hence, discussions aren't
        really so much threads as they are trees. Except that they don't
        really have leaves, or multiple branching roots; usually some lines
        of discussion will just sort of die off after everyone gets tired of
        them. This could take anywhere from hours to weeks, or even longer.

        The term `topic drift' is often used in gentle reminders that the
        discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we started
        with a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended up
        discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now that's
        topic drift!"

:topic group: n.

        Syn. {forum}.

:TOPS-10: /topsten/, n.

        {DEC}'s proprietary OS for the fabled {PDP-10} machines, long a
        favorite of hackers but now long extinct. A fountain of hacker
        folklore; see Appendix A. See also {ITS}, {TOPS-20}, {TWENEX},
        {VMS}, {operating system}. TOPS-10 was sometimes called BOTS-10
        (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the inappropriateness of
        describing it as the top of anything.

:TOPS-20: /topstwen'tee/, n.

        See {TWENEX}.

:TOS: vt.

        [from the acronym for `Terms Of Service' playing on the verb "toss"]

        1. The act of terminating an Internet access account because the
        owner breached the terms of service (e.g. by spamming).

        2. To successfully complain to the ISP for that reason so that they
        then close the account.

:tourist: n.

        1. [ITS] A guest on the system, especially one who generally logs in
        over a network from a remote location for {comm mode}, email, games,
        and other trivial purposes. One step below {luser}. ITS hackers
        often used to spell this {turist}, perhaps by some sort of tenuous
        analogy with {luser} (this usage may also have expressed the ITS
        culture's penchant for six-letterisms, and/or been some sort of
        tribute to Alan Turing). Compare {twink}, {lurker}, {read-only
        user}.

        2. [IRC] An {IRC} user who goes from channel to channel without
        saying anything; see {channel hopping}.

:tourist information: n.

        Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful,
        but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the
        software or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls
        in this category depends partly on what the user is looking for at
        any given time. The `bytes free' information at the bottom of an
        MS-DOS or Windows dir display is tourist information; so (most of
        the time) is the TIME information in a Unix ps(1) display.

:touristic: adj.

        Having the quality of a {tourist}. Often used as a pejorative, as in
        `losing touristic scum'. Often spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so
        that phrase might be more properly rendered `lusing turistic scum'.

:toy: n.

        A computer system; always used with qualifiers.

        1. nice toy: One that supports the speaker's hacking style
        adequately.

        2. just a toy: A machine that yields insufficient {computron}s for
        the speaker's preferred uses. This is not condemnatory, as is {bitty
        box}; toys can at least be fun. It is also strongly conditioned by
        one's expectations; Cray XMP users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a
        toy, and certainly all RISC boxes and mainframes are toys by their
        standards. See also {Get a real computer!}.

:toy language: n.

        A language useful for instructional purposes or as a
        proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but
        inadequate for general-purpose programming. {Bad Thing}s can result
        when a toy language is promoted as a general purpose solution for
        programming (see {bondage-and-discipline language}); the classic
        example is {Pascal}. Several moderately well-known formalisms for
        conceptual tasks such as programming Turing machines also qualify as
        toy languages in a less negative sense. See also {MFTL}.

:toy problem: n.

        [AI] A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem
        used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real
        problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See also {gedanken}, {toy
        program}.

:toy program: n.

        1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial program
        (compare {noddy}).

        2. One for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs
        through its life cycle. See also {noddy}.

:trampoline: n.

        An incredibly {hairy} technique, found in some {HLL} and
        program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh), that
        involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as
        not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code
        sections. Under BSD and possibly in other Unixes, trampoline code is
        used to transfer control from the kernel back to user mode when a
        signal (which has had a handler installed) is sent to a process.
        These pieces of {live data} are called trampolines. Trampolines are
        notoriously difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is said
        by those who use this term that the trampoline that doesn't bend
        your brain is not the true trampoline. See also {snap}.

:trap:

        1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some
        exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS
        performs some action, then returns control to the program.

        2. vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor."
        Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The
        monitor traps all input/output instructions."

        This term is associated with assembler programming (interrupt or
        exception is more common among {HLL} programmers) and appears to be
        fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler
        continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer
        architects and systems hackers (see {system}, sense 1), who use it
        to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from
        timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).

:trap door: n.

        (alt.: trapdoor)

        1. Syn. {back door} -- a {Bad Thing}.

        2. [techspeak] A trap-door function is one which is easy to compute
        but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such functions are
        {Good Thing}s with important applications in cryptography,
        specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems.

:trash: vt.

        To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure). The most
        common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung}, {mangle},
        {scribble}, and {roach}.

:trawl: v.

        To sift through large volumes of data (e.g., Usenet postings, FTP
        archives, or the Jargon File) looking for something of interest.

:tree-killer: n.

        [Sun]

        1. A printer.

        2. A person who wastes paper. This epithet should be interpreted in
        a broad sense; `wasting paper' includes the production of {spiffy}
        but {content-free} documents. Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers.

        It is likely that both senses derive their flavor from the epithet
        `tree-killer' applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R.
        Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. See also {elvish}, {elder days}, and
        especially {dead-tree version}.

:treeware: /tree'weir/, n.

        Printouts, books, and other information media made from pulped dead
        trees. Compare {tree-killer}, see {documentation}.

:trit: /trit/, n.

        [by analogy with bit] One base-3 digit; the amount of information
        conveyed by a selection among one of three equally likely outcomes
        (see also {bit}). Trits arise, for example, in the context of a
        {flag} that should actually be able to assume three values -- such
        as yes, no, or unknown. Trits are sometimes jokingly called 3-state
        bits. A trit may be semi-seriously referred to as a bit and a half,
        although it is linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is,
        log_{2$(3)} bits).

:trivial: adj.

        1. Too simple to bother detailing.

        2. Not worth the speaker's time.

        3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not
        utterly {cretinous} would have thought of them already.

        4. Any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish
        trivial usually evaluates to "I've seen it before"). Hackers'
        notions of triviality may be quite at variance with those of
        non-hackers. See {nontrivial}, {uninteresting}.

        The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an
        amazing degree (see his essay "Los Alamos From Below" in Surely
        You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!), defined trivial theorem as "one that
        has already been proved".

:troff: /T'rof/, /trof/, n.

        [Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting and
        phototypesetting program, written originally in {PDP-11} assembler
        and then in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossanna,
        modeled after the earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after the
        {Multics} and {CTSS} program RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (that name
        came from the expression "to run off a copy"). A companion program,
        nroff, formats output for terminals and line printers.

        In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
        phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
        describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent troff," AT&T CSTR
        #97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's
        "obvious deficiencies -- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious and
        undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for
        computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of
        the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:

          None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating Ossanna's
          accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably robust tool,
          taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors and
          being forced into uses that were never conceived of in the
          original design, all with considerable grace under fire.

        The success of {TeX} and desktop publishing systems have reduced
        troff's relative importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the
        strengths that secured troff a place in hacker folklore; indeed, it
        could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of
        good programs that, in the long run, hackers most admire.

:troglodyte: n.

        [Commodore]

        1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term gnoll (from
        Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported.

        2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment.
        The combination ITS troglodyte was flung around some during the
        Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the
        Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended to describe
        adopted it with pride.

:troglodyte mode: n.

        [Rice University] Programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses
        on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been
        up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see {raster
        burn}). Loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner is
        optional but recommended. See {larval stage}, {hack mode}.

:Trojan horse: n.

        [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards] A malicious
        security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign,
        such as a directory lister, archiver, game, or (in one notorious
        1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! See
        {back door}, {virus}, {worm}, {phage}, {mockingbird}.

:troll:

        1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a
        posting on {Usenet} designed to attract predictable responses or
        {flame}s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for
        {newbie}s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style
        of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for
        a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of
        newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than
        they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
        experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall
        for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also {YHBT}.

        2. n. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly
        posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup,
        discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy
        someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact
        that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand
        - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they
        are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as
        such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in,
        "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare {kook}.

        3. n. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS
        students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab
        policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves
        lurking in dark cavelike corners.

        Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower
        category than {flame bait}, that a troll is categorized by
        containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly
        controversial. See also {Troll-O-Meter}.

        The use of `troll' in any of these senses is a live metaphor that
        readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one
        not infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of
        a followup to troll postings.

:Troll-O-Meter: n.

        Common Usenet jargon for a notional instrument used to measure the
        provocation level of a Usenet {troll}. "Come on, everyone! If the
        above doesn't set off the Troll-O-Meter, we're going to have to get
        him to run around with a big blinking sign saying `I am a troll, I'm
        only in it for the controversy and flames', and shooting random gobs
        of Jell-O(tm) at us before the point is proven." Mentions of the
        Troll-O-Meter are often accompanied by an ASCII picture of an arrow
        pointing at a numeric scale. Compare {bogometer}, {Indent-o-Meter}.

:tron: v.

        [NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie Tron] To become inaccessible except
        via email or talk(1), especially when one is normally available via
        telephone or in person. Frequently used in the past tense, as in:
        "Ran seems to have tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you
        were able to un-tron yourself". One may also speak of tron mode;
        compare {spod}.

        Note that many dialects of BASIC have a TRON/TROFF command pair that
        enables/disables line number tracing; this has no obvious
        relationship to the slang usage.

:troughie: /traw'fee/, n.

        [British BBS scene] Synonym for {leech}, sense 1. The implied
        metaphor is that of a pig at a trough.

:true-hacker: n.

        [analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] One who exemplifies the
        primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to
        other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me bring
        up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000 last week -- manifestly the
        act of a true-hacker." Compare {demigod}, oppose {munchkin}.

:tty: /TTY/, /tit'ee/, n.

        The latter pronunciation was primarily ITS, but some Unix people say
        it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have
        sexual undertones.

        1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy
        mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print
        quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See also
        {bit-paired keyboard}.

        2. [especially Unix] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to
        the particular terminal controlling a given job.

        3. [Unix] Any serial port, whether or not the device connected to it
        is a terminal; so called because under Unix such devices have names
        of the form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but
        seldom bothersome.

:tube:

        1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real
        hackers don't watch TV, except for Looney Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle,
        Trek Classic, the Simpsons, Babylon 5, and the occasional cheesy old
        swashbuckler movie.

        2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to someone else's terminal.
        "Tube me that note?"

:tube time: n.

        Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking
        time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's
        environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too much of
        my tube time reading mail since I started this revision."

:tumbler: n.

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

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

:tunafish: n.

        In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke
        to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of tunefs(8) in the
        original {BSD} 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in later
        releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but apparently
        restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs
        relates to the tuning of file-system parameters for optimum
        performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly
        inscriptions was a `BUGS' section consisting of the line "You can
        tune a file system, but you can't tunafish". Variants of this can be
        seen in other BSD versions, though it has been excised from some
        versions by humorless management {droid}s. The [nt]roff source for
        SunOS 4.1.1 contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this:
        "Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until
        the time_t's wrap around."

        [It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually
        at a canning factory... --ESR]

:tune: vt.

        [from automotive or musical usage] To optimize a program or system
        for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical parameters
        designed as {hook}s for tuning, e.g., by changing #define lines in
        C. One may tune for time (fastest execution), tune for space (least
        memory use), or tune for configuration (most efficient use of
        hardware). See {hot spot}, {hand-hacking}.

:turbo nerd: n.

        See {geek}.

:Turing tar-pit: n.

        1. A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is
        practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer
        science by showing that all machines and languages capable of
        expressing a certain very primitive set of operations are logically
        equivalent in the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in
        principle have capabilities that differ only in speed from those of
        the most powerful and elegantly designed computers. However, no
        machine or language exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever
        been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it
        would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. A Turing tar-pit
        is any computer language or other tool that shares this property.
        That is, it's theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder
        you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies
        suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}.

        2. The perennial {holy wars} over whether language A or B is the
        "most powerful".

:turist: /too'rist/, n.

        Var. sp. of {tourist}, q.v. Also in adjectival form, `turistic'.
        Poss. influenced by {luser} and `Turing'.

:Tux:

        Tux the Penguin is the official emblem of {Linux}, This eventuated
        after a logo contest in 1996, during which Linus Torvalds endorsed
        the idea of a penguin logo in a couple of famously funny postings.
        Linus explained that he was once bitten by a killer penguin in
        Australia and has felt a special affinity for the species ever
        since. (Linus has since admitted that he was also thinking of
        Feathers McGraw, the evil-genius penguin jewel thief who appeared in
        a Wallace & Grommit feature cartoon, The Wrong Trousers.)

        Larry Ewing designed the official Tux logo. It has proved a wise
        choice, amenable to hundreds of recognizable variations used as
        emblems of Linux-related projects, products, and user groups. In
        fact, Tux has spawned an entire mythology, of which the Gospel
        According to Tux and the mock-epic poem Tuxowolf are among the
        best-known examples.

        There is a `real' Tux -- a black-footed penguin resident at the
        Bristol Zoo. Several friends of Linux bought a zoo sponsorship for
        Linus as a birthday present in 1996.

:tweak: vt.

        1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used
        synonymously with {twiddle}. If a program is almost correct, rather
        than figure out the precise problem you might just keep tweaking it
        until it works. See {frobnicate} and {fudge factor}; also see
        {shotgun debugging}.

        2. To {tune} a program; preferred usage in the U.K.

:TWENEX: /twe'neks/, n.

        The TOPS-20 operating system by {DEC} -- the second proprietary OS
        for the PDP-10 -- preferred by most PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10
        (that is, by those who were not {ITS} or {WAITS} partisans). TOPS-20
        began in 1969 as Bolt, Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating system
        using special paging hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of the
        systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX
        from BBN and began work to make it their own. The first in-house
        code name for the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory
        Operating System); when customers started asking questions, the name
        was changed to SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any
        project called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was
        briefly reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when
        someone objected that krans meant `funeral wreath' in Swedish
        (though some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply
        `wreath'; this part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC
        picked TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it was as
        TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its
        origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty TENEX'),
        even though by this point very little of the original TENEX code
        remained (analogously to the differences between AT&T V6 Unix and
        BSD). DEC people cringed when they heard "TWENEX", but the term
        caught on nevertheless (the written abbreviation `20x' was also
        used). TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a
        period in the early 1980s when it commanded as fervent a culture of
        partisans as Unix or ITS -- but DEC's decision to scrap all the
        internal rivals to the {VAX} architecture and its relatively stodgy
        VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in
        the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20 users to convert to
        {VMS}, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20 hackers
        had migrated to Unix. There is a TOPS-20 home page.

:twiddle: n.

        1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, ~). Also called squiggle, sqiggle (sic --
        pronounced /skig'l/), and twaddle, but twiddle is the most common
        term.

        2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one
        bug and generates several new ones (see also {shotgun debugging}).

        3. vt. To change something in a small way. Bits, for example, are
        often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or {knobs} implies much less
        sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see {frobnicate}. To
        speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't
        specify what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more
        specific meaning (see {bit twiddling}, {toggle}). 4. Uncommon name
        for the {twirling baton} prompt.

:twilight zone: n., //

        [IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where {IRC} operators live.
        An {op} is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone".

:twink: /twink/, n.

        1. [Berkeley] A clue-repellant user; the next step beyond a clueless
        one.

        2. [UCSC] A {read-only user}. Also reported on the Usenet group
        soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with
        nothing upstairs (compare mainstream `chick').

        3. On MU* systems that specialize in role-playing, refers to
        behavior of a (usually inexperienced) player that either ignores
        rules or social convention, or disrupts the natural flow of a scene
        to show off super powers.

        We are informed that in Indian country, the term twink generally
        refers to blondes into generic `Native American spirituality'. Signs
        include Indian jewelry with MADE IN THAILAND stamped on it,
        crystals, Clairol black hair, wearing swimsuits to powwows, Cherokee
        princess grandmas, a love of Dances with Wolves, and a fear of AIM
        and the NCAI. The twink nature is everywhere.

:twirling baton: n.

        [PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\- which produces an animated
        twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace between
        characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the sequence BS
        SP between characters, the baton spins from left to right. If you
        output BS SP BS BS between characters, the baton spins from right to
        left. This is also occasionally called a twiddle prompt.

        The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature
        files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The
        archie Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton program
        today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that the
        program is working on a query. The twirling baton is also used as a
        boot progress indicator on several BSD variants of Unix; if it
        stops, you're probably going to have a long and trying day.

:two pi: quant.

        The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in
        stories in the following form: "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years
        later..."

:two-to-the-N: quant.

        An amount much larger than {N} but smaller than {infinity}. "I have
        2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you
        probably won't show up.

:tyop: n.

        [USENET] A deliberate typo for `typo'. Used in satirical reference.
        "There's a tyop in your posting". Compare {grilf}, {hing}.

  U

   u-

   UBD

   UBE

   ubergeek

   UCE

   UDP

   UN*X

   undefined external reference

   under the hood

   undocumented feature

   uninteresting

   Unix

   Unix brain damage

   Unix conspiracy

   Unix weenie

   unixism

   unswizzle

   unwind the stack

   unwind-protect

   up

   upload

   upstream

   upthread

   uptime

   urchin

   URL

   Usenet

   Usenet Death Penalty

   user

   user-friendly

   user-obsequious

   userland

   Utah teapot, the

   UTSL

   UUOC

:u-: pref.

        Written shorthand for {micro-}; techspeak when applied to metric
        units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from the Greek letter 
        the first letter of "micro" (and which letter looks a lot like the
        English letter "u").

:UBD: /UBD/, n.

        [abbreviation for `User Brain Damage'] An abbreviation used to close
        out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the
        user's part. Compare {pilot error}, {PEBKAC}, {ID10T}; oppose {PBD};
        see also {brain-damaged}.

:UBE: //, n.

        [abbrev., Unsolicited Bulk Email] A widespread, more formal term for
        email {spam}. Compare {UCE}. The UBE term recognizes that spam is
        uttered by nonprofit and advocacy groups whose motives are not
        commercial.

:ubergeek: n., /oo'bergeek/

        [common; often spelled with initial ; from German ber + {geek}]
        Almost synonymous with {demigod}; used as a compliment of someone
        regarded as a paragon of {geek} achievement and virtue. Has
        partially replaced earlier {demigod}.

:UCE: n.

        [abbrev., Unsolicited Commercial Email] A widespread, more formal
        term for email {spam}. Compare {UBE}, which may be superseding it.

:UDP: /UDP/, v.,n.

        [Usenet] Abbreviation for {Usenet Death Penalty}. Common (probably
        now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed. Compare
        {IDP}.

:UN*X: n.

        Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T,
        then of Novell, then of Unix Systems Laboratories, then of the Open
        Group; the source code parted company with it after Novell and was
        owned by SCO, which was acquired by Caldera) in writing, but
        avoiding the need for the ugly (TM) typography (see also {(TM)}).
        Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating
        systems. Ironically, lawyers now say that the requirement for the
        trademark postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is
        entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a
        psychological connection to practice in certain religions
        (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never written
        out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or `G--d' is used. See also {glob} and
        {splat out}.

:undefined external reference: excl.

        [Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose
        ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.

:under the hood: adj.

        [hot-rodder talk]

        1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product
        (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is
        not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is
        about to enable the listener to {grok} it. "Let's now look under the
        hood to see how ...."

        2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the
        appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we are just fork/execing
        the shell."

        3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz
        68030!"

:undocumented feature: n.

        See {feature}.

:uninteresting: adj.

        1. Said of a problem that, although {nontrivial}, can be solved
        simply by throwing sufficient resources at it.

        2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance
        the state of the art nor be fun to design and code.

        Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time,
        to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. Real hackers (see
        {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems enough to make them
        interesting and solve them -- thus solving the original problem as a
        special case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a
        molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). See
        {WOMBAT}, {SMOP}; compare {toy problem}, oppose {interesting}.

:Unix: /yoo'niks/, n.

        [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it
        was "UNICS"] (also "UNIX") An interactive timesharing system
        invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics
        project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7.
        Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the
        system. The turning point in Unix's history came when it was
        reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972--1974, making it the
        first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and
        expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a
        uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix
        had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating
        system in the world -- and since 1996 the variant called {Linux} has
        been at the cutting edge of the {open source} movement. Many people
        consider the success of Unix the most important victory yet of
        hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {Unix weenie} and {Unix
        conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). See {Version 7}, {BSD},
        {Linux}.

        Archetypal hackers ken (left) and dmr (right).

        Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately
        `UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably.
        Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling originally happened in
        CACM's 1974 paper The UNIX Time-Sharing System because "we had a new
        typesetter and {troff} had just been invented and we were
        intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr tried
        to get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell Labs
        papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed,
        and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So, while the
        trademark today is `UNIX', both capitalizations are grounded in
        ancient usage; the Jargon File uses `Unix' in deference to dmr's
        wishes.

:Unix brain damage: n.

        Something that has to be done to break a network program (typically
        a mailer) on a non-Unix system so that it will interoperate with
        Unix systems. The hack may qualify as Unix brain damage if the
        program conforms to published standards and the Unix program in
        question does not. Unix brain damage happens because it is much
        easier for other (minority) systems to change their ways to match
        non-conforming behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of
        thousands of Unix systems out there.

        An example of Unix brain damage is a {kluge} in a mail server to
        recognize bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to
        the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed
        by a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened {jock} weep.

:Unix conspiracy: n.

        [ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among {ITS} and
        {TOPS-20} fans, Unix's growth is the result of a plot, hatched
        during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT&T's
        competitors by making them dependent upon a system whose future
        evolution was to be under AT&T's control. This would be accomplished
        by disseminating an operating system that is apparently inexpensive
        and easily portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so
        as to require continuing upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a
        substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the {back
        door} entry.

        In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first computer
        viruses (see {virus}) -- but a virus spread to computers indirectly
        by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and
        networks. Adherents of this `Unix virus' theory like to cite the
        fact that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered
        by {DEC} president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively
        promoting its own family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to
        have been misquoted.)

        If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the
        plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its Unix operation to Novell
        around the same time {Linux} and other free-Unix distributions were
        beginning to make noise.

:Unix weenie: n.

        [ITS]

        1. A derogatory play on `Unix wizard', common among hackers who use
        Unix by necessity but would prefer alternatives. The implication is
        that although the person in question may consider mastery of Unix
        arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only real skill involved is the
        ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence
        and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many Unix
        programs. "This shell script tries to parse its arguments in 69
        bletcherous ways. It must have been written by a real Unix weenie."

        2. A derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of
        Unix. Often appearing in the context "stupid Unix weenie". See
        {Weenix}, {Unix conspiracy}. See also {weenie}.

:unixism: n.

        A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected
        multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead
        that exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common {unixism}s
        include: gratuitous use of fork(2); the assumption that certain
        undocumented but well-known features of Unix libraries such as
        stdio(3) are supported elsewhere; reliance on {obscure} side-effects
        of system calls (use of sleep(2) with a 0 argument to clue the
        scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for
        example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed;
        and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from
        never free()ing memory. Compare {vaxocentrism}; see also {New
        Jersey}.

:unswizzle: v.

        See {swizzle}.

:unwind the stack: vi.

        1. [techspeak] During the execution of a procedural language, one is
        said to unwind the stack from a called procedure up to a caller when
        one discards the stack frame and any number of frames above it,
        popping back up to the level of the given caller. In C this is done
        with longjmp/setjmp, in LISP or C++ with throw/catch. See also
        {smash the stack}.

        2. People can unwind the stack as well, by quickly dealing with a
        bunch of problems: "Oh heck, let's do lunch. Just a second while I
        unwind my stack."

:unwind-protect: n.

        [MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] A task you must remember to
        perform before you leave a place or finish a project. "I have an
        unwind-protect to call my advisor."

:up: adj.

        1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up." Oppose {down}.

        2. bring up: vt. To create a working version and start it. "They
        brought up a down system."

        3. come up vi. To become ready for production use.

:upload: /uhp'lohd/, v.

        1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data over a digital
        communications link from a system near you (especially a smaller or
        peripheral client system) to one further away from you (especially a
        larger or central host system). A transfer in the other direction
        is, of course, called a {download}

        2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and algorithms
        that make up one's mind from one's brain into a computer. Those who
        are convinced that such patterns and algorithms capture the complete
        essence of the self view this prospect with pleasant anticipation.

:upstream: adj.

        [common] Towards the original author(s) or maintainer(s) of a
        project. Used in connection with software that is distributed both
        in its original source form and in derived, adapted versions through
        a distribution (like the Debian version of Linux or one of the BSD
        ports) that has component maintainers for each of their parts. When
        a component maintainer receives a bug report or patch, he may choose
        to retain the patch as a porting tweak to the distribution's
        derivative of the project, or to pass it upstream to the project's
        maintainer. The antonym downstream is rare.

:upthread: adv.

        Earlier in the discussion (see {thread}), i.e., `above'. "As Joe
        pointed out upthread, ..." See also {followup}.

:uptime: n.

        Technically, a machine's time since last reboot; jargonically, how
        long a hacker has gone without sleep. "What's your uptime?" "Oh,
        about 28 hours so far, but I think I can probably do another 12."
        This is, of course, a reference to the uptime command and the pride
        with which most Unix types note how long their computers go without
        reboots. Uptime is a testament to the stability of the OS and the
        stamina of the hacker.

:urchin: n.

        See {munchkin}.

:URL: /URL/, /erl/, n.

        Uniform Resource Locator, an address widget that identifies a
        document or resource on the World Wide Web. This entry is here
        primarily to record the fact that the term is commonly pronounced
        both /erl/, and /U-R-L/ (the latter predominates in more formal
        contexts).

:Usenet: /yoos'net/, /yooznet/, n.

        [from `Users' Network'; the original spelling was USENET, but the
        mixed-case form is now widely preferred] A distributed {bboard}
        (bulletin board) system supported mainly by Unix machines.
        Originally implemented in 1979--1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis,
        Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University and the University
        of North Carolina, it has swiftly grown to become international in
        scope and is now probably the largest decentralized information
        utility in existence. As of late 2002, it hosts over 100,000
        {newsgroup}s and an unguessably huge volume of new technical
        articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day (and
        that leaves out the graphics...).

        By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the original UUCP
        transport for Usenet was fading out of use -- almost all Usenet
        connections were over Internet links. A lot of newbies and
        journalists began to refer to "Internet newsgroups" as though Usenet
        was and always had been just another Internet service. This
        ignorance greatly annoys experienced Usenetters.

:Usenet Death Penalty:

        [Usenet] A sanction against sites that habitually spew Usenet
        {spam}. This can be either passive or active. A passive UDP refers
        to the dropping of all postings by a particular domain so as to
        inhibit propagation. An active UDP refers to third-party
        cancellation of all postings by the UDPed domain. A partial UDP is
        one which applies only to certain newsgroups or hierarchies in
        Usenet. Compare {Internet Death Penalty}, with which this term is
        sometimes confused.

:user: n.

        1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using it as a means
        rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See {real
        user}.

        2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks
        silly questions. [GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true
        that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are
        thoughtful or deep. Very often they are annoying or downright
        stupid, apparently because the user failed to think for two seconds
        or look in the documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See
        {luser}.

        3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully,
        without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports
        bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them.

        The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of
        people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and
        {luser}s. The users are looked down on by hackers to some extent
        because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system
        in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as real winners.)
        The term is a relative one: a skilled hacker may be a user with
        respect to some program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker
        might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the
        skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether
        skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap between the two terms;
        the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context.

:user-friendly: adj.

        Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in a critical tone, to
        describe systems that hold the user's hand so obsessively that they
        make it painful for the more experienced and knowledgeable to get
        any work done. See {menuitis}, {drool-proof paper}, {Macintrash},
        {user-obsequious}.

:user-obsequious: adj.

        Emphatic form of {user-friendly}. Connotes a system so verbose,
        inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly
        unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a fool will
        want to use it." See {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash}.

:userland: n.

        Anywhere outside the kernel. "That code belongs in userland." This
        term has been in common use among Unix kernel hackers since at least
        1985, and may have have originated in that community. The earliest
        sighting was reported from the usenet group net.unix-wizards.

:Utah teapot, the:

        This object is historically one of the first complex 3D models to be
        rendered in computer graphics. It consisted of about 110 vertices,
        and was generated by Martin Newell in 1974 using hand-drawn Bezier
        curves, based on a real teapot that he and his wife had bought. This
        model served as a basis for comparing various 3D rendering
        methodologies for lighting, textures, bump-mapping, etc. By the
        standards of 2002, the model is trivial to render and thus is often
        not suited to demonstrate the complexity of modern research. Despite
        this, the tea pot still appears, now and then, in recent papers.
        More on the teapot's history lives at The History Of The Teapot.
        Compare {lenna}, {Stanford Bunny}

:UTSL: //, n.

        [Unix] On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a pun on Obi-Wan
        Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in Star Wars) -- analogous to {RTFS}
        (sense 1), but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that
        someone would be better off reading the source code that supports
        whatever feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet
        another futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions
        on Usenet that haven't attracted {wizard}s to answer them.

        Once upon a time in {elder days}, everyone running Unix had source.
        After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in
        theory appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with
        a Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code
        (made precisely for reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one
        could utter it at almost anyone on the network without concern.

        Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed
        that anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is
        certainly Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD distributions
        running second. Cheap commercial Unixes with source such as BSD/OS
        are accelerating this trend.

:UUOC:

        [from the comp.unix.shell group on Usenet] Stands for Useless Use of
        {cat}; the reference is to the Unix command cat(1), not the feline
        animal. As received wisdom on comp.unix.shell observes, "The purpose
        of cat is to concatenate (or `catenate') files. If it's only one
        file, concatenating it with nothing at all is a waste of time, and
        costs you a process." Nevertheless one sees people doing

        cat file | some_command and its args ...

        instead of the equivalent and cheaper

        <file some_command and its args ...

        or (equivalently and more classically)

        some_command and its args ... <file

        Since 1995, occasional awards for UUOC have been given out, usually
        by Perl luminary Randal L. Schwartz. There is a web page devoted to
        this and other similar awards.

  V

   V7

   vadding

   vanilla

   vanity domain

   vannevar

   vaporware

   var

   vaston

   VAX

   VAXen

   vaxocentrism

   vdiff

   veeblefester

   velveeta

   Venus flytrap

   verbage

   verbiage

   Version 7

   vgrep

   vi

   video toaster

   videotex

   virgin

   virtual

   virtual beer

   virtual Friday

   virtual reality

   virtual shredder

   virus

   visionary

   Visual Fred

   VMS

   voice

   voice-net

   voodoo programming

   VR

   Vulcan nerve pinch

   vulture capitalist

:V7: /V'seven/, n.

        See {Version 7}.

:vadding: /vading/, n.

        [from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e., {ADVENT}), used to avoid a
        particular {admin}'s continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the
        game] A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the
        covert exploration of the `secret' parts of large buildings --
        basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam
        tunnels, and the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in
        order to synthesize vadding keys. The verb is to vad (compare
        {phreaking}; see also {hack}, sense 9). This term dates from the
        late 1970s, before which such activity was simply called `hacking';
        the older usage is still prevalent at MIT.

        The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is elevator rodeo,
        a.k.a. elevator surfing, a sport played by wrasslin' down a
        thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of string, and then
        exploiting this mastery in various stimulating ways (such as
        elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and the
        ever-popular drop experiments). Kids, don't try this at home!

:vanilla: adj.

        [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] Ordinary
        {flavor}, standard. When used of food, very often does not mean that
        the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, vanilla
        wonton soup means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot-and-sour
        wonton soup. Applied to hardware and software, as in "Vanilla
        Version 7 Unix can't run on a vanilla 11/34." Also used to
        orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for instance, a 74V00 means what TI
        calls a 7400, as distinct from a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from
        {canonical} in that the latter means `default', whereas vanilla
        simply means `ordinary'. For example, when hackers go on a
        {great-wall}, hot-and-sour soup is the {canonical} soup to get
        (because that is what most of them usually order) even though it
        isn't the vanilla (wonton) soup.

:vanity domain: n.

        [common; from `vanity plate' as in car license plate] An Internet
        domain, particularly in the .com or .org top-level domains,
        apparently created for no reason other than boosting the creator's
        ego.

:vannevar: /van'@var/, n.

        A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering
        concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that
        technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in isolation from
        one another when in fact the learning curve tends to be highly
        nonlinear, revolutions are common, and competition is the rule. The
        prototype was Vannevar Bush's prediction of `electronic brains' the
        size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent
        cooling system for their tubes and relays, a prediction made at a
        time when the semiconductor effect had already been demonstrated.
        Other famous vannevars have included magnetic-bubble memory, LISP
        machines, {videotex}, and a paper from the late 1970s that computed
        a purported ultimate limit on areal density for ICs that was in fact
        less than the routine densities of 5 years later.

:vaporware: /vay'prweir/, n.

        Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may
        not actually take place).

:var: /veir/, /var/, n.

        Short for variable. Compare {arg}, {param}.

:vaston: n.

        [Durham, UK] The unit of `load average'. A measure of how much work
        a computer is doing. A meter displaying this as a function of time
        is known as a vastometer. First used during a computing practical in
        December 1996.

:VAX: /vaks/, n.

        1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer
        design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate
        ancestor, the {PDP-11}. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse
        by {killer micro}s after about 1986, the VAX was probably the
        hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release
        of 4.2 BSD Unix (see {BSD}). Especially noted for its large,
        assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set -- an asset that
        became a liability after the RISC revolution.

        It is worth noting that the standard plural of VAX was `vaxen' and
        that VAX system operators were sometimes referred to as `vaxherds'

        2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because
        its sales pitch, "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a sort of
        battle-cry of RISC partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC
        actually entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people
        that allowed them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for
        not challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S.

        A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was
        "Nothing sucks like Electrolux". It has apparently become a classic
        example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of not knowing
        the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB,
        while confirming that the company used this slogan in the late
        1960s, also tells us that their marketing people were fully aware of
        the possible double entendre and intended it to gain attention.

        And gain attention it did -- the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought
        the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British
        hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we
        have one report from a New Zealander that the infamous slogan
        surfaced there in TV ads for the product in 1992.

:VAXen: /vak'sn/, n.

        [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] (alt.: vaxen) The
        plural canonically used among hackers for the {DEC} VAX computers.
        "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See {boxen}.

:vaxocentrism: /vak`sohsen'trizm/, n.

        [analogy with `ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to afflict C
        programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions
        that are valid (esp. under Unix) on {VAXen} but false elsewhere.
        Among these are:

         1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because
            it is all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0. Problem:
            this may instead cause an illegal-address trap on non-VAXen, and
            even on VAXen under OSes other than BSD Unix. Usually this is an
            implicit assumption of sloppy code (forgetting to check the
            pointer before using it), rather than deliberate exploitation of
            a misfeature.

         2. The assumption that characters are signed.

         3. The assumption that a pointer to any one type can freely be cast
            into a pointer to any other type. A stronger form of this is the
            assumption that all pointers are the same size and format, which
            means you don't have to worry about getting the casts or types
            correct in calls. Problem: this fails on word-oriented machines
            or others with multiple pointer formats.

         4. The assumption that the parameters of a routine are stored in
            memory, on a stack, contiguously, and in strictly ascending or
            descending order. Problem: this fails on many RISC
            architectures.

         5. The assumption that pointer and integer types are the same size,
            and that pointers can be stuffed into integer variables (and
            vice-versa) and drawn back out without being truncated or
            mangled. Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or
            word-oriented machines with funny pointer formats.

         6. The assumption that a data type of any size may begin at any
            byte address in memory (for example, that you can freely
            construct and dereference a pointer to a word- or greater-sized
            object at an odd char address). Problem: this fails on many
            (esp. RISC) architectures better optimized for {HLL} execution
            speed, and can cause an illegal address fault or bus error.

         7. The (related) assumption that there is no padding at the end of
            types and that in an array you can thus step right from the last
            byte of a previous component to the first byte of the next one.
            This is not only machine- but compiler-dependent.

         8. The assumption that memory address space is globally flat and
            that the array reference foo[-1] is necessarily valid. Problem:
            this fails at 0, or other places on segment-addressed machines
            like Intel chips (yes, segmentation is universally considered a
            {brain-damaged} way to design machines (see {moby}), but that is
            a separate issue).

         9. The assumption that objects can be arbitrarily large with no
            special considerations. Problem: this fails on segmented
            architectures and under non-virtual-addressing environments.

        10. The assumption that the stack can be as large as memory.
            Problem: this fails on segmented architectures or almost
            anything else without virtual addressing and a paged stack.

        11. The assumption that bits and addressable units within an object
            are ordered in the same way and that this order is a constant of
            nature. Problem: this fails on {big-endian} machines.

        12. The assumption that it is meaningful to compare pointers to
            different objects not located within the same array, or to
            objects of different types. Problem: the former fails on
            segmented architectures, the latter on word-oriented machines or
            others with multiple pointer formats.

        13. The assumption that an int is 32 bits, or (nearly equivalently)
            the assumption that sizeof(int) == sizeof(long). Problem: this
            fails on {PDP-11}s, 286-based systems and even on 386 and 68000
            systems under some compilers (and on 64-bit systems like the
            Alpha, of course).

        14. The assumption that argv[] is writable. Problem: this fails in
            many embedded-systems C environments and even under a few
            flavors of Unix.

        Note that a programmer can validly be accused of vaxocentrism even
        if he or she has never seen a {VAX}. Some of these assumptions (esp.
        2--5) were valid on the {PDP-11}, the original C machine, and became
        endemic years before the VAX. The terms vaxocentricity and
        all-the-world's-a-VAX syndrome have been used synonymously.

:vdiff: /vee'dif/, v.,n.

        Visual diff. The operation of finding differences between two files
        by {eyeball search}. The term optical diff has also been reported,
        and is sometimes more specifically used for the act of superimposing
        two nearly identical printouts on one another and holding them up to
        a light to spot differences. Though this method is poor for
        detecting omissions in the `rear' file, it can also be used with
        printouts of graphics, a claim few if any diff programs can make.
        See {diff}.

        An interesting variant of the vdiff technique usable by anyone who
        has sufficient control over the parallax of their eyeballs (e.g.
        those who can easily view random-dot stereograms), is to hold up two
        paper printouts and go cross-eyed to superimpose them. This invokes
        deep, fast, built-in image comparison wetware (the same machinery
        responsible for depth perception) and differences stand out almost
        immediately. This technique is good for finding edits in graphical
        images, or for comparing an image with a compressed version to spot
        artifacts.

:veeblefester: /vee'b@lfes`tr/, n.

        [from the Born Loser comix via Commodore; prob.: originally from Mad
        Magazine's `Veeblefetzer' parodies beginning in #15, 1954] Any
        obnoxious person engaged in the (alleged) professions of marketing
        or management. Antonym of {hacker}. Compare {suit}, {marketroid}.

:velveeta: n.

        [Usenet: by analogy with {spam}. The trade name Velveeta is attached
        in the U.S. to a particularly nasty processed-cheese spread.] Also
        knows as {ECP}; a message that is excessively cross-posted, as
        opposed to {spam} which is too frequently posted. This term is
        widely recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to both
        kinds of abuse as spam. Compare {jello}.

:Venus flytrap: n.

        [after the insect-eating plant] See {firewall machine}.

:verbage: /ver'b@j/, n.

        A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of {verbiage} that
        assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare {content-free}. More
        pejorative than `verbiage'.

:verbiage: n.

        When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers
        to {documentation}. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream
        `verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility
        and that the motives behind its production have little to do with
        the ostensible subject.

:Version 7: /vee' sevn/, n.

        The first widely distributed version of {Unix}, released unsupported
        by Bell Labs in 1978. The term is used adjectivally to describe Unix
        features and programs that date from that release, and are thus
        guaranteed to be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was
        the standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003
        standards). Note that this usage does not derive from the release
        being the "seventh version of {Unix}"; research {Unix} at Bell Labs
        has traditionally been numbered according to the edition of the
        associated documentation. Indeed, only the widely-distributed Sixth
        and Seventh Editions are widely known as V[67]; the OS that might
        today be known as `V10' is instead known in full as "Tenth Edition
        Research Unix" or just "Tenth Edition" for short. For this reason,
        "V7" is often read by cognoscenti as "Seventh Edition". See {BSD},
        {Unix}. Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel
        bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True Unix.

:vgrep: /vee'grep/, v.,n.

        Visual grep. The operation of finding patterns in a file optically
        rather than digitally (also called an optical grep). See {grep};
        compare {vdiff}.

:vi: /VI/, not, /vi:/, never, /siks/, n.

        [from `Visual Interface'] A screen editor crufted together by Bill
        Joy for an early {BSD} release; an interview describing how it came
        to be is available. Became the de facto standard Unix editor and a
        nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of
        {EMACS} after about 1984. Tends to frustrate new users no end, as it
        will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice
        versa, and the default setup on older versions provides no
        indication of which mode the editor is in (years ago, a
        correspondent reported that he has often heard the editor's name
        pronounced /vi:l/; there is now a vi clone named vile). Nevertheless
        vi (and variants such as vim and elvis) is still widely used (about
        half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even
        EMACS fans often resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing
        jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions
        of EMACS). See {holy wars}.

:video toaster: n.

        Historically, an Amiga fitted with a particular line of special
        video effects hardware from NewTek -- long a popular platform at
        special-effects and video production houses. More generally, any
        computer system designed specifically for video production and
        manipulation. Compare {web toaster} and see {toaster}.

:videotex: n. obs.

        An electronic service offering people the privilege of paying to
        read the weather on their television screens instead of having
        somebody read it to them for free while they brush their teeth. The
        idea bombed everywhere it wasn't government-subsidized, because by
        the time videotex was practical the installed base of personal
        computers could hook up to timesharing services and do the things
        for which videotex might have been worthwhile better and cheaper.
        Videotex planners badly overestimated both the appeal of getting
        information from a computer and the cost of local intelligence at
        the user's end. Like the {gorilla arm} effect, this has been a
        cautionary tale to hackers ever since. See also {vannevar}.

:virgin: adj.

        Unused; pristine; in a known initial state. "Let's bring up a virgin
        system and see if it crashes again." (Esp.: useful after contracting
        a {virus} through {SEX}.) Also, by extension, buffers and the like
        within a program that have not yet been used.

:virtual: adj.

        [via the technical term virtual memory, prob.: from the term virtual
        image in optics]

        1. Common alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the
        artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than
        physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way
        to manage access to shared resources.

        2. Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't
        really there. An imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate.
        Oppose {real}.

:virtual beer: n.

        Praise or thanks. Used universally in the Linux community.
        Originally this term signified cash, after a famous incident in
        which some Britishers who wanted to buy Linus a beer sent him money
        to Finland to do so.

:virtual Friday: n.

        (also logical Friday) The last day before an extended weekend, if
        that day is not a `real' Friday. For example, the U.S. holiday
        Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The next day is often also a
        holiday or taken as an extra day off, in which case Wednesday of
        that week is a virtual Friday (and Thursday is a virtual Saturday,
        as is Friday). There are also virtual Mondays that are actually
        Tuesdays, after the three-day weekends associated with many national
        holidays in the U.S.

:virtual reality: n.

        1. Computer simulations that use 3-D graphics and devices such as
        the Dataglove to allow the user to interact with the simulation. See
        {cyberspace}.

        2. A form of network interaction incorporating aspects of
        role-playing games, interactive theater, improvisational comedy, and
        `true confessions' magazines. In a virtual reality forum (such as
        Usenet's alt.callahans newsgroup or the {MUD} experiments on
        Internet), interaction between the participants is written like a
        shared novel complete with scenery, foreground characters that may
        be personae utterly unlike the people who write them, and common
        background characters manipulable by all parties. The one iron law
        is that you may not write irreversible changes to a character
        without the consent of the person who `owns' it. Otherwise anything
        goes. See {bamf}, {cyberspace}, {teledildonics}.

:virtual shredder: n.

        The jargonic equivalent of the {bit bucket} at shops using IBM's
        VM/CMS operating system. VM/CMS officially supports a whole bestiary
        of virtual card readers, virtual printers, and other phantom
        devices; these are used to supply some of the same capabilities Unix
        gets from pipes and I/O redirection.

:virus: n.

        [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A cracker
        program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by
        embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become {Trojan
        horse}s. When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is
        executed too, thus propagating the `infection'. This normally
        happens invisibly to the user. Unlike a {worm}, a virus cannot
        infect other computers without assistance. It is propagated by
        vectors such as humans trading programs with their friends (see
        {SEX}). The virus may do nothing but propagate itself and then allow
        the program to run normally. Usually, however, after propagating
        silently for a while, it starts doing things like writing cute
        messages on the terminal or playing strange tricks with the display
        (some viruses include nice {display hack}s). Many nasty viruses,
        written by particularly perversely minded {cracker}s, do
        irreversible damage, like nuking all the user's files.

        In the 1990s, viruses became a serious problem, especially among
        Windows users; the lack of security on these machines enables
        viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system (Unix
        machines, by contrast, are immune to such attacks). The production
        of special anti-virus software has become an industry, and a number
        of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria
        among users; many {luser}s tend to blame everything that doesn't
        work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense
        of virus has passed not only into techspeak but into also popular
        usage (where it is often incorrectly used to denote a {worm} or even
        a {Trojan horse}). See {phage}; compare {back door}; see also {Unix
        conspiracy}.

:visionary: n.

        1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence
        researcher working on the problem of getting computers to `see'
        things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending
        information from a TV camera to a computer. The problem is, how can
        the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information?
        See {SMOP}, {AI-complete}.)

        2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently,
        such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.

:Visual Fred: n.

        Pejorative hackerism for VB.NET (Visual Basic for the .NET
        framework). VB.NET has been marketed by Microsoft as an updated
        version of the previous Visual Basic on its .NET framework, but
        VB.NET is really just C# with a slightly different syntax and fewer
        libraries. Migrating existing code from Visual Basic to VB.NET is
        generally impractical because VB.NET has a large number of
        unnecessary incompatibilities with Visual Basic. Since VB.NET has
        essentially nothing to do with Visual Basic, a well-known
        ex-Microserf suggested that VB.NET should have a completely
        different name -- Visual Fred. This rapidly caught on.

:VMS: /VMS/, n.

        {DEC}'s proprietary operating system for its {VAX} minicomputer; one
        of the seven or so environments that loom largest in hacker
        folklore. Many Unix fans generously concede that VMS would probably
        be the hacker's favorite commercial OS if Unix didn't exist; though
        true, this makes VMS fans furious. One major hacker gripe with VMS
        concerns its slowness -- thus the following limerick:

           There once was a system called VMS
           Of cycles by no means abstemious.
                It's chock-full of hacks
                And runs on a VAX
           And makes my poor stomach all squeamious.
                                            -- The Great Quux

        See also {VAX}, {TOPS-10}, {TOPS-20}, {Unix}, {runic}.

:voice: vt.

        To phone someone, as opposed to emailing them or connecting in {talk
        mode}. "I'm busy now; I'll voice you later."

:voice-net: n.

        Hackish way of referring to the telephone system, analogizing it to
        a digital network. Usenet {sig block}s not uncommonly include the
        sender's phone next to a "Voice:" or "Voice-Net:" header; common
        variants of this are "Voicenet" and "V-Net". Compare {paper-net},
        {snail-mail}.

:voodoo programming: n.

        [from George Bush Sr.'s "voodoo economics"]

        1. The use by guess or cookbook of an {obscure} or {hairy} system,
        feature, or algorithm that one does not truly understand. The
        implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn't,
        one will never know why. Almost synonymous with {black magic},
        except that black magic typically isn't documented and nobody
        understands it. Compare {magic}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry},
        {rain dance}, {cargo cult programming}, {wave a dead chicken}, {SCSI
        voodoo}.

        2. Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try
        anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
        everything.

:VR: //, n.

        On-line abbrev for {virtual reality}, as opposed to {RL}.

:Vulcan nerve pinch: n.

        [from the old Star Trek TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The
        keyboard combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor
        (on machines that support such a feature). On Amigas this is
        <Ctrl>-<Left-Amiga>-<Right-Amiga>; on PC clones this is
        Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power
        switch> or <Cmd>-<Ctrl>-<Power>! On IRIX,
        <Left-Ctrl><Left-Shift><F12><Keypad-Slash>, which kills and restarts
        the X server, is sometimes called a vulcan nerve pinch. Also called
        {three-finger salute} and Vulcan death grip. At shops with a lot of
        Microsoft Windows machines, this is often called the Microsoft
        Maneuver because of the distressing frequency with which Microsoft's
        unreliable software requires it. Compare {quadruple bucky}.

:vulture capitalist: n.

        Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the
        common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of
        control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought
        to have made from them.

  W

   w00t

   wabbit

   WAITS

   waldo

   walk

   walk off the end of

   walking drives

   wall

   wall follower

   wall time

   wall wart

   wallhack

   wango

   wank

   wannabee

   war dialer

   war-driving

   war-chalking

   -ware

   warez

   warez d00dz

   warez kiddies

   warlording

   warm boot

   wart

   washing machine

   washing software

   water MIPS

   wave a dead chicken

   weasel

   web pointer

   web ring

   web toaster

   webify

   webmaster

   wedged

   wedgie

   wedgitude

   weeble

   weeds

   weenie

   Weenix

   well-behaved

   well-connected

   wetware

   whack

   whack-a-mole

   whacker

   whales

   What's a spline?

   wheel

   wheel bit

   wheel of reincarnation

   wheel wars

   white hat

   whitelist

   whizzy

   Whorfian mind-lock

   wibble

   WIBNI

   widget

   wiggles

   wild side

   WIMP environment

   win

   win big

   win win

   Winchester

   windoid

   window shopping

   Windowsitis

   Windoze

   winged comments

   winkey

   winnage

   winner

   winnitude

   Wintel

   Wintendo

   wired

   wirehead

   wirewater

   wish list

   within delta of

   within epsilon of

   wizard

   Wizard Book

   wizard hat

   wizard mode

   wizardly

   wok-on-the-wall

   womb box

   WOMBAT

   womble

   wonky

   workaround

   working as designed

   worm

   wormhole

   wound around the axle

   wrap around

   write-only code

   write-only language

   write-only memory

   Wrong Thing

   wugga wugga

   wumpus

   WYSIAYG

   WYSIWYG

:w00t:

        An interjection similar to "Yay!", as in: "w00t!!! I just got a
        raise!" Often used for small victories the speaker dies not expect
        to be of special interest to anyone else. Some claim this is a
        bastardization of "root", the highest level of access to a system
        (particularly UNIX), originated by script kiddies as a 133tspeak
        equivalent of "root", and said as an exclamation upon gaining root
        access. Others claim it originated in the Everquest multiplayer game
        as an abbreviation of "wonderful loot". Still other claim it on
        originated on IRC as the "Ewok victory cheer". Adj. w00table has the
        sense of "cool" or "nifty". This is one of the few leet-speak
        coinages to have crossed over into non-ironic use among hackers.

:wabbit: /wab'it/, n.

        [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy
        wabbit!"]

        1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and
        elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by
        inspiration) from a hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a
        Burroughs 5500 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The
        program would make two copies of itself every time it was run,
        eventually crashing the system.

        2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication
        but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See {fork bomb} and {rabbit job},
        see also {cookie monster}.

:WAITS: /wayts/, n.

        The mutant cousin of {TOPS-10} used on a handful of systems at
        {SAIL} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS
        (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways
        process), but it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative
        to ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent
        exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and
        innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence.
        The early screen modes of {EMACS}, for example, were directly
        inspired by WAITS's `E' editor -- one of a family of editors that
        were the first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing
        commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of
        insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is
        said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and
        elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the
        XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. Also invented
        there were {bucky bits} -- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a
        WAITS legacy. One WAITS feature very notable in pre-Web days was a
        news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and
        filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also
        featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called
        multimedia computing, allowing analog audio and video signals to be
        switched to programming terminals.

:waldo: /wol'doh/, n.

        [From Robert A. Heinlein's story Waldo]

        1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human
        limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the
        mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein
        in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic
        term telefactoring, this technology is of intense interest to NASA
        for tasks like space station maintenance.

        2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is
        used instead of {foobar} as a metasyntactic variable and general
        nonsense word. See {foo}, {bar}, {foobar}, {quux}.

:walk: n.,vt.

        Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list
        data structure in {core}. See also {codewalker}, {silly walk},
        {clobber}.

:walk off the end of: vt.

        To run past the end of an array, list, or medium after stepping
        through it -- a good way to land in trouble. Often the result of an
        {off-by-one error}. Compare {clobber}, {roach}, {smash the stack}.

:walking drives: n.

        An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days
        when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. Those old {dinosaur}
        parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a
        misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with
        the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching
        alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There
        is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the
        computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the
        wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain
        patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the
        disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of
        old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns
        that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive
        races.

:wall: interj.

        [WPI]

        1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone:
        "Wall??"

        2. A request for further explication. Compare {octal forty}.

        3. [Unix, from `write all'] v. To send a message to everyone
        currently logged in, esp. with the wall(8) utility.

        It is said that sense 1 came from the idiom `like talking to a blank
        wall'. It was originally used in situations where, after you had
        carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly,
        clearly having understood nothing that was explained. You would then
        throw out a "Hello, wall?" to elicit some sort of response from the
        questioner. Later, confused questioners began voicing "Wall?"
        themselves.

:wall follower: n.

        A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or
        native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure
        shown to have been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this
        is not necessarily pejorative; it recalls `Harvey Wallbanger', the
        winning robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the
        cocktail). Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on
        one wall and running till it came out the other end. This was
        inelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work on
        simply-connected mazes -- and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more
        sophisticated robots that tried to `learn' each maze by building an
        internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term is
        pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book
        mentality. See also {code grinder}; compare {droid}.

:wall time: n.

        (also wall clock time)

        1. `Real world' time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed
        to the system clock's idea of time.

        2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of
        {tick}s required to execute it (on a timesharing system these always
        differ, as no one program gets all the ticks, and on multiprocessor
        systems with good thread support one may get more processor time
        than real time).

:wall wart: n.

        A small power-supply brick with integral male plug, designed to plug
        directly into a wall outlet; called a `wart' because when installed
        on a power strip it tends to block up at least one more socket than
        it uses. These are frequently associated with modems and other small
        electronic devices which would become unacceptably bulky or hot if
        they had power supplies on board (there are other reasons as well
        having to do with the cost of UL certification).

:wallhack:

        A form of game cheat especially associated with first-person
        shooters like Quake, in which the walls in the simulated maze or
        dungeon are rendered transparent to the cheater. This gives the
        cheater normally hidden information about the whereabouts of other
        players. Beyond gaming, a wallhack is the paradigm case of a whole
        class of security problems that stem from the fact that a server
        cannot trust client software, and server authors must assume that
        all computation farmed out to a client is exposed to and can be
        interfered with by the user.

:wango: /wang'goh/, n.

        Random bit-level {grovel}ling going on in a system during some
        unspecified operation. Often used in combination with {mumble}. For
        example: "You start with the `.o' file, run it through this
        postprocessor that does mumble-wango -- and it comes out a snazzy
        object-oriented executable."

:wank: /wangk/, n.,v.,adj.

        [Columbia University: prob.: by mutation from Commonwealth slang v.
        wank, to masturbate] Used much as {hack} is elsewhere, as a noun
        denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such
        cleverness. May describe (negatively) the act of hacking for
        hacking's sake ("Quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more
        positively) a {wizard}. Adj. wanky describes something particularly
        clever (a person, program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get
        wanky when there are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness
        is signalled by an overload of the wankometer (compare {bogometer}).
        When the wankometer overloads, the conversation's subject must be
        changed, or all non-wanks will leave. Compare neep-neeping (under
        {neep-neep}). Usage: U.S. only. In Britain and the Commonwealth this
        word is extremely rude and is best avoided unless one intends to
        give offense. Adjectival wanky is less offensive and simply means
        `stupid' or `broken' (this is mainstream in Great Britain).

:wannabee: /won'@bee/, n.

        (also, more plausibly, spelled wannabe) [from a term recently used
        to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol;
        prob.: originally from biker slang] A would-be {hacker}. The
        connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and
        exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be
        entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be
        annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such
        creatures. When used of any professional programmer, CS academic,
        writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory, implying that said person is
        trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't,
        fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about.
        Overuse of terms from this lexicon is often an indication of the
        {wannabee} nature. Compare {newbie}.

        Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different
        flavor now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the
        people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage},
        the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and
        unaffected by models known in popular culture -- communities formed
        spontaneously around people who, as individuals, felt irresistibly
        drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a
        fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become similarly wizardly.
        Those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to
        the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of
        the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some
        people semi-consciously set out to be hackers and borrow hackish
        prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do
        this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless,
        old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about
        the change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about
        the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.

:war dialer: n.

        [originally from `wargames dialer', a reference to the movie War
        Games] A cracking tool, a program that calls a given list or range
        of phone numbers and records those which answer with handshake tones
        (and so might be entry points to computer or telecommunications
        systems). Some of these programs have become quite sophisticated,
        and can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones and log each one
        separately. The war dialer is one of the most important tools in the
        {phreaker}'s kit. These programs evolved from early {demon dialer}s.

:war-driving:

        [play on {war dialer}; also as single word wardriving] Driving
        around looking for unsecured wireless Internet access points to
        connect to. More at the War Driving home page. Compare
        {war-chalking}.

:war-chalking:

        [play on {war-driving}; the first syllable has since been
        reinterpreted as an acronym for "wireless access revolution"] The
        practice of using chalk marks similar to hobo signs to indicate the
        nearby presence of a wireless Internet access point, a boon to
        strolling hackers with laptops. The concept was first floated in
        early 2002 and was instantly seized upon with cries of glee by
        hackers all over the portions of the world urbanized enough to have
        sidewalks and access points. The process rather recalls the
        explosive spread of heraldry in the medieval Europe of the 1120s.
        There is a site that explains the symbology;.

:-ware: suff.

        [from `software'] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of
        software. For examples, see {annoyware}, {careware}, {crippleware},
        {crudware}, {freeware}, {fritterware}, {guiltware}, {liveware},
        {meatware}, {payware}, {psychedelicware}, {shareware}, {shelfware},
        {vaporware}, {wetware}, {spyware}, {adware}.

:warez: /weirz/, n.

        Widely used in {cracker} subcultures to denote cracked version of
        commercial software, that is versions from which copy-protection has
        been stripped. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it
        themselves. See {warez d00dz}, {courier}, {leech}, {elite}.

:warez d00dz: /weirz doodz/, n.

        A substantial subculture of {cracker}s refer to themselves as warez
        d00dz; there is evidently some connection with {B1FF} here. As
        `Ozone Pilot', one former warez d00d, wrote:

          Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted software. If it has
          copy protection on it, they break the protection so the software
          can be copied. Then they distribute it around the world via
          several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass group names like RAZOR
          and the like. They put up boards that distribute the latest ware,
          or pirate program. The whole point of the Warez sub-culture is to
          get the pirate program released and distributed before any other
          group. I know, I know. But don't ask, and it won't hurt as much.
          This is how they prove their poweress [sic]. It gives them the
          right to say, "I released King's Quest IVXIX before you so
          obviously my testicles are larger." Again don't ask...

        The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is emit
        0-day warez, that is copies of commercial software copied and
        cracked on the same day as its retail release. Warez d00ds also
        hoard software in a big way, collecting untold megabytes of
        arcade-style games, pornographic JPGs, and applications they'll
        never use onto their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely observes:

          [BELONG] is the only word you will need to know. Warez d00dz want
          to belong. They have been shunned by everyone, and thus turn to
          cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they always start groups
          like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...]
          Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because
          warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a
          good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and
          girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles
          like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince,
          Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin
          Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide behind their
          terminals. More likely, if you were given a sample of 100 people,
          the person whose handle is Hellraiser is the last person you'd
          associate with the name.

        The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive. See
        {cracker}, {wannabee}, {handle}, {elite}, {courier}, {leech};
        compare {weenie}, {spod}.

:warez kiddies: n.

        Even more derogatory way of referring to {warez d00dz}; refers to
        the fact that most warez d00dz are around the age of puberty.
        Compare {script kiddies}.

:warlording: v.

        [from the Usenet group alt.fan.warlord] The act of excoriating a
        bloated, ugly, or derivative {sig block}. Common grounds for
        warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a {BUAF},
        over-used or cliched {sig quote}s, ugly {ASCII art}, or simply
        excessive size. The original `Warlord' was a {B1FF}-like {newbie}
        c.1991 who featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious
        ASCII graphic resembling the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the
        1981 John Milius movie; the group name alt.fan.warlord was sarcasm,
        and the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic
        praise. See also {McQuary limit}.

:warm boot: n.

        See {boot}.

:wart: n.

        A small, {crock}y {feature} that sticks out of an otherwise {clean}
        design. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a
        special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some
        versions of csh(1), single quotes literalize every character inside
        them except !. In ANSI C, the ?? syntax used for obtaining ASCII
        characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also {miswart}.

:washing machine: n.

        1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So
        called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading'
        access to the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set on
        `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language
        barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also
        {walking drives}. The thick channel cables connecting these were
        called bit hoses (see {hose}, sense 3).

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-02-20:2. The previous
        cartoon was 75-10-04.)

        2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for {washing software}. CMU has
        clusters of these.

:washing software: n.

        The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often
        when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and
        merge together all of the various changes that have been made to the
        source.

:water MIPS: n.

        (see {MIPS}, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's
        ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe}
        type.

        A really unusual kind of {water MIPS}.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-12-25. The previous
        cartoon was 73-10-31.)

:wave a dead chicken: v.

        To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware
        that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that
        others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been
        expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I
        really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo
        programming}, {rain dance}; see also {casting the runes}.

:weasel: n.

        [Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does
        things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with
        {loser}.

:web pointer: n.

        A World Wide Web {URL}. See also {hotlink}, which has slightly
        different connotations.

:web ring: n.

        Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between sites
        sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques have the
        topology of a ring, in order to make it easy for visitors to
        navigate through all of them.

:web toaster: n.

        A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or keyboard or
        any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be controlled
        through an Ethernet port and function as a WWW server. Products of
        this kind (for example the Cobalt Qube) are often about the size of
        a toaster. See {toaster}; compare {video toaster}.

:webify: n.

        To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW.
        Frequently used for papers ("Why don't you webify all your
        publications?") or for demos ("They webified their 6.866 final
        project"). This term seems to have been (rather logically)
        independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.

:webmaster: n.

        [WWW: from {postmaster}] The person at a site providing World Wide
        Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages
        and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.

:wedged: adj.

        1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is
        different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has
        become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is
        trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable
        of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a
        process may become wedged if it {deadlock}s with another (but not
        all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also {gronk}, {locked
        up}, {hosed}, {hung} (wedged is more severe than {hung}).

        2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally
        wedged -- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation."

        3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a
        losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has
        messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.

        There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually
        thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial
        inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older
        `hot-press' printing technology in which physical type elements were
        locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this
        had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be
        made.

:wedgie: n.

        [Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related to {wedged}.

:wedgitude: /wedj'it[y]ood/, n.

        The quality or state of being {wedged}.

:weeble: /weebl/, interj.

        [Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing
        stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble....".

:weeds: n.

        1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no
        possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the
        weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is
        serious weeds...."

        2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase go off in the weeds was
        equivalent mainstream hackerdom's {jump off into never-never land}.

:weenie: n.

        1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing
        version of {B1FF} that infests many {BBS} systems. The typical
        weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a
        grandiose {handle} derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics.
        Among sysops, the weenie problem refers to the marginally literate
        and profanity-laden {flamage} weenies tend to spew all over a
        newly-discovered BBS. Compare {spod}, {geek}, {terminal junkie},
        {warez d00dz}.

        2. [among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as in
        {Unix weenie}, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult
        or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and
        whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or
        herself to be the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has
        put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the
        area indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's
        judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also {bigot}.

        3. The semicolon character, ; (ASCII 0111011).

:Weenix: /wee'niks/, n.

        1. [ITS] A derogatory term for {Unix}, derived from {Unix weenie}.
        According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system
        preferred by Unix Weenies: typified by poor modularity, poor
        reliability, hard file deletion, no file version numbers, case
        sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are all
        advantages". (Some ITS fans behave as though they believe Unix stole
        a future that rightfully belonged to them. See {ITS}, sense 2.)

        2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for tutorial purposes
        at Brown University. See
        http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html. Named
        independently of the ITS usage.

:well-behaved: adj.

        1. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive
        effects. Esp.: said of software having an interface spec
        sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a {tool}
        by other software. See {cat}.

        2. Said of an algorithm that doesn't {crash} or {blow up}, even when
        given {pathological} input. Implies that the stability of the
        algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this somewhat different from
        {bulletproof}.

:well-connected: adj.

        Said of a computer installation, asserts that it has reliable email
        links with the network and/or that it relays a large fraction of
        available {Usenet} newsgroups. Well-known can be almost synonymous,
        but also implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due
        perhaps to an archive service or active Usenet users).

:wetware: /wet'weir/, n.

        [prob.: from the novels of Rudy Rucker]

        1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or
        software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers."

        2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to
        a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software.
        See {liveware}, {meatware}.

:whack: v.

        According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of {NeWS},
        {GOSMACS} and Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever
        how it works." (See {whacker}.) It is actually possible to do this
        in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined
        and you are very good at {glark}ing things from context. As a
        trivial example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr writes
        to stdout writes in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwise
        mysterious.

:whack-a-mole: n.

        [from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly
        hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up
        from their holes.]

        1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers' {throwaway account}s
        and drop boxes to be terminated.

        2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed
        into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such
        combinations as whack-a-mole windows; the obnoxious pop-up
        advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surf to sites like
        Angelfire or Lycos.

:whacker: n.

        [University of Maryland: from {hacker}]

        1. A person, similar to a {hacker}, who enjoys exploring the details
        of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities.
        Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends
        up whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are often
        quite egotistical and eager to claim {wizard} status, regardless of
        the views of their peers.

        2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly
        and ineptly.

:whales: n.

        See {like kicking dead whales down the beach}.

:What's a spline?:

        [XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: "You have just used a term that
        I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should know, but
        don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." The PARC lexicon
        adds "Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they seem
        obvious."

:wheel: n.

        [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who has an
        active {wheel bit}. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung
        tape drives." (See {wedged}, sense 1.) The traditional name of
        security group zero in {BSD} (to which the major system-internal
        users like {root} belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on
        this usage, modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can
        {go root}.

:wheel bit: n.

        A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted
        operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on
        the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address
        in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or
        create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX
        operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and
        others. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called
        wheel mode. This term entered the Unix culture from TWENEX in the
        mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university
        sites). See also {root}.

:wheel of reincarnation:

        [coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of
        Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used
        to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing
        system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware
        for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power
        as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to
        support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds
        the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins
        again.

        Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in
        graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications
        and floating-point processors. Also known as the Wheel of Life, the
        Wheel of Samsara, and other variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist
        theological idea. See also {blitter}.

:wheel wars: n.

        [Stanford University] A period in {larval stage} during which
        student hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other
        out of the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak
        havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users.

:white hat:

        See {black hat}.

:whitelist: n.

        The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an explicit
        list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who
        are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email
        addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam
        filters.

:whizzy: adj.

        (alt.: wizzy) [Sun] Describes a {cuspy} program; one that is
        feature-rich and well presented.

:Whorfian mind-lock:

        [from the Lojban-language list] Software designs are often
        restricted in unavoidable ways by the capacities of the operating
        system or hardware they have to work with. Sometimes they are
        restricted in avoidable ways by mental habits a developer has picked
        up from a particular language or environment (perhaps a now-obsolete
        one) and never discarded. When a design develops complications that
        are the result of a mental habit that is no longer adaptive, the
        developer has succumbed to Whorfian mind-lock. The design itself has
        been `whorfed'.

        For example, some Unix designs are whorfed by the assumption that
        directory searches are linear and expensive for large directories;
        therefore directories must be kept small. Another common way to
        succumb to Whorfian mind-lock is to do serial processing with a
        small working set rather than slurping an entire file or data
        structure into memory; the hidden assumption here is that not much
        core is available and virtual memory works poorly if at all.
        Detecting Whorfian mind-lock is important, because it tends to
        introduce unnecessary complexity and bugs.

:wibble:

        [UK, perh. originally from the first Roger Irrelevant strip in VIZ
        comics, spread via Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s and early
        1990s]

        1. n.,v. Commonly used to describe chatter, content-free remarks or
        other essentially meaningless contributions to threads in
        newsgroups. "Oh, rspence is wibbling again".

        2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op.

        3. One of the preferred {metasyntactic variable}s in the UK, forming
        a series with wobble, wubble, and flob (attributed to the hilarious
        historical comedy Blackadder).

        4. A pronunciation of the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e.,
        www.{foo}.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com" (compare
        {dub dub dub}).

:WIBNI: //, n.

        [Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] What most requirements documents
        and specifications consist entirely of. Compare {IWBNI}.

:widget: n.

        1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic
        examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the
        original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the
        parts list for a widget has 52 entries...."

        2. [poss.: evoking `window gadget'] A user interface object in {X}
        graphical user interfaces.

:wiggles: n.

        [scientific computation] In solving partial differential equations
        by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth
        (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength
        representable on the grid. If an algorithm is unstable, this is
        often the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the
        solution. Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be
        generated near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.

:wild side:

        The public or uncontrolled side of a {firewall machine}.

:WIMP environment: n.

        [acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down menu)']
        A graphical-user-interface environment such as {X} or the Macintosh
        interface, esp. as described by a hacker who prefers command-line
        interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility.
        However, it is also used without negative connotations; one must pay
        attention to voice tone and other signals to interpret correctly.
        See {menuitis}, {user-obsequious}.

:win:

        [MIT; now common everywhere]

        1. vi. To succeed. A program wins if no unexpected conditions arise,
        or (especially) if it is sufficiently {robust} to take exceptions in
        stride.

        2. n. Success, or a specific instance thereof. A pleasing outcome.
        "So it turned out I could use a {lexer} generator instead of
        hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. What a win!" Emphatic forms:
        moby win, super win, hyper-win (often used interjectively as a
        reply). For some reason suitable win is also common at MIT, usually
        in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. Oppose {lose};
        see also {big win}, which isn't quite just an intensification of
        win.

:win big: vi.

        To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a
        2-for-1 sale." See {big win}.

:win win: excl.

        Expresses pleasure at a {win}.

:Winchester: n.

        Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk drives in
        which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air
        cushion. There is a legend that the name arose because the original
        1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM 3340
        featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30--30 became `Winchester' when
        somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous
        Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber
        and the second to the grain weight of the charge). (It is sometimes
        incorrectly claimed that Winchester was the laboratory in which the
        technology was developed.)

:windoid: n.

        In the Macintosh world, a style of window with much less adornment
        (smaller or missing title bar, zoom box, etc.) than a standard
        window.

:window shopping: n.

        [US Geological Survey] Among users of {WIMP environment}s like {X}
        or the Macintosh, extended experimentation with new window colors,
        fonts, and icon shapes. This activity can take up hours of what
        might otherwise have been productive working time. "I spent the
        afternoon window shopping until I found the coolest shade of green
        for my active window borders -- now they perfectly match my medium
        slate blue background." Serious window shoppers will spend their
        days with bitmap editors, creating new and different icons and
        background patterns for all to see. Also: window dressing, the act
        of applying new fonts, colors, etc. See {fritterware}, compare
        {macdink}.

:Windowsitis:

        1. As a disease of people: the tendency of inexperienced (or
        Windows-experienced) Web developers have to use backslashes in URLs,
        rather than the correct forward slashes.

        2. As a disease of programs: to be a rigid, clunky, bug-prone
        monstrosity, all glossy surface with a hollow interior.

:Windoze: /win'dohz/, n.

        See {Microsloth Windows}. (Also Losedoze.)

:winged comments: n.

        Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to {boxed
        comments}. In C, for example:

        d = sqrt(x*x + y*y);  /* distance from origin */

        Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line.

        (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 75-10-04. The previous
        cartoon was 74-12-25.)

:winkey: n.

        (alt.: winkey face) See {emoticon}.

:winnage: /win'@j/, n.

        The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is
        winning.

:winner:

        1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or
        person.

        2. real winner: Often sarcastic, but also used as high praise (see
        also the note under {user}). "He's a real winner -- never reports a
        bug till he can duplicate it and send in an example."

:winnitude: /win'@t[y]ood/, n.

        The quality of winning (as opposed to {winnage}, which is the result
        of winning). "Guess what? They tweaked the microcode and now the
        LISP interpreter runs twice as fast as it used to." "That's really
        great! Boy, what winnitude!" "Yup. I'll probably get a half-hour's
        winnage on the next run of my program." Perhaps curiously, the
        obvious antonym `lossitude' is rare.

:Wintel: n.

        Microsoft Windows plus Intel -- the tacit alliance that dominated
        desktop computing in the 1990s. After 1999 it began to break up
        under pressure from {Linux}; see {Lintel}.

:Wintendo: /winten'doh/, n.

        [Play on "Nintendo"] A PC running the Windows operating system kept
        primarily for the purpose of viewing multimedia and playing games.
        The implication is that the speaker uses a Linux or *BSD box for
        everything else.

:wired: n.

        See {hardwired}.

:wirehead: /wi:r'hed/, n.

        [prob.: from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict]

        1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on
        communications hardware.

        2. An expert in local-area networks. A wirehead can be a network
        software wizard too, but will always have the ability to deal with
        network hardware, down to the smallest component. Wireheads are
        known for their ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare
        resistors, for example.

:wirewater: n.

        Syn. {programming fluid}. This melds the mainstream slang adjective
        `wired' (stimulated, up, hyperactive) with `firewater'; however, it
        refers to caffeinacious rather than alcoholic beverages.

:wish list: n.

        A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done
        for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code
        is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. "OK, I'll add
        automatic filename completion to the wish list for the new
        interface." Compare {tick-list features}.

:within delta of: adj.

        See {delta}.

:within epsilon of: adj.

        See {epsilon}.

:wizard: n.

        1. Transitively, a person who knows how a complex piece of software
        or hardware works (that is, who {grok}s it); esp. someone who can
        find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a {hacker} if
        he or she has general hacking ability, but is a wizard with respect
        to something only if he or she has specific detailed knowledge of
        that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for something given
        the time to study it.

        2. The term `wizard' is also used intransitively of someone who has
        extremely high-level hacking or problem-solving ability.

        3. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
        people; one who has {wheel} privileges on a system.

        4. A Unix expert, esp. a Unix systems programmer. This usage is well
        enough established that `Unix Wizard' is a recognized job title at
        some corporations and to most headhunters.

        See {guru}, {lord high fixer}. See also {deep magic}, {heavy
        wizardry}, {incantation}, {magic}, {mutter}, {rain dance}, {voodoo
        programming}, {wave a dead chicken}.

:Wizard Book: n.

        Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Hal Abelson,
        Jerry Sussman and Julie Sussman; MIT Press, 1984, 1996; ISBN
        0-262-01153-0), an excellent computer science text used in
        introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the
        jacket. One of the {bible}s of the LISP/Scheme world. Also, less
        commonly, known as the {Purple Book}. Now available on the
        http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

:wizard hat: n.

        [also, after Terry Pratchett, pointy hat] Notional headgear worn by
        whoever is the {wizard} in a particular context. The implication is
        that it's a transferable role. "Talk to Alice, she's wearing the
        TCP/IP wizard hat while Bob is on vacation." This metaphor is
        sufficiently live that one may actually see hackers miming the act
        of putting on, taking off, or transferring a phantom hat. See also
        {pointy hat}, compare {patch pumpkin}.

:wizard mode: n.

        [from {rogue}] A special access mode of a program or system, usually
        passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. Generally
        not used for operating systems themselves (root mode or wheel mode
        would be used instead). This term is often used with respect to
        games that have editable state.

:wizardly: adj.

        Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly {feature} is one that only a
        wizard could understand or use properly.

:wok-on-the-wall: n.

        A small microwave dish antenna used for cross-campus private network
        circuits, from the obvious resemblance between a microwave dish and
        the Chinese culinary utensil.

:womb box: n.

        1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment.

        2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy
        interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber
        matrix; mundanely called a flight case. Used for delicate test
        equipment, electronics, and musical instruments.

:WOMBAT: /wom'bat/, adj.

        [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems
        which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely
        to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful
        constructions such as wrestling with a wombat. See also {crawling
        horror}, {SMOP}. Also note the rather different usage as a
        metasyntactic variable in {Commonwealth Hackish}.

        Users of the {PDP-11} database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat
        as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP
        WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats.

:womble: n.

        [Unisys UK: from British puppet-show characters] A user who has
        great difficulty in communicating their requirements and/or in using
        the resulting software. Extreme case of {luser}. An especially
        senior or high-ranking womble is referred to as Great-Uncle
        Bulgaria. Compare {Aunt Tillie}.

:wonky: /wong'kee/, adj.

        [from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for
        {broken}. Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior
        seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "That was the day
        the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came
        out in Tengwar." Also in wonked out. See {funky}, {demented},
        {bozotic}.

:workaround: n.

        1. A temporary {kluge} used to bypass, mask, or otherwise avoid a
        {bug} or {misfeature} in some system. Theoretically, workarounds are
        always replaced by {fix}es; in practice, customers often find
        themselves living with workarounds for long periods of time. "The
        code died on NUL characters in the input, so I fixed it to interpret
        them as spaces." "That's not a fix, that's a workaround!"

        2. A procedure to be employed by the user in order to do what some
        currently non-working feature should do. Hypothetical example:
        "Using META-F7 {crash}es the 4.43 build of Weemax, but as a
        workaround you can type CTRL-R, then SHIFT-F5, and delete the
        remaining {cruft} by hand."

:working as designed: adj.

        [IBM]

        1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful,
        but misdesigned.

        2. Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility.

        3. Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a
        criticism or suggestion. At {IBM}, this sense is used in official
        documents! See {BAD}.

:worm: n.

        [from tapeworm in John Brunner's novel The Shockwave Rider, via
        XEROX PARC] A program that propagates itself over a network,
        reproducing itself as it goes. Compare {virus}. Nowadays the term
        has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only {cracker}s
        write worms. Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's
        {Great Worm} of 1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and
        hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also
        {cracker}, {RTM}, {Trojan horse}, {ice}.

:wormhole: /werm'hohl/, n.

        [from the wormhole singularities hypothesized in some versions of
        General Relativity theory]

        1. [n.,obs.] A location in a monitor which contains the address of a
        routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a
        different routine. This term is now obsolescent; modern operating
        systems use clusters of wormholes extensively (for modularization of
        I/O handling in particular, as in the Unix device-driver
        organization) but the preferred techspeak for these clusters is
        `device tables', `jump tables' or `capability tables'.

        2. [Amateur Packet Radio] A network path using a commercial
        satellite link to join two or more amateur VHF networks. So called
        because traffic routed through a wormhole leaves and re-enters the
        amateur network over great distances with usually little clue in the
        message routing header as to how it got from one relay to the other.
        Compare {gopher hole} (sense 2).

:wound around the axle: adj.

        In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.

:wrap around: vi.

        (also n. wraparound and v. shorthand wrap)

        1. [techspeak] The action of a counter that starts over at zero or
        at minus infinity (see {infinity}) after its maximum value has been
        reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed
        to do so or because of an overflow (as when a car's odometer starts
        over at 0).

        2. To change {phase} gradually and continuously by maintaining a
        steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than 24 hours, e.g., living
        six long (28-hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the
        rate of 10 microhertz). This sense is also called {phase-wrapping}.

:write-only code: n.

        [a play on read-only memory] Code so arcane, complex, or
        ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by
        anyone but its author, and possibly not even by him/her. A {Bad
        Thing}.

:write-only language: n.

        A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre
        that any routine of significant size is automatically {write-only
        code}. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL,
        though {INTERCAL} and {TECO} certainly deserve it more. See also
        {Befunge}.

:write-only memory: n.

        The obvious antonym to read-only memory. Out of frustration with the
        long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component
        specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an
        engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only
        memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be
        approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics
        {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking
        for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of
        the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones.
        Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a double-page spread in Electronics
        magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day
        joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the
        25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory"
        data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs.: Temp.", "Iff vs.
        Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs.: number of socket insertions",
        and "AQL vs.: selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF
        supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, 2%.

:Wrong Thing: n.

        A design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or
        inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if
        capitalized. The opposite of the {Right Thing}; more generally,
        anything that is not the Right Thing. In cases where `the good is
        the enemy of the best', the merely good -- although good -- is
        nevertheless the Wrong Thing. "In C, the default is for module-level
        declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than just within the
        module. This is clearly the Wrong Thing."

:wugga wugga: /wuh'g@ wuhg@/, n.

        Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a
        tedious or difficult task.{grind} (sense 4).

:wumpus: /wuhm'p@s/, n.

        The central monster (and, in many versions, the name) of a famous
        family of very early computer games called Hunt The Wumpus. The
        original was invented in 1970 (several years before {ADVENT}) by
        Gregory Yob. The wumpus lived somewhere in a cave with the topology
        of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph (later versions supported
        other topologies, including an icosahedron and Mbius strip). The
        player started somewhere at random in the cave with five `crooked
        arrows'; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms,
        and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the
        wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players,
        the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely
        by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also
        by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up
        and drop you at a random location (later versions added `anaerobic
        termites' that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that
        randomly changed pit locations).

        This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random
        graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even
        older Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like
        setting and its terse, amusing messages, it prefigured {ADVENT} and
        {Zork} and was directly ancestral to the latter (Zork acknowledged
        this heritage by including a super-bat colony). A C emulation of the
        original Basic game is available at the Retrocomputing Museum,
        http://www.catb.org/retro/.

:WYSIAYG: /wiz'eeayg/, adj.

        Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You
        Get"; an unhappy variant of {WYSIWYG}. Visual,
        `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial
        learning curves, but also to lack depth; they often frustrate
        advanced users who would be better served by a command-style
        interface. When this happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG
        problem. This term is most often used of editors, word processors,
        and document formatting programs. WYSIWYG `desktop publishing'
        programs, for example, are a clear win for creating small documents
        with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like
        newsletters and presentation slides. When typesetting book-length
        manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the
        task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased
        power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like {TeX} or
        Unix's {troff} becomes not just desirable but a necessity. Compare
        {YAFIYGI}.

:WYSIWYG: /wiz'eewig/, /wisseewig/, adj.

        [Traced to Flip Wilson's "Geraldine" character c.1970] Describes a
        user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as
        opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands that do not
        result in immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in environments
        supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a rarely-attained ideal;
        there are variants of this term to express real-world manifestations
        including WYSIAWYG (What You See Is Almost What You Get) and
        WYSIMOLWYG (What You See Is More or Less What You Get). All these
        can be mildly derogatory, as they are often used to refer to
        dumbed-down {user-friendly} interfaces targeted at non-programmers;
        a hacker has no fear of obscure commands (compare {WYSIAYG}). On the
        other hand, {EMACS} was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors,
        replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure,
        command-based {TECO}. See also {WIMP environment}. [Oddly enough,
        WYSIWYG made it into the 1986 supplement to the OED, in lower case
        yet. --ESR]

  X

   X

   XEROX PARC

   XOFF

   XON

   xor

   xref

   XXX

   xyzzy

:X: /X/, n.

        1. Used in various speech and writing contexts (also in lowercase)
        in roughly its algebraic sense of `unknown within a set defined by
        context' (compare {N}). Thus, the abbreviation 680x0 stands for
        68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, or 68040, and 80x86 stands for 80186,
        80286, 80386, 80486, 80586 or 80686 (note that a Unix hacker might
        write these as 680[0-6]0 and 80[1-6]86 or 680?0 and 80?86
        respectively; see {glob}).

        2. [after the name of an earlier window system called `W'] An
        over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered and incredibly
        over-complicated window system developed at MIT and widely used on
        Unix systems.

:XEROX PARC: /zee'roks park/, n.

        The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than a decade, from
        the early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing
        volume of groundbreaking hardware and software innovations. The
        modern mice, windows, and icons style of software interface was
        invented there. So was the laser printer and the local-area network;
        and PARC's series of D machines anticipated the powerful personal
        computers of the 1980s by a decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were
        without honor in their own company, so much so that it became a
        standard joke to describe PARC as a place that specialized in
        developing brilliant ideas for everyone else.

        The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's top-level
        {suit}s has been well anatomized in Fumbling The Future: How XEROX
        Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas K.
        Smith and Robert C. Alexander (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN
        0-688-09511-9).

:XOFF: /Xof/, n.

        Syn. {control-S}.

:XON: /Xon/, n.

        Syn. {control-Q}.

:xor: /X'or/, /kzor/, conj.

        Exclusive or. `A xor B' means `A or B, but not both'. "I want to get
        cherry pie xor a banana split." This derives from the technical use
        of the term as a function on truth-values that is true if exactly
        one of its two arguments is true.

:xref: /X'ref/, v.,n.

        Hackish standard abbreviation for cross-reference.

:XXX: /XXX/, n.

        A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program comments
        to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some hackers
        liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating. Compare
        {FIXME}.

:xyzzy: /XYZZY/, /XYziz'ee/, /zizee/, /ikzizee/, adj.

        [from the ADVENT game] The {canonical} `magic word'. This comes from
        {ADVENT}, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with
        many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. If you type
        xyzzy at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two
        otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of
        {magic}, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply
        "Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he
        has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system
        will let you do it anyway." "Xyzzy!" It's traditional for xyzzy to
        be an {Easter egg} in games with text interfaces.

        Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command
        on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would
        typically respond "Nothing happens", just as {ADVENT} did if the
        magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed
        the action that enabled the word. In more recent 32-bit versions, by
        the way, AOS/VS responds "Twice as much happens".

        Early versions of the popular `minesweeper' game under Microsoft
        Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command
        `xyzzy<enter><right-shift>' that turns the top-left pixel of the
        screen different colors depending on whether or not the cursor is
        over a bomb. This feature temporarily disappeared in Windows 98, but
        reappeared in Windows 2000.

        The following passage from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank
        Baum, suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, has recently come to
        light: "Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!" said Dorothy, who was now standing on
        both feet. This ended the saying of the charm, and they heard a
        great chattering and flapping of wings, as the band of Winged
        Monkeys flew up to them.

        The text can be viewed at Project Gutenberg.

  Y

   YA-

   YABA

   YAFIYGI

   yak shaving

   YAUN

   yellow card

   yellow wire

   Yet Another

   YHBT

   YKYBHTLW

   YMMV

   You are not expected to understand this

   You know you've been hacking too long when

   Your mileage may vary

   Yow!

   yoyo mode

   Yu-Shiang Whole Fish

:YA-: abbrev.

        [Yet Another] In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to
        {Yet Another}, following the precedent set by Unix yacc(1) (Yet
        Another Compiler-Compiler). See {YABA}.

:YABA: /ya'b@/, n.

        [Cambridge] Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is
        being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name
        that is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of
        originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would
        then be `YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions like
        "What is WYSIWYG?" See also {TLA}.

:YAFIYGI: /yaf'eey@gee/, adj.

        [coined in response to WYSIWYG] Describes the command-oriented
        ed/vi/nroff/TeX style of word processing or other user interface,
        the opposite of {WYSIWYG}. Stands for "You asked for it, you got
        it", because what you actually asked for is often not apparent until
        long after it is too late to do anything about it. Used to denote
        perversity ("Real Programmers use YAFIYGI tools...and like it!") or,
        less often, a necessary tradeoff ("Only a YAFIYGI tool can have full
        programmable flexibility in its interface.").

        This precise sense of "You asked for it, you got it" seems to have
        first appeared in Ed Post's classic parody Real Programmers don't
        use Pascal (see {Real Programmer}s); the acronym is a more recent
        invention.

:yak shaving:

        [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy
        episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually
        necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several
        levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working
        on.

:YAUN: /yawn/, n.

        [Acronym for `Yet Another Unix Nerd'] Reported from the San Diego
        Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a
        good-natured punning insult aimed at Unix zealots.

:yellow card: n.

        See {green card}.

:yellow wire: n.

        [IBM] Repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon
        connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to
        reconnect cut traces after the FE mistakenly cut one. Compare {blue
        wire}, {purple wire}, {red wire}.

:Yet Another: adj.

        [From Unix's yacc(1), `Yet Another Compiler-Compiler', a LALR parser
        generator]

        1. Of your own work: A humorous allusion often used in titles to
        acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is.
        As in `Yet Another AI Group' or `Yet Another Simulated Annealing
        Algorithm'.

        2. Of others' work: Describes something of which there are already
        far too many. See also {YA-}, {YABA}, {YAUN}.

:YHBT: //

        [Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: You Have Been Trolled (see
        {troll}, sense 1). Especially used in "YHBT. YHL. HAND.", which is
        widely understood to expand to "You Have Been Trolled. You Have
        Lost. Have A Nice Day". You are quite likely to see this if you
        respond incautiously to a flame-provoking post that was obviously
        floated as sucker bait.

:YKYBHTLW: //, abbrev.

        Abbreviation of `You know you've been hacking too long when...',
        which became established on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers
        during extended discussion of the indicated entry in the Jargon
        File.

:YMMV: //, cav.

        Abbreviation for {Your mileage may vary} common on Usenet.

:You are not expected to understand this: cav.

        [Unix] The canonical comment describing something {magic} or too
        complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment
        in the context-switching code of the V6 Unix kernel. Dennis Ritchie
        has explained this in detail.

:You know you've been hacking too long when:

        The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about
        themselves. These include the following:

          o not only do you check your email more often than your paper
            mail, but you remember your {network address} faster than your
            postal one.

          o your {SO} kisses you on the neck and the first thing you think
            is "Uh, oh, {priority interrupt}."

          o you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing
            it in octal.

          o your computers have a higher street value than your car.

          o in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10.

          o more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some
            programming language.

          o you see the word "Oxford" and mentally trip over the fact that
            `r' is not a hex digit.

          o you realize you have never seen half of your best friends.

        A list of these can be found by searching for this phrase on the
        web.

        [An early version of this entry said "All but one of these have been
        reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even
        hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." The ringer was
        balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up out of whole
        cloth. Although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than
        any of the others, I also received multiple independent reports of
        its actually happening, most famously to Grace Hopper while she was
        working with BINAC in 1949. --ESR]

:Your mileage may vary: cav.

        [from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by
        American car manufacturers]

        1. A ritual warning often found in Unix freeware distributions.
        Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried to write this portably, but who
        knows what'll happen on your system?"

        2. More generally, a qualifier attached to advice. "I find that
        sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."

:Yow!: /yow/, interj.

        [from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] A favored hacker expression of
        humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out what happens when you
        twiddle the foo option on this display hack!".

:yoyo mode: n.

        The state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
        alternates several times between being up and being down.
        Interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware
        vendors give out free yoyos at Usenix exhibits.

        Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists
        staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were
        subsequently treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top
        computer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.

:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish: /yooshyang hohl fish/, n. obs.

        The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop
        in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The
        term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is
        cooked whole (not {parse}d) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or
        Yu-Hsiang, or in modern Pinyin transliteration yuxiang) sauce.
        Usage: primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could
        display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity
        from people who hear about it second-hand.

        Yu Shiang Whole Fish is alive and well in Unicode as U+0263 LATIN
        SMALL LETTER GAMMA (as opposed to the actual Greek letter at U+03B3,
        which usually has a loopless glyph; the form of U+0263 is
        consistently loopy). This symbol is included in Unicode as a Latin
        letter because it is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In
        the IPA, gamma represents a voiced velar fricative, the sound
        commonly transcribed "gh" in Arabic or Klingon.

  Z

   zap

   zapped

   Zawinski's Law

   zbeba

   zen

   zero

   zero-content

   Zero-One-Infinity Rule

   zeroth

   zigamorph

   zip

   zipperhead

   zombie

   zorch

   Zork

   zorkmid

:zap:

        1. n. Spiciness.

        2. vt. To make food spicy.

        3. vt. To make someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most
        hackers love spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy
        unless it makes you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.) See
        {zapped}.

        4. vt. To modify, usually to correct; esp. used when the action is
        performed with a debugger or binary patching tool. Also implies
        surgical precision. "Zap the debug level to 6 and run it again." In
        the IBM mainframe world, binary patches are applied to programs or
        to the OS with a program called `superzap', whose file name is
        `IMASPZAP' (possibly contrived from I M A SuPerZAP).

        5. vt. To erase or reset.

        6. To {fry} a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh -- I think that
        lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."

:zapped: adj.

        Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in
        temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For example, the Chinese
        appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold
        but zapped; by contrast, {vanilla} wonton soup is hot but not
        zapped. See also {oriental food}, {laser chicken}. See {zap}, senses
        1 and 2.

:Zawinski's Law:

        "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those
        programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
        Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of Software
        Envelopment") to express his belief that all truly useful programs
        experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application
        platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of
        that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of
        accuracy.

:zbeba: n.

        [USENET] The word `moron' in {rot13}. Used to describe newbies who
        are behaving with especial cluelessness.

:zen: vt.

        To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of
        enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied
        to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer
        allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast {grok}, which
        connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare {hack
        mode}. See also {guru}.

:zero: vt.

        1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits
        or words (esp. in the construction zero out).

        2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and
        directories, where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing
        zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One may speak of something
        being logically zeroed rather than being physically zeroed. See
        {scribble}.

:zero-content: adj.

        Syn. {content-free}.

:Zero-One-Infinity Rule: prov.

        "Allow none of {foo}, one of {foo}, or any number of {foo}." A rule
        of thumb for software design, which instructs one to not place
        {random} limits on the number of instances of a given entity (such
        as: windows in a window system, letters in an OS's filenames, etc.).
        Specifically, one should either disallow the entity entirely, allow
        exactly one instance (an "exception"), or allow as many as the user
        wants -- address space and memory permitting.

        The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations where
        it makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of none.
        However, if one decides to go further and allow N (for N > 1), then
        why not N+1? And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so on? Once above 1,
        there's no excuse not to allow any N; hence, {infinity}.

        Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel The
        Gods Themselves in which a character announces that the number 2 is
        impossible -- if you're going to believe in more than one universe,
        you might as well believe in an infinite number of them.

:zeroth: /zee'rohth/, adj.

        First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based
        indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0
        instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits
        correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital
        devices known as counters count in this way.

        Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter
        of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an introductory
        nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition of
        {K&R}). In recent years this trait has also been observed among many
        pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering
        from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce {fencepost error}s,
        though it cannot eliminate them entirely.

:zigamorph: /zig'@morf/, n.

        1. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or {fence} character.
        Usage: primarily at IBM shops.

        2. [proposed] n. The Unicode non-character U+FFFF
        (1111111111111111), a character code which is not assigned to any
        character, and so is usable as end-of-string. (Unicode is a 16-bit
        character code intended to cover all of the world's writing systems,
        including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, hiragana, katakana,
        Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and many other scripts -- support for
        {elvish} is planned for a future release).

:zip: vt.

        [primarily MS-DOS/Windows] To create a compressed archive from a
        group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its
        use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm
        have been written. Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and
        send it to you." See {tar and feather}.

:zipperhead: n.

        [IBM] A person with a closed mind.

:zombie: n.

        1. [Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its
        process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a
        wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings
        occasionally. Compare {orphan}.

        2. A machine, especially someone's {home box}, that has been cracked
        and is being used as part of a second-stage attack by miscreants
        trying to mask their home IP address. Especially used of machines
        being exploited in large gangs for a mechanized denial-of-service
        attack like Tribe Flood Network; the image that goes with this is of
        a veritable army of zombies mindlessly doing the bidding of a
        necromancer.

:zorch: /zorch/

        1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink.

        2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity
        approaching lightspeed --ESR].

        3. [MIT] v. To propel something very quickly. "The new comm software
        is very fast; it really zorches files through the network."

        4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible
        and fuzzy currency in which favors are measured. "I'd rather not ask
        him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with
        him for the week."

        5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability. "I think I'll {punt} that
        change for now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of
        zorch."

        6. [MIT] v. To flunk an exam or course.

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

:Zork: /zork/, n.

        The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy
        gaming; see {ADVENT}. Originally written on MIT-DM during 1977-1979,
        later distributed with BSD Unix (as a patched, sourceless RT-11
        FORTRAN binary; see {retrocomputing}) and commercialized as `The
        Zork Trilogy' by {Infocom}. The FORTRAN source was later rewritten
        for portability and released to Usenet under the name "Dungeon".
        Both FORTRAN "Dungeon" and translated C versions are available at
        many FTP sites; the commercial Zork trilogy is available at
        http://www.ifarchive.org/. See also {grue}. You can play Zork via a
        Java Applet.

:zorkmid: /zork'mid/, n.

        The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This
        originated in {Zork} but has spread to {nethack} and is referred to
        in several other games.

                                  Appendices

   Table of Contents

   A. Hacker Folklore

                The Meaning of `Hack'

                TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity

                A Story About `Magic'

                Some AI Koans

                             Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

                             Moon instructs a student

                             Sussman attains enlightenment

                             Drescher and the toaster

                OS and JEDGAR

                The Story of Mel

   B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker

                General Appearance

                Dress

                Reading Habits

                Other Interests

                Physical Activity and Sports

                Education

                Things Hackers Detest and Avoid

                Food

                Politics

                Gender and Ethnicity

                Religion

                Ceremonial Chemicals

                Communication Style

                Geographical Distribution

                Sexual Habits

                Personality Characteristics

                Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality

                Miscellaneous

   C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow

   Bibliography

Appendix A. Hacker Folklore

   Table of Contents

   The Meaning of `Hack'

   TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity

   A Story About `Magic'

   Some AI Koans

                Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

                Moon instructs a student

                Sussman attains enlightenment

                Drescher and the toaster

   OS and JEDGAR

   The Story of Mel

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

The Meaning of `Hack'

   "The word {hack} doesn't really have 69 different meanings", according to
   MIT hacker Phil Agre. "In fact, {hack} has only one meaning, an extremely
   subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is
   implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on
   the context. Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words,
   most notably {random}."

   Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of
   ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a
   carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that
   went into it.

   An important secondary meaning of {hack} is `a creative practical joke'.
   This kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the
   programming kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures; see the
   lexicon entries for {pseudo} and {kgbvax}. But here are some examples of
   pure practical jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit:

     In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology, in
     Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed as a
     reporter and `interviewed' the director of the University of Washington
     card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up
     colored cards to make pictures). The reporter learned exactly how the
     stunts were operated, and also that the director would be out to dinner
     later.

     While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the
     `Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction sheet
     for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the
     blank. The next day they picked the lock again and stole the master
     plans for the stunts -- large sheets of graph paper colored in with the
     stunt pictures. Using these as a guide, they made new instructions for
     three of the stunts on the duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in
     once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting the stack
     of diddled instruction sheets for the original set.

     The result was that three of the pictures were totally different.
     Instead of `WASHINGTON', the word `CALTECH' was flashed. Another stunt
     showed the word `HUSKIES', the Washington nickname, but spelled it
     backwards. And what was supposed to have been a picture of a husky
     instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the beaver --
     nature's engineer -- as a mascot.)

     After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative said:
     "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The Washington
     student body president remarked: "No hard feelings, but at the time it
     was unbelievable. We were amazed."

   This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the
   direction sheets constituted a form of programming.

   Here is another classic hack:

     On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale football game. Just
     after Harvard's second touchdown against Yale, in the first quarter, a
     small black ball popped up out of the ground at the 40-yard line, and
     grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The letters `MIT' appeared all
     over the ball. As the players and officials stood around gawking, the
     ball grew to six feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a
     cloud of white smoke.

     The Boston Globe later reported: "If you want to know the truth, MIT
     won The Game."

     The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's Delta
     Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather balloon, a
     hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a
     vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made eight separate
     expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 AM, locating an unused
     110-volt circuit in the stadium and running buried wires from the
     stadium circuit to the 40-yard line, where they buried the balloon
     device. When the time came to activate the device, two fraternity
     members had merely to flip a circuit breaker and push a plug into an
     outlet.

     This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise, publicity,
     the ingenious use of technology, safety, and harmlessness. The use of
     manual control allowed the prank to be timed so as not to disrupt the
     game (it was set off between plays, so the outcome of the game would
     not be unduly affected). The perpetrators had even thoughtfully
     attached a note to the balloon explaining that the device was not
     dangerous and contained no explosives.

     Harvard president Derek Bok commented: "They have an awful lot of
     clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again." President Paul
     E. Gray of MIT said: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I
     had anything to do with it, but I wish there were."

   The hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to have
   happened. Many other classic-hack stories from MIT and elsewhere, though
   retold as history, have the characteristics of what Jan Brunvand has
   called `urban folklore' (see {FOAF}). Perhaps the best known of these is
   the legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an alleged incident in which
   engineering students are said to have welded a trolley car to its tracks
   with thermite. Numerous versions of this have been recorded from the
   1940s to the present, most set at MIT but at least one very detailed
   version set at CMU.

   Brian Leibowitz has researched MIT hacks both real and mythical
   extensively; the interested reader is referred to his delightful
   pictorial compendium The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery,
   and Pranks (MIT Museum, 1990; ISBN 0-917027-03-5). The Institute has a
   World Wide Web page at http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/Gallery.html. There is
   a sequel entitled Is This The Way To Baker House?. The Caltech Alumni
   Association has published two similar books titled Legends of Caltech and
   More Legends of Caltech.

   Here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks:

     Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola
     discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the
     Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy,
     it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a
     portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which
     memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large
     value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and
     could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the
     file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other
     interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.

     Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official
     `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be
     fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a
     database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola
     followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as
     `Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation,
     ways-to-reproduce, etc.

     The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't
     realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary
     operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official
     patch.

     Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support
     rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to
     demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be
     cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be
     subverted.

     They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a
     thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then
     incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar
     Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs'
     (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the existing loophole to
     subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep
     an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator
     (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.

     One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development
     system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena.
     These included the following:

       o Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of
         a job.

       o Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would
         attempt to walk across the floor (see {walking drives}).

       o The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself
         and punch a `lace card' (card with all positions punched). These
         would usually jam in the punch.

       o The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin
         Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.

       o The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be
         instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a
         card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into
         stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some
         code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would
         flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would
         divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator
         to recollate them manually.

     Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They
     found the bandit ghost jobs running, and killed them... and were once
     again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the following sequence of
     events took place:

     !X id1

     id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack!  Pray save me!
     id1: Off (aborted)

     id2: Fear not, friend Robin!  I shall rout the Sheriff
          of Nottingham's men!

     id1: Thank you, my good fellow!

     Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed,
     and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few
     milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them
     simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.

     Finally, the system programmers did the latter -- only to find that the
     bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out
     that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel
     file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs
     that were to be started at boot time (this is similar to the way
     Windows viruses propagate).

     The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the
     system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled
     the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this
     problem.

     It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management
     about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It
     is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against
     either of them.

   Finally, here is a wonderful hack story for the new millennium:

   1990's addition to the hallowed tradition of April Fool RFCs was RFC
   1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.
   This sketched a method for transmitting IP packets via carrier pigeons.

   Eleven years later, on 28 April 2001, the Bergen Linux User's Group
   successfully demonstrated CPIP (Carrier Pigeon IP) between two Linux
   machines running on opposite sides of a small mountain in Bergen, Norway.
   Their network stack used printers to hex-dump packets onto paper, pigeons
   to transport the paper, and OCR software to read the dumps at the other
   end and feed them to the receiving machine's network layer.

   Here is the actual log of the ping command they successfully executed.
   Note the exceptional packet times.

   Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001
   vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
   tun0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
             inet addr:10.0.3.2  P-t-P:10.0.3.1  Mask:255.255.255.255
             UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:150  Metric:1
             RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
             TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
             collisions:0
             RX bytes:88 (88.0 b)  TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)

   vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -i 450 10.0.3.1
   PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
   64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
   64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
   64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms

   -- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics --
   9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms
   vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit

   Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001

   A web page documenting the event, with pictures, is at
   http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/. In the finest Internet tradition, all
   software involved was open-source; the custom parts are available for
   download from the site.

   While all acknowledged the magnitude of this achievement, some debate
   ensued over whether BLUG's implementation was properly conformant to the
   RFC. It seems they had not used the duct tape specified in 1149 to attach
   messages to pigeon legs, but instead employed other methods less
   objectionable to the pigeons. The debate was properly resolved when it
   was pointed out that the duct-tape specification was not prefixed by a
   MUST, and was thus a recommendation rather than a requirement.

   The perpetrators finished their preliminary writeup in this wise: "Now,
   we're waiting for someone to write other implementations, so that we can
   do interoperability tests, and maybe we finally can get the RFC into the
   standards track... ".

   The logical next step should be an implementation of RFC2549.

TV Typewriters: A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity

   Here is a true story about a glass tty: One day an MIT hacker was in a
   motorcycle accident and broke his leg. He had to stay in the hospital
   quite a while, and got restless because he couldn't {hack}. Two of his
   friends therefore took a terminal and a modem for it to the hospital, so
   that he could use the computer by telephone from his hospital bed.

   Now this happened some years before the spread of home computers, and
   computer terminals were not a familiar sight to the average person. When
   the two friends got to the hospital, a guard stopped them and asked what
   they were carrying. They explained that they wanted to take a computer
   terminal to their friend who was a patient.

   The guard got out his list of things that patients were permitted to have
   in their rooms: TV, radio, electric razor, typewriter, tape player, ...
   no computer terminals. Computer terminals weren't on the list, so the
   guard wouldn't let it in. Rules are rules, you know. (This guard was
   clearly a {droid}.)

   Fair enough, said the two friends, and they left again. They were
   frustrated, of course, because they knew that the terminal was as
   harmless as a TV or anything else on the list... which gave them an idea.

   The next day they returned, and the same thing happened: a guard stopped
   them and asked what they were carrying. They said: "This is a TV
   typewriter!" The guard was skeptical, so they plugged it in and
   demonstrated it. "See? You just type on the keyboard and what you type
   shows up on the TV screen." Now the guard didn't stop to think about how
   utterly useless a typewriter would be that didn't produce any paper
   copies of what you typed; but this was clearly a TV typewriter, no doubt
   about it. So he checked his list: "A TV is all right, a typewriter is all
   right ... okay, take it on in!"

   [Historical note: Many years ago, Popular Electronics published
   solder-it-yourself plans for a TV typewriter. Despite the essential
   uselessness of the device, it was an enormously popular project. Steve
   Ciarcia, the man behind Byte magazine's "Circuit Cellar" feature,
   resurrected this ghost in one of his books of the early 1980s. He
   ascribed its popularity (no doubt correctly) to the feeling of power the
   builder could achieve by being able to decide himself what would be shown
   on the TV. And, in fact, the device was not entirely useless; when
   combined with a modem board, it became a crude but serviceable terminal.
   --ESR]

   [Antihistorical note: On September 23rd, 1992, the L.A. Times ran the
   following bit in Steve Harvey's `Only in L.A.' column:

     It must have been borrowed from a museum: Solomon Waters of Altadena, a
     6-year-old first-grader, came home from his first day of school and
     excitedly told his mother how he had written on "a machine that looks
     like a computer--but without the TV screen."

     She asked him if it could have been a "typewriter."

     "Yeah! Yeah!" he said. "That's what it was called."

   I have since investigated this matter and determined that many of today's
   teenagers have never seen a slide rule, either.... --ESR]

A Story About `Magic'

   Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed
   the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame
   of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the
   lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who).

   You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it
   does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a
   most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the
   metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'. The switch was
   in the `more magic' position.

   I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch
   before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one
   wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze
   of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a
   switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This
   switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.

   It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke.
   Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped
   it. The computer instantly crashed.

   Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but
   nevertheless restored the switch to the `more magic' position before
   reviving the computer.

   A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I
   recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural
   belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him
   with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch,
   still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it,
   still in the `more magic' position. We scrutinized the switch and its
   lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though
   connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That
   clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically
   nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect
   anything anyway. So we flipped the switch.

   The computer promptly crashed.

   This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was
   close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He
   inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and
   {dike}d it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever
   since.

   We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory
   that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the
   switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as
   millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for
   sure; all we can really say is that the switch was {magic}.

   I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually
   keep it set on `more magic'.

   1994: Another explanation of this story has since been offered. Note that
   the switch body was metal. Suppose that the non-connected side of the
   switch was connected to the switch body (usually the body is connected to
   a separate earth lug, but there are exceptions). The body is connected to
   the computer case, which is, presumably, grounded. Now the circuit ground
   within the machine isn't necessarily at the same potential as the case
   ground, so flipping the switch connected the circuit ground to the case
   ground, causing a voltage drop/jump which reset the machine. This was
   probably discovered by someone who found out the hard way that there was
   a potential difference between the two, and who then wired in the switch
   as a joke.

Some AI Koans

   Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

   Moon instructs a student

   Sussman attains enlightenment

   Drescher and the toaster

   These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the
   MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original koans were composed
   by Danny Hillis, who would later found Connection Machines, Inc. In
   reading these, it is at least useful to know that Minsky, Sussman, and
   Drescher are AI researchers of note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp
   machine's principal designers, and that David Moon wrote much of Lisp
   Machine Lisp.

  Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

   A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off
   and on.

   Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix
   a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going
   wrong."

   Knight turned the machine off and on.

   The machine worked.

  Moon instructs a student

   One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how to make a
   better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers
   to each cons."

   Moon patiently told the student the following story:

     "One day a student came to Moon and said: `I understand how to make a
     better garbage collector...

   [Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with
   circular structures that point to themselves.]

  Sussman attains enlightenment

   In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat
   hacking at the PDP-6.

   "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

   "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman
   replied.

   "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

   "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman
   said.

   Minsky then shut his eyes.

   "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.

   "So that the room will be empty."

   At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

  Drescher and the toaster

   A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his
   morning meal.

   "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider,
   "because I want you to be happy."

   Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster,
   saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."

OS and JEDGAR

   This story says a lot about the ITS ethos.

   On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what was
   being printed on someone else's terminal. It spied on the other guy's
   output by examining the insides of the monitor system. The output spy
   program was called OS. Throughout the rest of the computer science world
   (and at IBM too) OS means `operating system', but among old-time ITS
   hackers it almost always meant `output spy'.

   OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way of
   `protection' that prevented one user from trespassing on another's areas.
   Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would automatically
   notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. It worked in exactly
   the same way, by looking at the insides of the operating system to see if
   anyone else was looking at the insides that had to do with your output.
   This `counterspy' program was called JEDGAR (a six-letterism pronounced
   as two syllables: /jed'gr/), in honor of the former head of the FBI.

   But there's more. JEDGAR would ask the user for `license to kill'. If the
   user said yes, then JEDGAR would actually gun the job of the {luser} who
   was spying. Unfortunately, people found that this made life too violent,
   especially when tourists learned about it. One of the systems hackers
   solved the problem by replacing JEDGAR with another program that only
   pretended to do its job. It took a long time to do this, because every
   copy of JEDGAR had to be patched. To this day no one knows how many
   people never figured out that JEDGAR had been defanged.

   Interestingly, there is still a security module named JEDGAR alive as of
   late 1999 -- in the Unisys MCP for large systems. It is unknown to us
   whether the name is tribute or independent invention.

The Story of Mel

   This was posted to Usenet by its author, Ed Nather
   (<nather@astro.as.utexas.edu>), on May 21, 1983.

   A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming
   made the bald and unvarnished statement:

       Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

   Maybe they do now,
   in this decadent era of
   Lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly" software
   but back in the Good Old Days,
   when the term "software" sounded funny
   and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
   Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
   Not FORTRAN.  Not RATFOR.  Not, even, assembly language.
   Machine Code.
   Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
   Directly.

   Lest a whole new generation of programmers
   grow up in ignorance of this glorious past,
   I feel duty-bound to describe,
   as best I can through the generation gap,
   how a Real Programmer wrote code.
   I'll call him Mel,
   because that was his name.

   I first met Mel when I went to work for Royal McBee Computer Corp.,
   a now-defunct subsidiary of the typewriter company.
   The firm manufactured the LGP-30,
   a small, cheap (by the standards of the day)
   drum-memory computer,
   and had just started to manufacture
   the RPC-4000, a much-improved,
   bigger, better, faster -- drum-memory computer.
   Cores cost too much,
   and weren't here to stay, anyway.
   (That's why you haven't heard of the company,
   or the computer.)

   I had been hired to write a FORTRAN compiler
   for this new marvel and Mel was my guide to its wonders.
   Mel didn't approve of compilers.

   "If a program can't rewrite its own code",
   he asked, "what good is it?"

   Mel had written,
   in hexadecimal,
   the most popular computer program the company owned.
   It ran on the LGP-30
   and played blackjack with potential customers
   at computer shows.
   Its effect was always dramatic.
   The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show,
   and the IBM salesmen stood around
   talking to each other.
   Whether or not this actually sold computers
   was a question we never discussed.

   Mel's job was to re-write
   the blackjack program for the RPC-4000.
   (Port?  What does that mean?)
   The new computer had a one-plus-one
   addressing scheme,
   in which each machine instruction,
   in addition to the operation code
   and the address of the needed operand,
   had a second address that indicated where, on the revolving drum,
   the next instruction was located.

   In modern parlance,
   every single instruction was followed by a GO TO!
   Put that in Pascal's pipe and smoke it.

   Mel loved the RPC-4000
   because he could optimize his code:
   that is, locate instructions on the drum
   so that just as one finished its job,
   the next would be just arriving at the "read head"
   and available for immediate execution.
   There was a program to do that job,
   an "optimizing assembler",
   but Mel refused to use it.

   "You never know where it's going to put things",
   he explained, "so you'd have to use separate constants".

   It was a long time before I understood that remark.
   Since Mel knew the numerical value
   of every operation code,
   and assigned his own drum addresses,
   every instruction he wrote could also be considered
   a numerical constant.
   He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say,
   and multiply by it,
   if it had the right numeric value.
   His code was not easy for someone else to modify.

   I compared Mel's hand-optimized programs
   with the same code massaged by the optimizing assembler program,
   and Mel's always ran faster.
   That was because the "top-down" method of program design
   hadn't been invented yet,
   and Mel wouldn't have used it anyway.
   He wrote the innermost parts of his program loops first,
   so they would get first choice
   of the optimum address locations on the drum.
   The optimizing assembler wasn't smart enough to do it that way.

   Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either,
   even when the balky Flexowriter
   required a delay between output characters to work right.
   He just located instructions on the drum
   so each successive one was just past the read head
   when it was needed;
   the drum had to execute another complete revolution
   to find the next instruction.
   He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure.
   Although "optimum" is an absolute term,
   like "unique", it became common verbal practice
   to make it relative:
   "not quite optimum" or "less optimum"
   or "not very optimum".
   Mel called the maximum time-delay locations
   the "most pessimum".

   After he finished the blackjack program
   and got it to run
   ("Even the initializer is optimized",
   he said proudly),
   he got a Change Request from the sales department.
   The program used an elegant (optimized)
   random number generator
   to shuffle the "cards" and deal from the "deck",
   and some of the salesmen felt it was too fair,
   since sometimes the customers lost.
   They wanted Mel to modify the program
   so, at the setting of a sense switch on the console,
   they could change the odds and let the customer win.

   Mel balked.
   He felt this was patently dishonest,
   which it was,
   and that it impinged on his personal integrity as a programmer,
   which it did,
   so he refused to do it.
   The Head Salesman talked to Mel,
   as did the Big Boss and, at the boss's urging,
   a few Fellow Programmers.
   Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
   but he got the test backwards,
   and, when the sense switch was turned on,
   the program would cheat, winning every time.
   Mel was delighted with this,
   claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
   and adamantly refused to fix it.

   After Mel had left the company for greener pa$ture$,
   the Big Boss asked me to look at the code
   and see if I could find the test and reverse it.
   Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to look.
   Tracking Mel's code was a real adventure.

   I have often felt that programming is an art form,
   whose real value can only be appreciated
   by another versed in the same arcane art;
   there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
   hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
   by the very nature of the process.
   You can learn a lot about an individual
   just by reading through his code,
   even in hexadecimal.
   Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.

   Perhaps my greatest shock came
   when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it.
   No test.  None.
   Common sense said it had to be a closed loop,
   where the program would circle, forever, endlessly.
   Program control passed right through it, however,
   and safely out the other side.
   It took me two weeks to figure it out.

   The RPC-4000 computer had a really modern facility
   called an index register.
   It allowed the programmer to write a program loop
   that used an indexed instruction inside;
   each time through,
   the number in the index register
   was added to the address of that instruction,
   so it would refer
   to the next datum in a series.
   He had only to increment the index register
   each time through.
   Mel never used it.

   Instead, he would pull the instruction into a machine register,
   add one to its address,
   and store it back.
   He would then execute the modified instruction
   right from the register.
   The loop was written so this additional execution time
   was taken into account --
   just as this instruction finished,
   the next one was right under the drum's read head,
   ready to go.
   But the loop had no test in it.

   The vital clue came when I noticed
   the index register bit,
   the bit that lay between the address
   and the operation code in the instruction word,
   was turned on --
   yet Mel never used the index register,
   leaving it zero all the time.
   When the light went on it nearly blinded me.

   He had located the data he was working on
   near the top of memory --
   the largest locations the instructions could address --
   so, after the last datum was handled,
   incrementing the instruction address
   would make it overflow.
   The carry would add one to the
   operation code, changing it to the next one in the instruction set:
   a jump instruction.
   Sure enough, the next program instruction was
   in address location zero,
   and the program went happily on its way.

   I haven't kept in touch with Mel,
   so I don't know if he ever gave in to the flood of
   change that has washed over programming techniques
   since those long-gone days.
   I like to think he didn't.
   In any event,
   I was impressed enough that I quit looking for the
   offending test,
   telling the Big Boss I couldn't find it.
   He didn't seem surprised.

   When I left the company,
   the blackjack program would still cheat
   if you turned on the right sense switch,
   and I think that's how it should be.
   I didn't feel comfortable
   hacking up the code of a Real Programmer.

   This is one of hackerdom's great heroic epics, free verse or no. In a few
   spare images it captures more about the esthetics and psychology of
   hacking than all the scholarly volumes on the subject put together. (But
   for an opposing point of view, see the entry for {Real Programmer}.)

   [1992 postscript -- the author writes: "The original submission to the
   net was not in free verse, nor any approximation to it -- it was straight
   prose style, in non-justified paragraphs. In bouncing around the net it
   apparently got modified into the `free verse' form now popular. In other
   words, it got hacked on the net. That seems appropriate, somehow." The
   author adds that he likes the `free-verse' version better than his prose
   original...]

   [1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the LGP-30
   refers to "Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the programming
   [...] of the ACT 1 system".]

   [2001: The Royal McBee LPG-30 turns out to have one other claim to fame.
   It turns out that meteorologist Edward Lorenz was doing weather
   simulations on an LGP-30 when, in 1961, he discovered the "Butterfly
   Effect" and computational chaos. This seems, somehow, appropriate.]

   [2002: A copy of the programming manual for the LGP-30 lives at
   http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html]

Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker

   Table of Contents

   General Appearance

   Dress

   Reading Habits

   Other Interests

   Physical Activity and Sports

   Education

   Things Hackers Detest and Avoid

   Food

   Politics

   Gender and Ethnicity

   Religion

   Ceremonial Chemicals

   Communication Style

   Geographical Distribution

   Sexual Habits

   Personality Characteristics

   Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality

   Miscellaneous

   This profile reflects detailed comments on an earlier `trial balloon'
   version from about a hundred Usenet respondents. Where comparatives are
   used, the implicit `other' is a randomly selected segment of the
   non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom.

   An important point: Except in some relatively minor respects such as
   slang vocabulary, hackers don't get to be the way they are by imitating
   each other. Rather, it seems to be the case that the combination of
   personality traits that makes a hacker so conditions one's outlook on
   life that one tends to end up being like other hackers whether one wants
   to or not (much as bizarrely detailed similarities in behavior and
   preferences are found in genetic twins raised separately).

General Appearance

   Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Surprisingly for a sedentary
   profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both extremes are more
   common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.

Dress

   Casual, vaguely post-hippie; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes,
   Birk-enstocks (or bare feet). Long hair, beards, and moustaches are
   common. High incidence of tie-dye and intellectual or humorous `slogan'
   T-shirts. Until the mid-1990s such T-shirts were seldom computer-related,
   as that would have been too obvious -- but the hacker culture has since
   developed its own icons, and J. Random Hacker now often wears a Linux
   penguin or BSD daemon or a DeCSS protest shirt.

   A substantial minority prefers `outdoorsy' clothing -- hiking boots ("in
   case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room", as one
   famous parody put it), khakis, lumberjack or chamois shirts, and the
   like.

   After about 1995 hacker dress styles assimilated some influence from
   punk, gothic, and rave subcultures. This was relatively mild and has
   manifested mostly as a tendency to wear a lot of black, especially when
   `dressed up' to the limit of formality. Other markers of those
   subcultures such as piercings, chains, and dyed hair remain relatively
   uncommon. Hackers appear to wear black more because it goes with
   everything and hides dirt than because they want to look like goths.

   Very few hackers actually fit the National Lampoon Nerd stereotype,
   though it lingers on at MIT and may have been more common before 1975. At
   least since the late Seventies backpacks have been more common than
   briefcases, and the hacker `look' has been more whole-earth than
   whole-polyester.

   Hackers dress for comfort, function, and minimal maintenance hassles
   rather than for appearance (some, perhaps unfortunately, take this to
   extremes and neglect personal hygiene). They have a very low tolerance of
   suits and other `business' attire; in fact, it is not uncommon for
   hackers to quit a job rather than conform to a dress code. When they are
   somehow backed into conforming to a dress code, they will find ways to
   subvert it, for example by wearing absurd novelty ties.

   Female hackers almost never wear visible makeup, and many use none at
   all.

Reading Habits

   Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science fiction. The
   typical hacker household might subscribe to Analog, Scientific American,
   Whole-Earth Review, and Smithsonian (most hackers ignore Wired and other
   self-consciously `cyberpunk' magazines, considering them {wannabee}
   fodder). Hackers often have a reading range that astonishes liberal arts
   people but tend not to talk about it as much. Many hackers spend as much
   of their spare time reading as the average American burns up watching TV,
   and often keep shelves and shelves of well-thumbed books in their homes.

Other Interests

   Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the culture:
   science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form practiced by the
   Society for Creative Anachronism and similar organizations), chess, go,
   backgammon, wargames, and intellectual games of all kinds. (Role-playing
   games such as Dungeons and Dragons used to be extremely popular among
   hackers but they lost a bit of their luster as they moved into the
   mainstream and became heavily commercialized. More recently, Magic: The
   Gathering has been widely popular among hackers.) Logic puzzles. Ham
   radio. Other interests that seem to correlate less strongly but
   positively with hackerdom include linguistics and theater teching.

Physical Activity and Sports

   Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and are
   determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in spectator
   sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one does, not
   something one watches on TV.

   Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball was
   long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and relatively
   friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for similar reasons.
   Hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving
   concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling,
   auto racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation,
   target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating, skydiving,
   scuba diving. Hackers' delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them
   towards hobbies with nifty complicated equipment that they can tinker
   with.

   The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves special
   mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection has grown
   noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many hackers admired martial
   arts disciplines from a distance, sensing a compatible ideal in their
   exaltation of skill through rigorous self-discipline and concentration.
   As martial arts became increasingly mainstreamed in the U.S. and other
   western countries, hackers moved from admiring to doing in large numbers.
   In 1997, for example, your humble editor recalls sitting down with five
   strangers at the first Perl conference and discovering that four of us
   were in active training in some sort of martial art -- and, what is more
   interesting, nobody at the table found this high perecentage at all odd.

   Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become firmly established as the
   hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture combining
   skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let anybody join seems a
   stronger parallel to hacker behavior than ever. Common usages in hacker
   slang un-ironically analogize programming to kung fu (thus, one hears
   talk of "code-fu" or in reference to specific skills like "HTML-fu").
   Albeit with slightly more irony, today's hackers readily analogize
   assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot of a Jet Li movie: the
   aspiring newbie studies with masters of the tradition, develops his art
   through deep meditation, ventures forth to perform heroic feats of
   hacking, and eventually becomes a master who trains the next generation
   of newbies in the hacker way.

Education

   Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or
   self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often
   considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be
   more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from
   which people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious
   computer science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics,
   linguistics, and philosophy.

Things Hackers Detest and Avoid

   All the works of Microsoft. Smurfs, Ewoks, and other forms of offensive
   cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening music. Television
   (with occasional exceptions for cartoons, movies, and good SF like Star
   Trek classic or Babylon 5). Business suits. Dishonesty. Incompetence.
   Boredom. COBOL. BASIC. Character-based menu interfaces.

Food

   Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most esp. Szechuan, Hunan, and
   Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely dclass). Hackers prefer
   the exotic; for example, the Japanese-food fans among them will eat with
   gusto such delicacies as fugu (poisonous pufferfish) and whale. Thai food
   has experienced flurries of popularity. Where available, high-quality
   Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed. A visible minority of
   Southwestern and Pacific Coast hackers prefers Mexican.

   For those all-night hacks, pizza and microwaved burritos are big.
   Interestingly, though the mainstream culture has tended to think of
   hackers as incorrigible junk-food junkies, many have at least mildly
   health-foodist attitudes and are fairly discriminating about what they
   eat. This may be generational; anecdotal evidence suggests that the
   stereotype was more on the mark before the early 1980s.

Politics

   Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently
   moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse of
   socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent which rejects
   conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization
   is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both
   paleoconservatism and `hard' leftism are rare. Hackers are far more
   likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or
   (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try
   to live by them day-to-day.

Gender and Ethnicity

   Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women
   is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical
   professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as
   equals.

   In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities
   of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent
   has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food, above,
   and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish).

   The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function
   of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and
   ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing
   contempt.

   When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and
   color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and
   this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have
   to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea
   of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive -- after all, if
   one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs,
   robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender
   can't seem very important any more.

Religion

   Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly, three
   or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional
   faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.

   Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed
   about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of
   religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody' religions such as
   Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.

   Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or
   (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native'
   religions.

   There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that
   shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with
   neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage to
   `wizards' and speaks of incantations and demons has too much
   psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.

Ceremonial Chemicals

   Most hackers don't smoke tobacco, and use alcohol in moderation if at
   all. However, there has been something of a trend towards exotic beers
   since about 1995, especially among younger Linux hackers apparently
   influenced by Linus Torvalds's fondness for Guinness.

   Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD,
   psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is
   still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of
   `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be particularly
   rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make them stupid. But
   {on the gripping hand}, many hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or
   sugar for all-night hacking runs.

Communication Style

   See the discussions of speech and writing styles near the beginning of
   this File. Though hackers often have poor person-to-person communication
   skills, they are as a rule quite sensitive to nuances of language and
   very precise in their use of it. They are often better at writing than at
   speaking.

Geographical Distribution

   In the United States, hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area-to-Boston axis;
   about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of
   Cambridge (Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California), although there are
   significant contingents in Los Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, and
   around Washington DC. Hackers tend to cluster around large cities,
   especially `university towns' such as the Raleigh-Durham area in North
   Carolina or Princeton, New Jersey (this may simply reflect the fact that
   many are students or ex-students living near their alma maters).

Sexual Habits

   Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle
   variation than the mainstream culture. It includes a relatively large gay
   and bisexual contingent. Hackers are somewhat more likely to live in
   polygynous or polyandrous relationships, practice open marriage, or live
   in communes or group houses. In this, as in general appearance, hackerdom
   semi-consciously maintains `counterculture' values.

Personality Characteristics

   The most obvious common `personality' characteristics of hackers are high
   intelligence, consuming curiosity, and facility with intellectual
   abstractions. Also, most hackers are `neophiles', stimulated by and
   appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). Most are also
   relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.

   Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the
   sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more
   important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large
   amounts of `meaningless' detail, trusting to later experience to give it
   context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence
   who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a creative genius
   who lacks it will swiftly find himself outdistanced by people who
   routinely upload the contents of thick reference manuals into their
   brains. [During the production of the first book version of this
   document, for example, I learned most of the rather complex typesetting
   language TeX over about four working days, mainly by inhaling Knuth's
   477-page manual. My editor's flabbergasted reaction to this genuinely
   surprised me, because years of associating with hackers have conditioned
   me to consider such performances routine and to be expected. --ESR]

   Contrary to stereotype, hackers are not usually intellectually narrow;
   they tend to be interested in any subject that can provide mental
   stimulation, and can often discourse knowledgeably and even interestingly
   on any number of obscure subjects -- if you can get them to talk at all,
   as opposed to, say, going back to their hacking.

   It is noticeable (and contrary to many outsiders' expectations) that the
   better a hacker is at hacking, the more likely he or she is to have
   outside interests at which he or she is more than merely competent.

   Hackers are `control freaks' in a way that has nothing to do with the
   usual coercive or authoritarian connotations of the term. In the same way
   that children delight in making model trains go forward and back by
   moving a switch, hackers love making complicated things like computers do
   nifty stuff for them. But it has to be their nifty stuff. They don't like
   tedium, nondeterminism, or most of the fussy, boring, ill-defined little
   tasks that go with maintaining a normal existence. Accordingly, they tend
   to be careful and orderly in their intellectual lives and chaotic
   elsewhere. Their code will be beautiful, even if their desks are buried
   in 3 feet of crap.

   Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional rewards
   such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted by challenges
   and excited by interesting toys, and to judge the interest of work or
   other activities in terms of the challenges offered and the toys they get
   to play with.

   In terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems, hackerdom
   appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP types; that is,
   introverted, intuitive, and thinker types (as opposed to the
   extroverted-sensate personalities that predominate in the mainstream
   culture). ENT[JP] types are also concentrated among hackers but are in a
   minority.

Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality

   Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with other
   people. This may be because hackers generally aren't much like `other
   people'. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards self-absorption,
   intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks perceived to
   be wasting their time.

   As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
   world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational,
   `cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often
   contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be
   especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.

   Another weakness of the hacker personality is a perverse tendancy to
   attack all problems from the most technically complicated angle, just
   because it may mean more interesting problems to solve, or cooler toys to
   play with. Hackers sometimes have trouble grokking that the bubble gum
   and paperclip hardware fix is actually the way to go, and that they
   really don't need to convince the client to buy that shiny new tool
   they've had your eye on for two months.

   Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the
   {Right Thing}, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant and bigoted on
   technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of
   camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise. Old-time
   {ITS} partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of {Unix} and
   {Linux} hackers; Unix aficionados despise {VMS} and Windows; and hackers
   who are used to conventional command-line user interfaces loudly loathe
   mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh. Hackers who don't
   indulge in {Usenet} consider it a huge waste of time and {bandwidth};
   fans of old adventure games such as {ADVENT} and {Zork} consider {MUD}s
   to be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere or interesting puzzles;
   hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to Usenet or MUDs
   consider {IRC} to be a real waste of time; IRCies think MUDs might be
   okay if there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way. And, of course,
   there are the perennial {holy wars} -- {EMACS} vs. {vi}, {big-endian} vs.
   {little-endian}, RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc. As in society at large,
   the intensity and duration of these debates is usually inversely
   proportional to the number of objective, factual arguments available to
   buttress any position.

   As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty
   maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the classic
   {geek}: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually frustrated, and
   desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her craft. Fortunately,
   this extreme is far less common than mainstream folklore paints it -- but
   almost all hackers will recognize something of themselves in the
   unflattering paragraphs above.

   Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing with
   the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles up to
   incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance tasks get
   deferred indefinitely.

   1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention Deficit
   Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other things) a
   combination of short attention span with an ability to `hyperfocus'
   imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another syndrome that is
   said to overlap with many hacker traits entered popular awareness:
   Asperger's syndrome (AS). This disorder is also sometimes called
   `high-function autism', though researchers are divided on whether AS is
   in fact a mild form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different
   etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to severe deficits in interpreting
   facial and body-language cues and in modeling or empathizing with others'
   emotions. Though some AS patients exhibit mild retardation, others
   compensate for their deficits with high intelligence and analytical
   ability, and frequently seek out technical fields where problem-solving
   abilities are at a premium and people skills are relatively unimportant.
   Both syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities in neurotransmitter
   chemistry, especially the brain's processing of serotonin.

   Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency to
   pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially
   those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures
   and conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those
   questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are
   really `diseases' rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation like
   having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a
   sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed and
   over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be
   inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly,
   intelligent individualists -- thus, any social system that depends on
   authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize
   and drug such `abnormal' people until they are properly docile and stupid
   and `well-socialized'.

   So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about
   clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most
   would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for
   non-hyperactive ADD and AS -- the status of caffeine as a hacker beverage
   of choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural
   receptors as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is
   probably true that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of
   clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS
   is rarer at 0.4-0.5%).

Miscellaneous

   Hackers are more likely to have cats than dogs (in fact, it is widely
   grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive incredibly decrepit
   heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy Porsches and
   RX-7s and then forget to have them washed. Almost all hackers have
   terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit of block-printing
   everything like junior draftsmen.

Appendix C. Helping Hacker Culture Grow

   If you have enjoyed the Jargon File, please help the culture that created
   it grow and flourish. Here are several ways you can help:

     o If you are a writer or journalist, don't say or write {hacker} when
       you mean {cracker}. If you work with writers or journalists, educate
       them on this issue and push them to do the right thing. If you catch
       a newspaper or magazine abusing the word `hacker', write them and
       straighten them out (this appendix includes a model letter).

     o If you're a techie or computer hobbyist, get involved with one of the
       free Unixes. Toss out that lame Microsoft OS, or confine it to one
       disk partition and put Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD on the other one.
       And the next time your friend or boss is thinking about some
       proprietary software `solution' that costs more than it's worth, be
       ready to blow the competition away with open-source software running
       over a Unix.

     o Contribute to organizations like the Free Software Foundation that
       promote the production of high-quality free and open-source software.
       You can reach the Free Software Foundation at <gnu@gnu.org>, by phone
       at +1-617-542-5942, or by snail-mail at 59 Temple Place, Suite 330,
       Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

     o Support the League for Programming Freedom, which opposes over-broad
       software patents that constantly threaten to blow up in hackers'
       faces, preventing them from developing innovative software for
       tomorrow's needs. You can reach the League for Programming Freedom at
       <lpf@uunet.uu.net>. by phone at +1 617 621 7084, or by snail-mail at
       1 Kendall Square #143, P.O.Box 9171, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
       USA.

     o Join the continuing fight against Internet censorship, visit the
       Center for Democracy and Technology Home Page at http://www.cdt.org/.

     o If you do nothing else, please help fight government attempts to
       seize political control of Internet content and restrict strong
       cryptography. The so-called `Communications Decency Act' was declared
       unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but U.S. cryptography policy
       still infringes our First Amendment rights. Surf to the Center for
       Democracy and technology's home page at http://www.cdt.org/ to see
       what you can do to help fight censorship of the net.

   Here's the text of a letter RMS wrote to the Wall Street Journal to
   complain about their policy of using "hacker" only in a pejorative sense.
   We hear that most major newspapers have the same policy. If you'd like to
   help change this situation, send your favorite newspaper the same letter
   -- or, better yet, write your own letter.

     This letter is not meant for publication, although you can publish it
     if you wish. It is meant specifically for you, the editor, not the
     public.

     I am a hacker. That is to say, I enjoy playing with computers --
     working with, learning about, and writing clever computer programs. I
     am not a cracker; I don't make a practice of breaking computer
     security.

     There's nothing shameful about the hacking I do. But when I tell people
     I am a hacker, people think I'm admitting something naughty -- because
     newspapers such as yours misuse the word "hacker", giving the
     impression that it means "security breaker" and nothing else. You are
     giving hackers a bad name.

     The saddest thing is that this problem is perpetuated deliberately.
     Your reporters know the difference between "hacker" and "security
     breaker". They know how to make the distinction, but you don't let
     them! You insist on using "hacker" pejoratively. When reporters try to
     use another word, you change it. When reporters try to explain the
     other meanings, you cut it.

     Of course, you have a reason. You say that readers have become used to
     your insulting usage of "hacker", so that you cannot change it now.
     Well, you can't undo past mistakes today; but that is no excuse to
     repeat them tomorrow.

     If I were what you call a "hacker", at this point I would threaten to
     crack your computer and crash it. But I am a hacker, not a cracker. I
     don't do that kind of thing! I have enough computers to play with at
     home and at work; I don't need yours. Besides, it's not my way to
     respond to insults with violence. My response is this letter.

     You owe hackers an apology; but more than that, you owe us ordinary
     respect.

Bibliography

   Here are some other books you can read to help you understand the hacker
   mindset.

   [Hofstadter] Gdel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Douglas
   Hofstadter. Copyright  1979. Basic Books. ISBN 0-394-74502-7.

   This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker preoccupations.
   Music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations on the nature of
   intelligence, biology, and Zen are woven into a brilliant tapestry themed
   on the concept of encoded self-reference. The perfect left-brain
   companion to Illuminatus.

   [Shea-ampersand-Wilson] The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Robert Shea and Robert
   Anton Wilson. DTP. ISBN 0440539811.

   (Originally in three volumes: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple,
   and Leviathan).

   This work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist
   rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins, the
   fall of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and the
   Cosmic Giggle Factor. First published in three volumes, but there is now
   a one-volume trade paperback, carried by most chain bookstores under SF.
   The perfect right-brain companion to Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach.
   See {Eris}, {Discordianism}, {random numbers}, {Church of the SubGenius}.

   [Adams] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams. Pocket
   Books. Copyright  1981. ISBN 0-671-46149-4.

   This `Monty Python in Space' spoof of SF genre traditions has been
   popular among hackers ever since the original British radio show. Read it
   if only to learn about Vogons (see {bogon}) and the significance of the
   number 42 (see {random numbers}) -- and why the winningest chess program
   of 1990 was called `Deep Thought'.

   [Geoffrey] The Tao of Programming. James Geoffrey. Infobooks. Copyright 
   1987. ISBN 0-931137-07-1.

   This gentle, funny spoof of the Tao Te Ching contains much that is
   illuminating about the hacker way of thought. "When you have learned to
   snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to
   leave."

   [Levy] Hackers. Steven Levy. Anchor/Doubleday. Copyright  1984. ISBN
   0-385-19195-2.

   Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
   Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer revolution.
   He never understood Unix or the networksthough, and his enshrinement of
   Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out (thankfully) to have
   been quite misleading. Despite being a bit dated and containing some
   minor errors (many fixed in the paperback edition), this remains a useful
   and stimulating book that captures the feel of several important hacker
   subcultures.

   [Kelly-Bootle] The Computer Contradictionary. Stan Kelly-Bootle. MIT
   Press. Copyright  1995. ISBN 0-262-61112-0.

   This pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work is similar in format to the
   Jargon File (and quotes several entries from TNHD-2) but somewhat
   different in tone and intent. It is more satirical and less
   anthropological, and is largely a product of the author's literate and
   quirky imagination. For example, it defines computer science as "a study
   akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former
   and the success of the latter" and implementation as "The fruitless
   struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises made by the
   rich and ignorant"; flowchart becomes "to obfuscate a problem with
   esoteric cartoons". Revised and expanded from The Devil's DP Dictionary,
   McGraw-Hill 1981, ISBN 0-07-034022-6; that work had some stylistic
   influence on TNHD-1.

   [Jennings] The Devouring Fungus: Tales from the Computer Age. Karla
   Jennings. Norton. Copyright  1990. ISBN 0-393-30732-8.

   The author of this pioneering compendium knits together a great deal of
   computer- and hacker-related folklore with good writing and a few
   well-chosen cartoons. She has a keen eye for the human aspects of the
   lore and is very good at illuminating the psychology and evolution of
   hackerdom. Unfortunately, a number of small errors and awkwardnesses
   suggest that she didn't have the final manuscript checked over by a
   native speaker; the glossary in the back is particularly embarrassing,
   and at least one classic tale (the Magic Switch story, retold here under
   A Story About Magic in Appendix A) is given in incomplete and badly
   mangled form. Nevertheless, this book is a win overall and can be enjoyed
   by hacker and non-hacker alike.

   [Kidder] The Soul of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder. Avon. Copyright  1982.
   ISBN 0-380-59931-7.

   This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of the
   design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It is an
   amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset -- although largely
   the hardware hacker -- done by a complete outsider. It is a bit thin in
   spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to the
   serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what
   day-to-day life can be like -- the fun, the excitement, the disasters.
   During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the
   nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company,
   leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am
   going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter
   than a season."

   [Libes] Life with UNIX: a Guide for Everyone. Don Libes. Sandy Ressler.
   Prentice-Hall. Copyright  1989. ISBN 0-13-536657-7.

   The authors of this book set out to tell you all the things about Unix
   that tutorials and technical books won't. The result is gossipy, funny,
   opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. Along the way they
   expose you to enough of Unix's history, folklore and humor to qualify as
   a first-class source for these things. Because so much of today's
   hackerdom is involved with Unix, this in turn illuminates many of its
   in-jokes and preoccupations.

   [Vinge] True Names ... and Other Dangers. Vernor Vinge. Baen Books.
   Copyright  1987. ISBN 0-671-65363-6.

   Hacker demigod Richard Stallman used to say that the title story of this
   book "expresses the spirit of hacking best". Until the subject of the
   next entry came out, it was hard to even nominate another contender. The
   other stories in this collection are also fine work by an author who has
   since won multiple Hugos and is one of today's very best practitioners of
   hard SF.

   [Stephenson] Snow Crash. Neal Stephenson. Bantam. Copyright  1992. ISBN
   0-553-56261-4.

   Stephenson's epic, comic cyberpunk novel is deeply knowing about the
   hacker psychology and its foibles in a way no other author of fiction has
   ever even approached. His imagination, his grasp of the relevant
   technical details, and his ability to communicate the excitement of
   hacking and its results are astonishing, delightful, and (so far)
   unsurpassed.

   [Markoff-ampersand-Hafner] Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer
   Frontier. Katie Hafner. John Markoff. Simon & Schuster. Copyright  1991.
   ISBN 0-671-68322-5.

   This book gathers narratives about the careers of three notorious
   crackers into a clear-eyed but sympathetic portrait of hackerdom's dark
   side. The principals are Kevin Mitnick, "Pengo" and "Hagbard" of the
   Chaos Computer Club, and Robert T. Morris (see {RTM}, sense 2). Markoff
   and Hafner focus as much on their psychologies and motivations as on the
   details of their exploits, but don't slight the latter. The result is a
   balanced and fascinating account, particularly useful when read
   immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is
   especially instructive to compare RTM, a true hacker who blundered, with
   the sociopathic phone-freak Mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled
   crackers who made the Chaos Club notorious. The gulf between {wizard} and
   {wannabee} has seldom been made more obvious.

   [Stoll] The Cuckoo's Egg. Clifford Stoll. Doubleday. Copyright  1989.
   ISBN 0-385-24946-2.

   Clifford Stoll's absorbing tale of how he tracked Markus Hess and the
   Chaos Club cracking ring nicely illustrates the difference between
   `hacker' and `cracker'. Stoll's portrait of himself, his lady Martha, and
   his friends at Berkeley and on the Internet paints a marvelously vivid
   picture of how hackers and the people around them like to live and how
   they think.
