Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr14/hackdic1.zip/JARGON1

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#========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.12, 10 MAY 1993 =========#

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 2.9.12" or
"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 2.9.12, 10 MAY 1993".)

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    [e-mail]   (215)-296-5718

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 two `authorized' editions so far are
described in the Revision History section; there may be more in the
future.

:Introduction:
**************

:About This File:
=================

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 35 years old.

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

Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in
the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to
detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code
for shared states of *consciousness*.  There is a whole range of altered
states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking
which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a
Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's `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.

But there is more.  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.

Hackish slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions.  For example, it has recently become
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
for over 15 years.  This one (like its ancestors) is primarily a
lexicon, but also includes `topic entries' which collect background or
sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to
subsume under individual entries.

Though the format is that of a reference 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 {appendix B}, "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker".  {Appendix C} is a
bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced or
described the hacker culture.

Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred.  Earlier 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.

:Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak:
=================================

Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the
term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations.
However, the ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File',
and hackish slang is traditionally `the jargon'.  When talking about the
jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish 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 hackish 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 communicates
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.

A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages,
or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that
isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical
historical background necessary to understand other entries to which
they are cross-referenced.  Some other techspeak senses of jargon words
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 File's 2.x.x versions 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.

: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, {FTP}ed 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 hackish language and humor.  Even as the advent of the microcomputer
and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File
(and related materials such as the AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be
seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain
chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab.  The pace of
change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously --- but the Jargon
File, 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 <[e-mail]> maintains the new File with
assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. <[e-mail]>; 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 [e-mail]
(UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can
use ...!uunet!snark!jargon).

(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not
guaranteed to be correct* later than the revision date on the first
line.  *Don't* email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces --- we
have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people.)

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

Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line revisions:

Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again after a
seven-year hiatus.  Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric
S.  Raymond, approved by Guy Steele.  Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and
microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time (as well as The
Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey).

Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy for book.
This version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551 characters, and 1702
entries.

Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the book,
including over fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions to
old ones.  Packaged with version 1.1 of vh(1) hypertext reader.  This
version had 19509 lines, 153108 words, 1006023 characters, and 1760
entries.

Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon.  This version
had 20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and 1821 entries.

Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material.  This
version had 21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters, and 1891
entries.

Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material.  This
version had 21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters, and 1922
entries.

Version 2.9.12, May 10 1993: a few new entries & changes, marginal
MUD/IRC slang and some borderline techspeak removed, all in preparation
for 2nd Edition of TNHD.  This version had 22238 lines, 175114 words,
1152467 characters, and 1946 entries.

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 <[e-mail]>, Bernie Cosell
<[e-mail]>, Earl Boebert <[e-mail]>, and Joe Morris
<[e-mail]>.

We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished
linguists.  David Stampe <[e-mail]> and Charles
Hoequist <[e-mail]> contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane
<[e-mail]> helped us improve the pronunciation guides.

A few bits of this text quote previous works.  We are indebted to Brian
A. LaMacchia <[e-mail]> for obtaining permission for us to
use material from the `TMRC Dictionary'; also, Don Libes
<[e-mail]> contributed some appropriate material from his
excellent book `Life With UNIX'.  We thank Per Lindberg <[e-mail]>,
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 <[e-mail]> 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 <[e-mail]> to the final manuscript; he read and reread
many drafts, checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of
thoughtful comments, and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor
usage bobbles.  Mr. Brader's rare combination of enthusiasm,
persistence, wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in
matters of language made his help invaluable, and the sustained volume
and quality of his input over many months only allowed him to escape
co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins.

Finally, George V. Reilly <[e-mail]> helped with TeX arcana and
painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions; Steve Summit
<[e-mail]> contributed a number of excellent new entries and
many small improvements to 2.9.10; and Eric Tiedemann <[e-mail]>
contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and
philosophunculism.

:How Jargon Works:
******************

:Jargon Construction:
=====================

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 the following:


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

     "The disk heads just crashed."  "Lose, lose."
     "Mostly he talked about his latest crock.  Flame, flame."
     "Boy, what a bagbiter!  Chomp, chomp!"

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

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

     alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg
     alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die
     comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk
     sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom
     alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill


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

     Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried)
     Boston Globe => Boston Glob
     Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle
            => the Crocknicle (or the Comical)
     New York Times => New York Slime

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

     Data General => Dirty Genitals
     IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
     Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys)
            => Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate
     for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
     Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford)
            => Marginal Hacks Hall

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?"

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


:Overgeneralization: -------------------- A very conspicuous feature of
jargon is the frequency with which techspeak items 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
     generous => generosity

hackers happily generalize:

     mysterious => mysteriosity
     ferrous => ferrosity
     obvious => obviosity
     dubious => dubiosity

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

win =>winnitude (a common exclamation)loss =>lossitudecruft =>cruftitudelame =>lameitude
Some hackers cheerfully reverse this; 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.

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

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

     win => winnitude, winnage
     disgust => disgustitude
     hack => hackification

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

On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form
plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text).  Even
words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g.,
`soxen' for a bunch of socks.  Other funny plurals are `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 `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never used; it has
been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular
endings that attract a Latinate plural.  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 (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!"


:Anthromorphization: -------------------- Semantically, one rich source
of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize
hardware and software.  This 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'.  What *is* common is 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".  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'.



Of the six listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun
formations, anthromorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations
have become quite general; but punning jargon is still largely confined
to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found
only where LISPers flourish.

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

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

The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
actually attained.  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.) 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.

: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.

Another hacker quirk 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).  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*.

Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a
term; this derives from conventions used in {BNF}.  Uses like the
following are common:

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

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

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

would be read as "Be nice to this fool, I mean this gentleman...".  This
comes from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print
representation for a backspace.  It parallels (and may have been
influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction
fanzines.

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

Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2^8 = 256'.  This
goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII
`up-arrow' that later became 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.  The notation is mildly confusing to
C programmers, because `^' means bitwise {XOR} in C.  Despite this, it
was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of USENET.  It is used
consistently in this text.

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 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 <[e-mail]> J. R. Hacker wrote:
     >I resently 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.

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.

:Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions:
========================================

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

Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
this way, so people had to paste in copy manually.  BSD `Mail(1)' was
the first message agent to support inclusion, and early USENETters
emulated its style.  But the TAB character tended to push included text
too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading
to ugly wraparounds.  After a brief period of confusion (during which an
inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became established
in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading `>' or `> ' became
standard, perhaps 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.

Because the default mailers supplied with UNIX and other operating
systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions
using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however,
>-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail.

In 1991 practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct'
inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}.  One variant style
reported uses the citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended
quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained.
One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the
same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a
leader of `> ' for everyone, another (the most common) is `> > > > ', `>
> > ', etc. (or `>>>> ', `>>> ', etc., depending on line length and
nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet
another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say `> ',
`: ', `| ', `} ' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of
messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors'
names).  Yet *another* style is to use each poster's initials (or login
name) as a citation leader for that poster.  Occasionally one sees a `#
' leader used for quotations from authoritative sources such as
standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the
special UNIX command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged
super-user).

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

For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use 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!").

:International Style:
=====================

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

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

Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia 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.

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

:How to Use the Lexicon:
************************

: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:

  1. 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).

  2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English.  The letter `g' is
     always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft
     ("church" rather than "chemist").  The letter `j' is the sound
     that occurs twice in "judge".  The letter `s' is always as in
     "pass", never a z sound.  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).

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

  4. Vowels are represented as follows:

     a
            back, that
     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
            father, palm
     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/)

A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels
(the one that is often written with an upside-down `e').  The schwa
vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is,
`kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not
/kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.

Note that the above table reflects only 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).  Many American and British
dialects make different distinctions.  One that's caused particular
comment is that our /o/ represents two different sounds in most other
dialects, one of which is often rendered as /ah/.

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

: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 after Z.  The case-blindness is a feature, not a
bug.

The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (`:') at the
left margin.  This convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers
that benefit from knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as
context-sensitive as humans.

In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used to
bracket words which themselves have entries in the File.  This isn't
done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a
reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one might
wish to refer to its entry.

In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished
from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than
":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than
"{" and "}".

Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'.  A
defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an
explanation of it.

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 freeware distributed
over USENET).  The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in
section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls,
n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is
system administration utilities.  Sections 4, 5, and 7 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:

abbrev.
     abbreviation
adj.
     adjective
adv.
     adverb
alt.
     alternate
cav.
     caveat
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:

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

Some other etymology abbreviations such as {UNIX} 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.

:Format For New Entries:
========================

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.

Try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words
separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries),
cross-references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries),
pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets,
single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc.  Stick to
the standard ASCII character set (7-bit printable, no high-half
characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions
generated from the master file is an info document that has to be
viewable on a character tty.

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

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

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

The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on
and will include a version number.  Read it, pass it around,
contribute --- this is *your* monument!

The Jargon Lexicon
******************

= A =
=====

:abbrev: /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. Common abbreviation for
   `abbreviation'.

:ABEND: [ABnormal END] /o'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. Abnormal
   termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}.  Derives from an
   error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but
   seriously mainly by {code grinder}s.  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'.

:accumulator: n. 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. [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".

   There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
   there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
   reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has
   gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}
   (sense 2), i.e., "I'm not here").

:ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions
   made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to
   the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact
   entirely arbitrary.  For example, fuzzy-matching against 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}.

:Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
   mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
   Pentagon.  Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that,
   technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind
   of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult
   to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle
   (one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s").  Hackers
   find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication
   features particularly hilarious.  Ada Lovelace (the daughter of
   Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while
   cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical
   computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch
   at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest
   thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good
   small language screaming to get out from inside its vast,
   {elephantine} bulk.

:adger: /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with
   consequences that could have been foreseen with even slight mental
   effort.  E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
   whole project".  Compare {dumbass attack}.

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

:ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
   implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
   computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
   puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods.  Now better known as Adventure,
   but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only six-letter
   filenames.  See also {vadding}.

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

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

: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 marked by
   customary observances on the hacker networks.

:AI: /A-I/ n. Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so
   common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among
   hackers.

:AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with
   `NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. 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 (1993) to solve them have
   foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence'
   they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.

:AI koans: /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen
   teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around
   various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included
   under "{A Selection of AI Koans}" in {Appendix
   A}).  See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and {{Humor,
   Hacker}}.

:AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a
   {glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple),
   this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe
   {SEX}.  See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse},
   {virgin}.

:AIDX: n. /aydkz/ n. Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version
   of UNIX, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000
   series.  A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this
   attempt to combine the two main currents of the UNIX stream
   ({BSD} and {USG UNIX}) became a {monstrosity} to haunt
   system administrators' dreams.  For example, if new accounts are
   created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps
   quickly over 20 due to silly implementation of the user databases.
   For a quite similar disease, compare {HP-SUX}.  Also, compare
   {terminak}, {Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor},
   {Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}.

: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}.

: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
   (`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.

:all-elbows: [MS-DOS] adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident)
   IBM PC program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator
   utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable.  Used to
   describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs
   without considering that other TSRs may also be resident.  One
   particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs
   fighting over the keyboard interrupt.  See {rude}, also
   {mess-dos}.

: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 `clover' or `Command'
   key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the
   speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {feature
   key}).  Some Mac hackers, confusingly, reserve `alt' for the Option
   key (and it is so labeled on some Mac II keyboards).  3. n.obs.
   [PDP-10; often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII
   ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some
   older terminals; also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/).  This character
   was almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in
   {TECO}, or under TOPS-10 --- always alt, as in "Type alt alt to
   end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto
   the [ITS] system").  This usage probably arose because alt is more
   convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by
   another alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character,
   for that matter).

:alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.

:altmode: n. Syn. {alt} sense 3.

:Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `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}}.

:amoeba: n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.

:amp off: [Purdue] vt. 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.

: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 `Bra' and
   `Ket' characters), or significantly smaller (single or double
   guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs.
   See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.

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

:annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ [IRC] n. See {robot}.

:AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a
   PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
   something.  "AOS the campfire."  Usage: considered silly, and now
   obsolete.  Now largely supplanted by {bump}.  See {SOS}.
   2. n. A {{Multics}}-derived OS supported at one time by Data
   General.  This was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/.  A spoof of
   the standard AOS system administrator's manual (`How to Load
   and Generate your AOS System') was created, issued a part number,
   and circulated as photocopy folklore; it was called `How to
   Goad and Levitate your CHAOS System'.  3. n. Algebraic Operating
   System, in reference to those calculators which use infix instead
   of postfix (reverse Polish) notation.

   Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
   instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
   1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'.  Why, you may ask,
   does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'?  Ah,
   here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore.  There were eight such
   instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction
   if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if
   the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped
   if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always;
   and so on.  Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never
   skipped.

   For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'.  Even
   more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'!  If you wanted to skip the
   next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'.  Likewise, JUMP meant
   `do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA.  However, hackers
   never did this.  By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST}
   (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster
   and so was invariably used.  Such were the perverse mysteries of
   assembler programming.

: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.) Oppose {tool}, {operating
   system}.

:arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by
   `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as
   dynamic storage.  So named from a `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: [acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] n. A
   USENET robot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio.  It 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 31, 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 amusememt 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" (instantly 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.  Compare {Great Worm,
   The}; {sorcerer's apprentice mode}.  See also {software
   laser}, {network meltdown}.

:armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.

:asbestos: adj. 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:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
   /as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
   computers.  he modern version uses 7 bits for each character,
   whereas most earlier codes (including an early version of ASCII)
   used fewer.  This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters
   --- a major {win} --- but it did not provide for accented
   letters or any other letterforms not used in English (such as the
   German 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.

   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; shriek; <exclamation mark>.
          Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey;
          wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier.

     "
          Common: double quote; quote.  Rare: literal mark;
          double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk;
          [rabbit-ears]; double prime.

     #
          Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; {crunch};
          hex; [mesh].  Rare: grid; cross-hatch; oc-to-thorpe; flash;
          <square>, pig-pen; tic-tac-toe; scratchmark; thud; thump;
          {splat}.

     $
          Common: dollar; <dollar sign>.  Rare: currency symbol; buck;
          cash; 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>; amper; and.  Rare: address (from C);
          reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from
          `sh(1)'); pretzel; amp.  [INTERCAL called this `ampersand';
          what could be sillier?]

     '
          Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>.  Rare: prime;
          glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation
          mark>; <acute accent>.

     ( )

          Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; o-pen-/-close;
          par-en/the-sis; o/c paren; o/c par-en-the-sis; l/r
          paren-the-sis; l/r ba-na-na.  Rare: so/al-ready;
          lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round
          bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane];
          par-en-this-ey/un-par-en-this-ey; 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/great-er 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); [angle/right angle].

     =
          Common: <equals>; gets; takes.  Rare: quadrathorpe;
          [half-mesh].

     ?
          Common: query; <question mark>; {ques}.  Rare: whatmark;
          [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.

     @
          Common: at sign; at; strudel.  Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
          [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
          <commercial at>.

     V
          Rare: [book].

     [ ]
          Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing
          brack-et>; brack-et/un-brack-et.  Rare: square-/-un-square; [U
          turn/U turn back].

     \
          Common: backslash; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh;
          backslant; backwhack.  Rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed
          virgule; [backslat].

     ^
          Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>.  Rare:
          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/un-curly; leftit/rytit;
          l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet].

     |
          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 pound graphic
   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.

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

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

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

   The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the
   world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits
   look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of
   international networks continues to increase (see {software
   rot}).  Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to embody
   the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that
   characters have 7 bits; this is a 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

                               Figure 1.

   And here are some very silly examples:


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

                               Figure 2.

   There is an important subgenre of humorous ASCII art that takes
   advantage of the names of the various characters to tell a
   pun-based joke.

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

                               Figure 3.

   Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire
   flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows.  Four of these are
   reproduced in Figure 2; here are three more:


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

                               Figure 4.

:ASCIIbetical order: /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ adj.,n. Used to
   indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than
   alphabetical order.  This lexicon is sorted in something close to
   ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and entries beginning
   with non-alphabetic characters moved to the end.

:atomic: [from Gk. `atomos', indivisible] adj. 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.  Esp. used to convey that an operation cannot be
   screwed up by interrupts.  "This routine locks the file and
   increments the file's semaphore atomically."  This usage 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-}.

:autobogotiphobia: /aw'to-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/ n. See {bogotify}.

:automagically: /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ 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."

:avatar: [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. {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 disliked the term `superuser',
   and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.

: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 =
=====

:back door: n. 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.
   The infamous {RTM} worm of late 1988, for example, used a back door
   in the {BSD} UNIX `sendmail(8)' utility.

   Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the
   existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have
   qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time.
   The 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 talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as
   "Reflections on Trusting Trust", `Communications of the
   ACM 27', 8 (August 1984), pp. 761--763.

:backbone cabal: n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed
   through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {USENET}
   during most of the 1980s.  The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in
   late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight.

:backbone site: n. 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 include uunet and the
   mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western
   Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of
   Texas.  Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.

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

:background: n.,adj.,vt.  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.

:backspace and overstrike: interj. Whoa!  Back up.  Used to suggest
   that someone just said or did something wrong.  Common among
   APL programmers.

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

:BAD: /B-A-D/ [IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] adj. Said
   of a program that is {bogus} because of bad design and misfeatures
   rather than because of bugginess.  See {working as designed}.

:Bad Thing: [from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody `1066 And
   All That'] n. Something that can't possibly result in improvement
   of the subject.  This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing
   all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad
   Thing".  Oppose {Good Thing}.  British correspondents confirm
   that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right
   Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the
   etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad
   Things.  This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the
   British side of the pond.

:bag on the side: n. 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. adj. `bagbiting' Having the
   quality of a bagbiter.  "This bagbiting system won't let me
   compute the factorial of a negative number."  Compare {losing},
   {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under
   {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}).  4. `bite
   the bag' vi. To fail in some manner.  "The computer keeps crashing
   every five minutes."  "Yes, the disk controller is really biting
   the bag."  The original loading of these terms was almost
   undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in
   their current usage they have become almost completely
   sanitized.

   A program called Lexiphage on the old MIT AI PDP-10 would draw on a
   selected victim's bitmapped terminal the words "THE BAG" in
   ornate letters, followed a pair of jaws biting pieces of it off.
   This is the first and to date only known example of a program
   *intended* to be a bagbiter.

:bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound
   made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's
   vicinity.  Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD})
   electronic {fora} when a character wishes to make a dramatic
   entrance or exit.  2. The sound of magical transformation, used in
   virtual reality {fora} like sense 1.

:banana label: n. The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape}
   reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended
   bananas.  This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current
   but visibly headed for obsolescence.

:banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I
   know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"].  Not
   knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare
   {fencepost error}).  One may say `there is a banana problem' of an
   algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions,
   or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing
   to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping
   featuritis}).  See 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. 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}.  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. 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
   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 in 1981.  Late-night dial-up
   UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times.  Bang paths
   were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as
   messages would often get lost.  See {{Internet address}},
   {network, the}, and {sitename}.

:banner: n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print
   spoolers (see {spool}).  Typically includes user or account ID
   information in very large character-graphics capitals.  Also called
   a `burst page', because it indicates where to burst (tear apart)
   fanfold paper to separate one user's printout from the next.  2. A
   similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold
   paper) from user-specified text, e.g., by a program such as UNIX's
   `banner({1,6})'.  3. On interactive software, a first screen
   containing a logo and/or author credits and/or a copyright notice.

:bar: /bar/ n. 1. The second {metasyntactic variable}, after {foo}
   and before {baz}.  "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR.
   FOO calls BAR...."  2. Often appended to {foo} to produce
   {foobar}.

:bare metal: n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such
   snares and delusions as an {operating system}, 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, a Real Programmer} (in {Appendix A}),
   interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays
   due to the device's rotational latency).  This sort of thing has
   become less common as the relative costs of programming time and
   machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily
   constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems, and
   in the code of hackers who just can't let go of that low-level
   control.  See {Real Programmer}.

   In the world of personal computing, bare metal programming
   (especially in sense 1 but sometimes also in sense 2) is often
   considered a {Good Thing}, or at least a necessary evil
   (because these machines have often been sufficiently slow and
   poorly designed to make it necessary; see {ill-behaved}).
   There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS
   interface and writing the application to directly access device
   registers and machine addresses.  "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the
   serial port, you need to get down to the bare metal."  People who
   can do this sort of thing well are held in high regard.

:barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit']
   1. interj.  Term of disgust.  This is the closest hackish
   equivalent of the Val\-speak "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}, {gag}.  In Commonwealth
   hackish, `barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'.
   {barf} is sometimes also used as a {metasyntactic variable},
   like {foo} or {bar}.

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

:barfulation: /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ interj. Variation of {barf}
   used around the Stanford area.  An exclamation, expressing disgust.
   On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim,
   "Barfulation!  Who wrote this, Quux?"

:barfulous: /bar'fyoo-l*s/ adj. (alt. `barfucious',
   /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf,
   if only for esthetic reasons.

: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. 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.  "Metafont even has
   features to introduce random variations to its letterform output.
   Now *that* is baroque!"  See also {rococo}.

:BASIC: [acronym, from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction
   Code] n. A programming language, originally designed for
   Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s,
   which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in
   proto-hackers.  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 is (a) 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.  As it is, it ruins
   thousands of potential wizards a year.

: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."

: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}.

:baud: /bawd/ [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
   International Telegraph Conference of 1927, and named after J.M.E.
   Baudot (1845--1903), the French engineer who constructed the first
   successful teleprinter.

:baud barf: /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor
   when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp.
   line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension
   on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the
   connection.  Baud barf is not completely {random}, by the way;
   hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell
   whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower
   speed than the terminal is set to.  *Really* experienced ones
   can identify particular speeds.

:baz: /baz/ n. 1. 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)."

:bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n.
   1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems
   running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET
   {newsgroup} (in fact, use of 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 a old-fashioned, non-electronic cork-and-thumbtack memo board.
   At CMU, it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge.

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

:BBS: /B-B-S/ [abbreviation, `Bulletin Board System'] n. An electronic
   bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can
   log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically)
   into {topic group}s.  Thousands of local BBS systems are in
   operation throughout the U.S., typically run by amateurs for fun
   out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each.
   Fans of USENET and Internet or the big commercial timesharing
   bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie tend to consider local BBSes
   the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they serve a
   valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in
   the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange
   code at all.  See also {bboard}.

:beam: [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To
   transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in
   combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to
   his site'.  Compare {blast}, {snarf}, {BLT}.

:beanie key: [Mac users] n. See {command key}.

:beep: n.,v. Syn. {feep}.  This term seems to be preferred among micro
   hobbyists.

:beige toaster: n. A Macintosh. See {toaster}; compare
   {Macintrash}, {maggotbox}.

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

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

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

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

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

:berklix: /berk'liks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `Berkeley UNIX'] See
   {BSD}.  Not used at Berkeley itself.  May be more common among
   {suit}s attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers,
   who usually just say `BSD'.

:Berzerkeley: /b*r-zer'klee/ [from `berserk', via the name of a
   now-deceased record label] n. Humorous distortion of `Berkeley'
   used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the
   {BSD} UNIX hackers.  See {software bloat}, {Missed'em-five},
   {Berkeley Quality Software}.

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

:beta: /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n.
   1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in
   beta'.  In the {Real World}, systems (hardware or software)
   software often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha
   (in-house) and Beta (out-house?).  Beta releases are generally made
   to a small number 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 customers and users.  This term
   derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints,
   first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry.
   `Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta
   Test' was initial system test.  These themselves came from earlier
   A- and B-tests for hardware.  The A-test was a feasibility and
   manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design
   and development.  The B-test was a demonstration that the
   engineering model functioned as specified.  The C-test
   (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early
   samples of the production design.

:BFI: /B-F-I/ n. See {brute force and ignorance}.  Also
   encountered in the variants `BFMI', `brute force and
   *massive* ignorance' and `BFBI' `brute force and bloody
   ignorance'.

:bible: n. 1. One of a small number of fundamental source books
   such as {Knuth} and {K&R}.  2. The most detailed and
   authoritative reference for a particular language, operating
   system, or other complex software system.

:BiCapitalization: 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}.

:BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the
   prototypical {newbie}.  Articles from BIFF are characterized by
   all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos,
   `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A
   K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE
   THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode}
   abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled
   sig}), and unbounded naivet'e.  BIFF posts articles using his
   elder brother's VIC-20.  BIFF's location is a mystery, as his
   articles appear to come from a variety of sites.  However,
   {BITNET} seems to be the most frequent origin.  The theory that
   BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately
   invalid) electronic mail address: [e-mail].

   [1993: Now It Can Be Told!  My spies inform me that BIFF was
   originally created by Joe Talmadge <[e-mail]>, 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. --- ESR]

:biff: /bif/ vt. To notify someone of incoming mail.  From the
   BSD utility `biff(1)', which was in turn named after a
   friendly golden Labrador who used to chase frisbees in the halls at
   UCB while 4.2BSD was in development (it had a well-known habit of
   barking whenever the mailman came).  No relation to
   {BIFF}.

:Big Gray Wall: n. What faces a {VMS} user searching for
   documentation.  A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation
   taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the addition of
   layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor
   networking, and programming tools.  Recent (since VMS version 5)
   DEC documentation comes with gray binders; under VMS version 4 the
   binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under version 3 they
   were blue.  See {VMS}.  Often contracted to `Gray Wall'.

:big iron: n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers.  Used generally
   of {number-crunching} supercomputers such as Crays, but can include
   more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes.  Term of
   approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose {dinosaur}.

:Big Red Switch: [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the
   `Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch
   on an IBM PC where it really is large and red.  "This !@%$%
   {bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch."
   Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's passion for
   {TLA}s, this is often 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}, {120 reset}; see
   also {scram switch}.

:Big Room, the: n. 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. 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: [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] adj. 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
   current in mid-1993, are big-endian.  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 Networking Team had decided to do
   it the other way round before the Internet domain standard was
   established; e.g., [e-mail].  Most gateway sites have
   {ad-hockery} in their mailers to handle this, but can still be
   confused.  In particular, the address above could be in the
   U.K. (domain uk) or Czechoslovakia (domain cs).

:bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MacLISP] n. 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 than 2^(31) (2,147,483,648) or (on a
   {bitty box}) 2^(15) (32,768).  If you want to work
   with numbers larger than that, you have to use floating-point
   numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or seven decimal
   places.  Computer languages that provide bignums can perform exact
   calculations on very large numbers, such as 1000! (the factorial
   of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998 times ... times 2
   times 1).  For example, this value for 1000!  was computed by the
   MacLISP system using bignums:

     40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
     46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
     00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
     94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
     59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
     56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
     63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
     74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
     43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
     52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
     86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
     89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
     02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126
     48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
     66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
     60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
     34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
     50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
     01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
     81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
     88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
     88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
     12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
     81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
     90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
     39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
     26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
     34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
     59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
     24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
     24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
     55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
     77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
     64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
     97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
     01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
     37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
     74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
     44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
     28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
     42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
     25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
     87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018
     21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
     77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
     56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
     79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
     00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
     00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
     00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
     00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
     000000000000000000.

:bigot: n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular
   computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see
   {religious issues}).  Usually found with a specifier; thus,
   `cray bigot', `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}.

:bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `Binary digIT'] n.
   1. [techspeak] The unit of information; the amount of information
   obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes
   are equally probable.  2. [techspeak] A computational quantity that
   can take on one of two values, such as true and false or 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 1949, and seems to have been coined by early computer
   scientist John Tukey.  Tukey records that it evolved over a lunch
   table as a handier alternative to `bigit' or `binit'.

: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 is now (1991) coming
   back into use on some RISC architectures because it consumes such
   an infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes sense
   not to have a UART.

: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 {bit bang},
   {mode bit}.

:bit bucket: n. 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.

: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. 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. 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 more of a Rube Goldberg 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).  This 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.  These alternatives
   became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards.  To
   a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and
   because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type,
   there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt
   keyboards to the typewriter standard.

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

:bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a 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.

:BITNET: /bit'net/ [acronym: Because It's Time NETwork] n.
   Everybody's least favorite piece of the network (see {network,
   the}).  The BITNET hosts are a collection of IBM dinosaurs and
   VAXen (the latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate
   using 80-character {{EBCDIC}} card images (see {eighty-column
   mind}); thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of
   third-party traffic from the rest of the ASCII/{RFC}-822 world with
   annoying regularity.  BITNET is also notorious as the apparent home
   of {BIFF}.

:bits: n.pl. 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 on BIX (the Byte
   Information eXchange).  The {smiley} bixie is <@_@>, apparently
   intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth.  A few others
   have been reported.

:black art: n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by
   implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular
   application or systems area (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 hole: n. What a piece of email or netnews 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.  Compare {bit
   bucket}.

:black magic: n. 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).

:blargh: /blarg/ [MIT] n. 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. vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data
   sends over a network or comm line.  Opposite of {snarf}.  Usage:
   uncommon.  The variant `blat' has been reported.  2. vt.
   [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense 3).  Sometimes the
   message `Unable to kill all processes.  Blast them (y/n)?' would
   appear in the command window upon logout.

:blat: n. 1. Syn. {blast}, sense 1.  2. See {thud}.

:bletch: /blech/ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss.
   via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj.  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},
   {bagbiter}, {bogus}, and {random}.  The term {bletcherous}
   applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for
   {cretinous}.  By contrast, something that is `losing' or
   `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria.  See also
   {bogus} and {random}, which have richer and wider shades of
   meaning than any of the above.

:blinkenlights: /blink'*n-li:tz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights
   on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}.  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!  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 1959 at Stanford
   University 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}.

:blit: /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part
   of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the
   memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display
   screen.  "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies
   the good parts up into high memory, and 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. 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. A special-purpose chip or hardware system
   built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast
   implementation of bit-mapped graphics.  The Commodore Amiga and a
   few other micros have these, but in 1991 the trend is away from
   them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}).  Syn. {raster
   blaster}.

:blivet: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term
   meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An
   intractable problem.  2. A crucial piece of hardware 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.

:BLOB: [acronym, Binary Large OBject] n. 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.

:block: [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi.
   To delay or sit idle while waiting for something.  "We're blocking
   until everyone gets here."  Compare {busy-wait}.  2. `block
   on' vt. To block, waiting for (something).  "Lunch is blocked on
   Phil's arrival."

:block transfer computations: [from the television series
   "Dr. Who"] n. Computations so fiendishly subtle and complex
   that they could not be performed by machines.  Used to refer to any
   task that should be expressible as an algorithm in theory, but
   isn't.

:Bloggs Family, the: 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 DEC
   Telephone Directory.  Compare {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}.

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

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

:blow up: vi. 1. [scientific computation] To become unstable.  Suggests
   that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon
   overflow or at least go {nonlinear}.  2.  Syn. {blow out}.

:BLT: /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /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 Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
   references on the page-layout and graphics-control language
   {{PostScript}} (`PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook',
   Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN
   0-201-10179-3); the other three official guides are known as the
   {Green Book}, the {Red Book}, and the {White Book} (sense
   2).  2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
   Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its
   Implementation', David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64,
   ISBN 0-201-11371-63 (this book also has green and red siblings).
   3. Any of the 1988 standards issued by the CCITT's ninth plenary
   assembly.  These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec
   and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards.  See also {{book
   titles}}.

:Blue Glue: [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an
   incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol
   widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better.  The
   official IBM definition is "that which binds blue boxes
   together."  See {fear and loathing}.  It may not be irrelevant
   that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M product that is
   commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable
   panel floors 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.  See
   {{nanotechnology}}.

:blue wire: [IBM] n. Patch wires added to circuit boards at the factory to
   correct design or fabrication problems.  These may be necessary if
   there hasn't been time to design and qualify another board version.
   Compare {purple wire}, {red wire}, {yellow wire}.

:blurgle: /bler'gl/ [Great Britain] n. 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 trebled. "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 6.

:BNF: /B-N-F/ n. 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a
   metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
   languages, command sets, and the like.  Widely used for language
   descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must
   usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers.  Consider this
   BNF for a 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 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: [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor
   in a {dinosaur pen}.  Possibly so called because they display a
   ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and
   flat after they have been coiled for some time.  It is rumored
   within IBM that 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. 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. (affectionate) Obsolete but still working hardware, especially
   used of an old S100-bus hobbyist system; originally a term of
   annoyance, but became more and more affectionate as the hardware
   became more and more obsolete.

:BOF: /B-O-F/ or /bof/ n. 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.

:bogo-sort: /boh`goh-sort'/ n. (var. `stupid-sort') The
   archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to {bubble
   sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm).
   Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in
   the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they
   are in order.  It serves as a sort of canonical example of
   awfulness.  Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one
   might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort."  Compare
   {bogus}, {brute force}, {Lasherism}.

:bogometer: /boh-gom'-*t-er/ n. A notional instrument for
   measuring {bogosity}.  Compare the `wankometer' described in
   the {wank} entry; see also {bogus}.

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

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

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

:bogosity: /boh-go's*-tee/ n. 1. The degree to which something is
   {bogus}.  At CMU, 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 /mi:k`roh-len'*t/
   (uL); the consensus is that this is the largest unit practical
   for everyday use.  2. The potential field generated by a {bogon
   flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}.  See also {bogon flux},
   {bogon filter}, {bogus}.

   Historical note: The microLenat was invented as an attack against
   noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate
   student}.  Doug had failed the student on an important exam for
   giving 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.

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

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

:bogus: adj. 1. Non-functional.  "Your patches are bogus."
   2. Useless.  "OPCON is a bogus program."  3. False.  "Your
   arguments are bogus."  4. Incorrect.  "That algorithm is bogus."
   5. Unbelievable.  "You claim to have solved the halting problem
   for Turing Machines?  That's totally bogus."  6. Silly.  "Stop
   writing those bogus sagas."

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

   It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense
   at Princeton in the late 1960s.  It was spread to CMU and Yale by
   Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus.  A glossary of bogus
   words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see
   {autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into
   hackerdom from CMU and MIT.  By the early 1980s it was also
   current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen
   slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985.  A correspondent 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".

:Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. 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/ [USENET: ascribed to the TV series "Cheers"
   and "Moonlighting"] 1. To have sex with; compare {bounce},
   sense 3. (This is mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the
   variant `bonk' is more common.  2. After the original Peter Korn
   `Boinkon' {USENET} parties, used for almost any net social
   gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in
   1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks,
   Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area.
   Compare {@-party}.  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} (sense 2), 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: 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 {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.  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}, {Blue Book},
   {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Green
   Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book},
   {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book},
   {Yellow Book}, and {bible}; see also {rainbow
   series}.

:boot: [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] v.,n. To load and
   initialize the operating system on a machine.  This usage is no
   longer jargon (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} 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.

:bottom feeder: n. syn. for {slopsucker}, derived from the
   fishermen's and naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist
   on the primordial ooze.

:bottom-up implementation: n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term
   `top-down design'.  It is now received wisdom in most
   programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels
   of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in
   increasing detail until you get to actual code.  Hackers often find
   (especially in exploratory designs 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.

:bounce: v. 1. [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. [Stanford] To play volleyball.  The
   now-demolished {D. C. Power Lab} building used by the Stanford
   AI Lab in the 1970s had a volleyball court on the front lawn.  From
   5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled maintenance time for the
   computer, so every afternoon at 5 would come over the intercom the
   cry: "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!", followed by Brian McCune
   loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of
   known volleyballers.  3. 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}.  4. To casually
   reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem.  Reported
   primarily among {VMS} users.  5.  [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: [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender
   by a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet
   address}} recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see
   {bounce}).  Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled
   username or a {down} relay site.  Bounce messages can themselves
   fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice
   mode} and {software laser}.  The terms `bounce mail' and
   `barfmail' are also common.

:boustrophedon: [from a Greek word for turning like an ox while
   plowing] n. 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. 1. A computer; esp. in the construction `foo box'
   where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or
   the name of an OS (thus, `UNIX box', `MS-DOS box', etc.)  "We
   preprocess the data on UNIX boxes before handing it up to the
   mainframe."  2. [IBM] Without qualification but within an
   SNA-using site, this refers specifically to an IBM front-end
   processor or FEP /F-E-P/.  An FEP is a small computer necessary
   to enable an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of
   the {dinosaur pen}.  Typically used in expressions like the cry
   that goes up when an SNA network goes down: "Looks like the
   {box} has fallen over." (See {fall over}.) See also
   {IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {fepped out}, {Blue
   Glue}.

: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/ [by analogy with {VAXen}] pl.n. Fanciful
   plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen',
   used to describe commodity {{UNIX}} hardware.  The connotation is
   that any two UNIX boxen are interchangeable.

:boxology: /bok-sol'*-jee/ n. Syn. {ASCII art}.  This term
   implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow drawings.
   "His report has a lot of boxology in it."  Compare
   {macrology}.

:bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a TV
   clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] adj. 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'.

:BQS: /B-Q-S/ adj. Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.

:brain dump: n. The act of telling someone everything one knows
   about a particular topic or project.  Typically used when someone
   is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code.  Conceptually
   analogous to an operating system {core dump} in that it saves a
   lot of useful {state} before an exit.  "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: 1. [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 commercial product it is
   intended to sell.  Syn.  {crippleware}.

:brain-dead: adj. 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}.

:branch to Fishkill: [IBM: from the location of one of the
   corporation's facilities] n. Any unexpected jump in a program that
   produces catastrophic or just plain weird results.  See {jump
   off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}.

:bread crumbs: n. 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; in several variants, a character
   leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as not to get lost in the
   woods.

: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 a few years ago.

: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.  The above example may not, after all, be
   hypothetical. -- ESR]

:breath-of-life packet: [XEROX PARC] n. 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 `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.  There is at least one documented
   instance of an Internet subnet with limited addres-table slots in a
   gateway machine in which kiss-of-death packets were routinely used
   to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for
   scarce parking spaces.

:breedle: n. See {feep}.

:bring X to its knees: v. 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 commercially
   developed software, which displays the quality far more often than
   it ought to.  Oppose {robust}.

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

:brochureware: n. Planned but non-existent product like
   {vaporware}, but with the added implication that marketing is
   actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures).
   Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic weapon; the idea is
   to con customers into not committing to an existing product of the
   competition's.  It is a safe bet that when a brochureware product
   finally becomes real, it will be more expensive than and inferior
   to the alternatives that had been available for years.

:broken: adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs).  2. Behaving
   strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting extreme
   depression.

:broken arrow: [IBM] n. 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....

:broket: /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ [by analogy with `bracket': a
   `broken bracket'] n. Either of the characters `<' and `>',
   when used as paired enclosing delimiters.  This word
   originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that
   is, a bracket that is bent in the middle.  (At MIT, and apparently
   in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called {angle
   brackets}.)

:Brooks's Law: prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project
   makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the expected
   advantage from splitting 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; too often, {management} still does.  See
   also {creationism}, {second-system effect},
   {optimism}.

:BRS: /B-R-S/ n. Syn. {Big Red Switch}.  This abbreviation is
   fairly common on-line.

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

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

   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}.

:BSD: /B-S-D/ n. [abbreviation for `Berkeley System Distribution'] a
   family of {{UNIX}} versions for the DEC {VAX} and PDP-11
   developed by Bill Joy and others at {Berzerkeley} starting
   around 1980, incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking
   enhancements, and many other features.  The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2,
   and 4.3) and 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,
   and are still widely popular.  See {{UNIX}}, {USG UNIX}.

:BUAF: // [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] n. 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
   `BUAF's.  See {warlording}.

:BUAG: // [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] n. 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.  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; he first suggested the idea of an EDIT
   key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7-bit ASCII character.  This
   was used in a number of editors written at Stanford or in its
   environs (TV-EDIT and NLS being the best-known).  Some sources
   claim that `Bucky' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname st Stanford,
   but Wirth himself does not recall this.

   Whatever its origins, the term spread to MIT and CMU early and is
   now in general use.  See {double bucky}, {quadruple
   bucky}.

:buffer overflow: n. What happens when you try to stuff more data
   into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle.  This may be due
   to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and
   consuming processes (see {overrun} 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 persistent {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.

   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!

   Actually, use of `bug' in the general sense of a disruptive event
   goes back to Shakespeare!  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."

   [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.  Thus, the
   process of investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in
   an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true!  --- ESR]

   [1992 update: the plot thickens!  A usually reliable source reports
   having seen The Bug at the Smithsonian in 1978.  I am unable to
   reconcile the conflicting histories I have been offered, and merely
   report this fact here. --- ESR.]

:bug-compatible: adj. 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.

:buglix: /buhg'liks/ n. Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX
   operating system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions.
   Still used to describe ULTRIX, but without nearly so much venom.
   Compare {AIDX}, {HP-SUX}, {Nominal Semidestructor},
   {Telerat}, {sun-stools}.

: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.  Syn. {armor-plated}.

:bum: 1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space,
   often at the expense of clarity.  "I managed to bum three more
   instructions out of that code."  "I spent half the night bumming
   the interrupt code."  In {elder days}, John McCarthy (inventor
   of {LISP}) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers
   among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimization became
   "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming".  2. To
   squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve
   whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this
   distinguishes the process from a {featurectomy}).  3. n. A small
   change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more
   efficient.  "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction
   faster."  Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. {tune}
   (and n. {tweak}, {hack}), though none of these exactly
   capture sense 2.  All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish,
   because in the parent dialects of English `bum' is a rude synonym
   for `buttocks'.

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

:burble: [from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] v. 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-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}.

:burst page: n. Syn. {banner}, sense 1.

: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.  This
   is a wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where
   a busy-waiting program may {hog} the processor.

: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 by applying an AC rather than DC signal.  Some wire
   faults will pass DC tests but fail a 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."

:BWQ: /B-W-Q/ [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. 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. 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/ [techspeak] n. A unit of memory or data equal to
   the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures
   this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines.  Some
   older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and
   the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of
   1 to 36 bits!  These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes
   have become rare in the general trend toward 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}.

:bytesexual: /bi:t`sek'shu-*l/ adj. Said of hardware, denotes
   willingness to compute or pass data in either {big-endian} or
   {little-endian} format (depending, presumably, on a {mode bit}
   somewhere).  See also {NUXI problem}.

:bzzzt, wrong: /bzt rong/ [USENET/Internet] From a Robin Williams
   routine in the movie "Dead Poets Society" spoofing radio or
   TV quiz programs, such as *Truth or Consequences*, where an
   incorrect answer earns one a blast from the buzzer and condolences
   from the interlocutor.  A way of expressing mock-rude disagreement,
   usually immediately following an included quote from another
   poster.  The less abbreviated "*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but thank you for
   playing" is also common; capitalization and emphasis of the
   buzzer sound varies.

= C =
=====

:C: n. 1. The third letter of the English alphabet.  2. ASCII
   1000011.  3. The name of a programming language designed by
   Dennis Ritchie during the early 1970s and immediately used to
   reimplement {{UNIX}}; so called because many features derived
   from an earlier compiler named `B' in commemoration of
   *its* parent, BCPL.  Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the
   question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate over whether
   C's successor should be named `D' or `P'.  C became immensely
   popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the dominant
   language in systems and microcomputer applications programming.
   See also {languages of choice}, {indent style}.

   C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain
   varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines
   all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the
   readability and maintainability of assembly language".

: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.

:calculator: [Cambridge] n. Syn. for {bitty box}.

:can: vt. To abort a job on a time-sharing system.  Used esp. when the
   person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the
   {{console}}".  Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can
   that print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!"  Synonymous with
   {gun}.  It is said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN
   (0011000) was used as a kill-job character on some early OSes.
   Alternatively, this may derive from mainstream slang `canned' for
   being laid off or fired.

: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).

: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 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: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. The
   usual or standard state or manner of something.  This word has a
   somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics.  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}.

   This word has an interesting history.  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' 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 use
   of jargon.  Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of
   using it as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it
   began to sink in.  Finally, in one conversation, he used the word
   `canonical' in jargon-like fashion without thinking.  Steele:
   "Aha!  We've finally got you talking jargon too!"  Stallman:
   "What did he say?"  Steele: "Bob just used `canonical' in the
   canonical way."

   Of course, canonicality depends on context, but 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'.

:card walloper: n. An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs
   that do stupid things like print people's paychecks.  Compare
   {code grinder}.  See also {{punched card}}, {eighty-column
   mind}.

:careware: /keir'weir/ n. {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: [from `cut and paste'] n. 1. The addition of a new
   {feature} to an existing system by selecting the code from an
   existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes.  Common in
   telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are
   selected using `case' statements.  Leads to {software bloat}.

   In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by
   Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of
   text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere.
   The term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting
   mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to
   integrate the code for two similar cases.

:casters-up mode: [IBM] n. 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 "{A Selection
   of AI Koans}" ({Appendix A}).

:cat: [from `catenate' via {{UNIX}} `cat(1)'] vt.
   1. [techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other
   output sink without pause.  2. By extension, to dump large amounts
   of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it
   carefully.  Usage: considered silly.  Rare outside UNIX sites.  See
   also {dd}, {BLT}.

   Among UNIX 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....

: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}.

:cd tilde: /C-D til-d*/ vi.  To go home.  From the UNIX C-shell
   and Korn-shell command `cd ~', which takes one to
   one's `$HOME' (`cd' with no arguments happens to do the
   same thing).  By extension, may be used with other arguments; thus,
   over an electronic chat link, `cd ~coffee' would
   mean "I'm going to the coffee machine."

:cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from LISP] vt. To skip past the
   first item from a list of things (generalized from the LISP
   operation on binary tree structures, 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 7090 that hosted
   the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called
   the `address' and `decrement' parts.  The term `cdr' was originally
   `Contents of Decrement part of Register'.  Similarly, `car' stood
   for `Contents of Address part of Register'.

   The cdr and car operations have since become bases for
   formation of compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts.  GLS recalls,
   for example, a programming project in which strings were
   represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character
   operations were of course called CHAR and CHDR.

:chad: /chad/ n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
   they have been separated from the printed portion.  Also called
   {selvage} and {perf}.  2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched
   out of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff', `computer
   confetti', and `keypunch droppings'.

   Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2)
   derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which
   cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab
   folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was
   clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the
   stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'.

:chad box: n.  boxes inside them, 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. [orig. from BASIC's `CHAIN' statement] vi. 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. 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.

:channel: [IRC] n. The basic unit of discussion on {IRC}.  Once
   one joins a channel, everything one types is read by others on that
   channel.  Channels can either be named with numbers or 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', 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: [IRC, GEnie] n. 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/ [IRC] n. Someone who is endowed with
   privileges on a particular {IRC} channel; commonly abbreviated
   `chanop' or `CHOP'.  These privileges include the right to
   {kick} users, to change various status bits, and to make others
   into CHOPs.

:chanop: /chan'-op/ [IRC] n. See {channel op}.

:char: /keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n. Shorthand for
   `character'.  Esp. used by C programmers, as `char' is
   C's typename for character data.

:charityware: /cha'rit-ee-weir`/ n. Syn. {careware}.

:chase pointers: 1. vi. To go through multiple levels of
   indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure.
   Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very
   common data type.  This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when
   used of human networks.  "I'm chasing pointers.  Bob said you
   could tell me who to talk to about...." See {dangling
   pointer} and {snap}.  2. [Cambridge] `pointer chase' or
   `pointer hunt': The process of going through a {core dump}
   (sense 1), interactively or on a large piece of paper printed with
   hex {runes}, following dynamic data-structures.  Used only in a
   debugging context.

: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).

:chemist: [Cambridge] n. Someone who wastes computer time on
   {number-crunching} when you'd far rather the machine were doing
   something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your
   name or printing Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns.
   May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.

:Chernobyl chicken: n. See {laser chicken}.

:Chernobyl packet: /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ n. A network packet that
   induces a {broadcast storm} and/or {network meltdown},
   in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl
   in Ukraine.  The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram
   that passes through a gateway with both source and destination
   Ether and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for
   the subnetworks being gated between.  Compare {Christmas tree
   packet}.

:chicken head: [Commodore] n. The Commodore Business Machines logo,
   which strongly resembles a poultry part.  Rendered in ASCII as
   `C='.  With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see {amoeba}),
   Commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es
   (see also {PETSCII}).  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.

: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.

:chine nual: /sheen'yu-*l/ [MIT] n.,obs. The LISP Machine Manual, so
   called because the title was wrapped around the cover so only those
   letters showed on the front.

:Chinese Army technique: n. Syn. {Mongolian Hordes technique}.

:choke: v. 1. 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 `#define's."
   See {barf}, {gag}, {vi}.   2. [MIT] More generally, to fail at any
   endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the popular definition is
   "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

:chomp: vi. To {lose}; specifically, to chew on something of
   which more was bitten off than one can.  Probably related to
   gnashing of teeth.  See {bagbiter}.

   A hand gesture commonly accompanies this.  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/ [IRC] n. 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.)

:chrome: [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. 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}.

:Cinderella Book: [CMU] n. `Introduction to Automata Theory,
   Languages, and Computation', by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman,
   (Addison-Wesley, 1979).  So called because the cover depicts a girl
   (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device
   and holding a rope 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}}.

: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}.

:Classic C: /klas'ik C/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. The
   C programming language as defined in the first edition of {K&R},
   with some small additions.  It is also known as `K&R C'.  The name
   came into use 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."

:CLM: /C-L-M/ [Sun: `Career Limiting Move'] 1. n. An action
   endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and
   raises, and possibly one's job:  "His Halloween costume was a
   parody of his manager.  He won the prize for `best CLM'."
   2. adj.  Denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a
   customer and obviously missed earlier because of poor testing:
   "That's a CLM bug!"

:clobber: vt. To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off
   the end of the array and clobbered the stack."  Compare {mung},
   {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash the stack}.

: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}.

: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. `PC clone:' a PC-BUS/ISA or
   EISA-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is sometimes
   spelled `klone' or `PClone').  These invariably have much
   more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble.
   5. In the construction `UNIX clone': An OS designed to deliver
   a UNIX-lookalike environment without UNIX license fees, or with
   additional `mission-critical' features such as support for
   real-time programming.  6. v. To make an exact copy of something.
   "Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that paper so I
   can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that file before
   you {mung} it".

:clover key: [Mac users] n. See {feature key}.

:clustergeeking: /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ [CMU] n. Spending more time
   at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend
   breathing.

:COBOL: /koh'bol/ [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n.
   (Synonymous with {evil}.)  A weak, verbose, and flabby language
   used by {card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on
   {dinosaur} mainframes.  Hackers believe 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.  See also {fear and loathing},
   {software rot}.

:COBOL fingers: /koh'bol fing'grz/ n. Reported from Sweden, a
   (hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in COBOL.  The
   language requires code verbose beyond all reason (see
   {candygrammar}); thus it is alleged that programming too much in
   COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless
   typing.  "I refuse to type in all that source code again; it would
   give me COBOL fingers!"

: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.
   Compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, {real
   programmer}.

:code police: [by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] n.
   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.

: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-math-ema-tic-al metaphors.  Four particularly important
   ones involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index', and
   `quotient'.  They are often loosely applied to things you cannot
   really be quantitative about, but there are subtle distinctions
   among them that convey information about the way the speaker
   mentally models whatever he or she is describing.

   `Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for
   which the issue is one of presence or absence.  The canonical
   example is {fudge factor}.  It's not important how much you're
   fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed.
   You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor.
   Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two
   opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient."
   This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor",
   but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck
   overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering
   your own).

   `Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply
   that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that
   can be larger or smaller.  Thus, you might refer to a paper or
   person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less
   likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'.  `Foo index' suggests
   that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane
   cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a
   fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction.  The choice
   between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some
   people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus
   say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel it is a
   combination of factors and thus say `bogosity index'.

:cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character,
   particularly one you can't type because it 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 `{altmode}-altmode-cokebottle'
   commands at MIT.  After the demise of the {space-cadet
   keyboard}, `cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was
   often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or
   non-intuitive keystroke command.  It may be due for a second
   inning, however.  The OSF/Motif window manager, `mwm(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.L. 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/ [ITS: from the feature supporting on-line
   chat; the term may spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for {talk
   mode}.

:command key: [Mac users] n. 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 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 tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot
   wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/).  The prefix {meta} may be
   pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually
   /bee't*/, zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth.  Preferred
   {metasyntactic variable}s include {blurgle}, `eek',
   `ook', `frodo', and `bilbo'; `wibble',
   `wobble', and in emergencies `wubble'; `banana',
   `tom', `dick', `harry', `wombat', `frog',
   {fish}, and so on and on (see {foo}, sense 4).

   Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama',
   `frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples: "barf
   city!"  "hack-o-rama!"  "core dump frenzy!").  Finally, note
   that the American terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (),
   [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers
   `brackets', `square brackets', and `curly brackets'.  Also, the
   use of `pling' for {bang} is common outside the United States.

   See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist},
   {console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes},
   {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal}, {leaky heap},
   {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger},
   {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster
   blaster}, {RTBM}, {seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge},
   {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble},
   {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad
   Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {chase pointers},
   {cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy},
   {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos},
   {nybble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak}, and
   {xyzzy}.

:compact: adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it
   can all be apprehended at once in one's head.  This generally means
   the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility
   and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact.
   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).

:compress: [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally
   refers to {crunch}ing of a file using a particular
   C implementation of compression by James A. Woods 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}.  Though this term is common,
   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.

:computer geek: n. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living.  One
   who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers:
   an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the
   personality of a cheese grater.  Cannot be used by outsiders
   without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black usage
   of `nigger'.  A computer geek may be either a fundamentally
   clueless individual or a proto-hacker in {larval stage}.  Also
   called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'.  See also {propeller head},
   {clustergeeking}, {geek out}, {wannabee}, {terminal
   junkie}, {spod}, {weenie}.

:computron: /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. A notional unit of computing
   power combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned
   roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store
   times megabytes-of-mass-storage.  "That machine can't run GNU
   EMACS, it doesn't have enough computrons!"  This usage is usually
   found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible
   commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower.  See
   {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}.
   2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of
   computation or information, in much the same way that an electron
   bears one unit of electric charge (see 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.
   (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: [from SF fandom] n. A science-fiction convention.  Not used
   of other sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings.  This
   term, unlike many others of 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.

:confuser: n. Common soundalike slang for `computer'.  Usually
   encountered in compounds such as `confuser room', `personal
   confuser', `confuser guru'.  Usage: silly.

:connector conspiracy: [probably came into prominence with the
   appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of
   whose connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of
   manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of
   anything) to come up with new products that don't fit together with
   the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or
   expensive interface devices.  The KL-10 Massbus connector was
   actually *patented* by DEC, which reputedly refused to license
   the design and thus effectively locked third parties out of
   competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market.  This
   policy is a source of never-ending frustration for the diehards who
   maintain older PDP-10 or VAX systems.  Their CPUs work fine, but
   they are stuck with dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives with
   low capacity and high power requirements.

   (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.  The Apple
   Macintosh takes this one step further, requiring not only a hex
   wrench 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/ or /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. 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.  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.  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}.  See also {CTY}.

:console jockey: n. See {terminal junkie}.

:content-free: [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj.
   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; originally
   stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll
   get a 4-pass compiler".

   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.

:cookbook: [from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small
   code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic}
   things in programs.  One current example is the
   `{{PostScript}} Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe
   Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as
   the {Blue Book} which has recipes for things like wrapping text
   around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.  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: [UNIX, by opposition with {raw mode}] n. 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).  Compare {magic cookie}; see also
   {fortune cookie}.

:cookie bear: n. Syn. {cookie monster}.

: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: [from the children's TV program "Sesame
   Street"] n. Any of a family of early (1970s) hacks reported on
   {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {{Multics}}, and elsewhere that would lock
   up either the victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the
   {{console}} (on a batch {mainframe}), repeatedly demanding "I
   WANT A COOKIE".  The required responses ranged in complexity from
   "COOKIE" through "HAVE A COOKIE" and upward.  See also
   {wabbit}.

:copious free time: [Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's
   song "It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier"] n. 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: /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. 1. [play on `copyright'] Used
   to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been
   `broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme
   disabled.  Syn.  {copywronged}.  2. Copy-protected software
   which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused
   the anti-piracy check.  See also {copy protection}.

:copyleft: /kop'ee-left/ [play on `copyright'] n. 1. The
   copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by {GNU}
   {EMACS} and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse
   and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also {General
   Public Virus}).  2. By extension, any copyright notice intended to
   achieve similar aims.

:copywronged: /ko'pee-rongd/ [play on `copyright'] adj. 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. 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}.

:core leak: n. Syn. {memory leak}.

:Core Wars: n. A game between `assembler' programs in a
   simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's
   program by overwriting it.  Popularized by A. K. Dewdney's column
   in `Scientific American' magazine, this was actually
   devised by Victor Vyssotsky, Robert Morris, and Dennis Ritchie in
   the early 1960s (their original game was called `Darwin' and ran on
   a PDP-1 at Bell Labs).  See {core}.

:corge: /korj/ [originally, the name of a cat] n. Yet another
   {metasyntactic variable}, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated
   by the {GOSMACS} documentation.  See {grault}.

:cosmic rays: n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}.  However, this is
   a semi-independent usage 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}.

:cowboy: [Sun, from William Gibson's {cyberpunk} SF] n. Synonym
   for {hacker}.  It is reported that at Sun this word is often
   said with reverence.

:CP/M:: /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
   microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and
   Z80-based machines, very popular in the late 1970s 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.  Many of CP/M's features and conventions strongly
   resemble those of early DEC operating systems such as
   {{TOPS-10}}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11.  See {{MS-DOS}},
   {operating system}.

:CPU Wars: /C-P-U worz/ n. A 1979 large-format comic by Chas
   Andres chronicling the attempts of the brainwashed androids of IPM
   (Impossible to Program Machines) to conquer and destroy the
   peaceful denizens of HEC (Human Engineered Computers).  This rather
   transparent allegory featured many references to {ADVENT} and
   the immortal line "Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!"
   (uttered, of course, by an IPM stormtrooper).  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 (then, as now, one of the few islands of true
   hackerdom in the IBM archipelago).  The lower loop of the B in the
   IBM logo, it is said, had been carefully whited out.  See {eat
   flaming death}.

:crack root: v. 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.

   Both these neologisms reflected a strong revulsion against the
   theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings.  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.

   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.

   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,
   the}.

:cracking: n. 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 only mediocre
   hackers.

:crank: [from automotive slang] vt. Verb used to describe the
   performance of a machine, especially sustained performance.  "This
   box cranks (or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode
   of twice that on vectorized operations."

:CrApTeX: /krap'tekh/ [University of York, England] n. 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 happened 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}).  Sun-3
   monitors losing the flyback transformer and lightning strikes on
   VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and burn generators.  The
   construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a computer
   used exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing
   bugs (i.e., not for development).  The implication is that it
   wouldn't be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since only the
   testers would be inconvenienced.

:crawling horror: n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that 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}.

:cray: /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of
   supercomputers designed by Cray Research.  2. Any supercomputer at
   all.  3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine.

   The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a
   noted computer architect and co-founder of the company.  Numerous
   vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented
   by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image.

:cray instability: n. A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that
   manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a
   powerful machine (see {cray}).  Generally more subtle than bugs
   that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation
   or mini.

:crayola: /kray-oh'l*/ n. A super-mini or -micro computer that
   provides some reasonable percentage of supercomputer performance
   for an unreasonably low price.  Might also be a {killer micro}.

:crayola books: n. The {rainbow series} of NCSC computer
   security standards (see {Orange Book}).  Usage: humorous and/or
   disparaging.

:crayon: n. 1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers.  More
   specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,
   probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of
   gender).  Systems types who have a UNIX background tend not to be
   described as crayons.  2. A {computron} (sense 2) that
   participates only in {number-crunching}.  3. A unit of
   computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1.  There is a
   standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola
   crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free
   sharpener.

:creationism: n. The (false) belief that large, innovative software
   designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly
   magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of
   normally talented programmers.  In fact, experience has shown
   repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary,
   exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
   exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population ---
   and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
   Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
   beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored.

:creep: v. To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably.  In hackish usage
   this verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the
   creeping horrors of low-budget monster movies.

:creeping elegance: n. Describes a tendency for parts of a design
   to become {elegant} past the point of diminishing return,
   something which often happens at the expense of the less
   interesting parts of the design, the schedule, and other things
   deemed important in the {Real World}.  See also {creeping
   featurism}, {second-system effect}, {tense}.

:creeping featurism: /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. 1. Describes a
   systematic tendency to load more {chrome} and {feature}s onto
   systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed
   when originally designed.  See also {feeping creaturism}.  "You
   know, the main problem with {BSD} UNIX has always been creeping
   featurism."  2. More generally, the tendency for anything
   complicated to become even more complicated because people keep
   saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too".
   (See {feature}.)  The result is usually a patchwork because it
   grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned.
   Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra
   little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and
   another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's
   like a cancer.  Usually this term is used to describe computer
   programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the
   IRS 1040 form, and new cars.  A similar phenomenon sometimes
   afflicts conscious redesigns; see {second-system effect}.  See
   also {creeping elegance}.

:creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n. Variant of
   {creeping featurism}, with its own spoonerization: `feeping
   creaturitis'.  Some people like to reserve this form for the
   disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as
   opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds.
   (After all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas
   -itis usually means `inflammation of'.)

:cretin: /kret'in/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious
   person; someone who can't do anything right.  It has been observed
   that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation
   /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/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. Wrong; stupid;
   non-functional; very poorly designed.  Also used pejoratively of
   people.  See {dread high-bit disease} for an example.
   Approximate synonyms: {bletcherous}, `bagbiting' (see
   {bagbiter}), {losing}, {brain-damaged}.

:crippleware: n. 1. Software that has some important functionality
   deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a
   working version.  2. [Cambridge] {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 dyked
   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/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n. (often
   capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR, ASCII 0001101)
   followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010).  More loosely,
   whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to
   the beginning of the next line.  See {newline}, {terpri}.
   Under {{UNIX}} influence this usage has become less common (UNIX
   uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF').

:crock: [from the American scatologism crock of shit] n. 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, a Real Programmer} 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: [USENET] vi. 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 only one
   part of the original posting.

: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/ [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.

   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.

:cruft together: vt. (also `cruft up') To throw together
   something ugly but temporarily workable.  Like vt. {kluge up},
   but more pejorative.  "There isn't any program now to reverse all
   the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft one together in about
   10 minutes."  See {hack together}, {hack up}, {kluge up},
   {crufty}.

:cruftsmanship: /kruhfts'm*n-ship / n. [from {cruft}] The
   antithesis of craftsmanship.

:crufty: /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty']
   adj. 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)."

:crumb: n. Two binary digits; a {quad}.  Larger than a {bit},
   smaller than a {nybble}.  Considered silly.  Syn. {tayste}.

:crunch: 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or
   complicated way.  Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is
   nonetheless painful to perform.  The pain may be due to the
   triviality'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.

:cruncha cruncha cruncha: /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ interj.
   An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a
   serious {grovel}.  Also describes a notional sound made by
   groveling hardware.  See {wugga wugga}, {grind} (sense 3).

:cryppie: /krip'ee/ n. A cryptographer.  One who hacks or implements
   cryptographic software or hardware.

:CTSS: /C-T-S-S/ n. Compatible Time-Sharing System.  An early
   (1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing
   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.

:CTY: /sit'ee/ or /C-T-Y/ n. [MIT] The terminal physically
   associated with a computer's system {{console}}.  The term is a
   contraction of `Console {tty}', that is, `Console TeleTYpe'.
   This {{ITS}}- and {{TOPS-10}}-associated term has become less
   common, as most UNIX hackers simply refer to the CTY as `the
   console'.

:cube: n. 1. [short for `cubicle'] A module in the open-plan
   offices used at many programming shops.  "I've got the manuals in
   my cube."  2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).

:cubing: [parallel with `tubing'] vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel
   Personal SuperComputer) hypercube.  "Louella's gone cubing
   *again*!!"  2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles,
   either physically or mathematically.  3. An indescribable form of
   self-torture (see sense 1 or 2).

: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/ [WPI: from the DEC abbreviation CUSP, for `Commonly
   Used System Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people]
   adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written.  2. Functionally excellent.  A
   program that performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy.
   See {rude}.  3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one
   regarded as available.  Implies a certain curvaceousness.

:cut a tape: 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.

:cybercrud: /si:'ber-kruhd/ [coined by Ted Nelson] n. Obfuscatory
   tech-talk.  Verbiage with a high {MEGO} factor.  The computer
   equivalent of bureaucratese.

:cyberpunk: /si:'ber-puhnk/ [orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke
   and/or editor Gardner Dozois] n.,adj. A subgenre of SF launched
   in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making novel `Neuromancer'
   (though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's `True Names'
   (see "{True Names ... and Other Dangers}" 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 na"ive 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}.

:cyberspace: /si:'ber-spays/ n. 1. Notional `information-space'
   loaded with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer
   interfaces called `cyberspace decks'; a characteristic prop of
   {cyberpunk} SF.  At the time of this writing (mid-1991),
   serious efforts to construct {virtual reality} interfaces
   modeled explicitly on Gibsonian cyberspace are already under way,
   using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular
   TV headsets.  Few hackers are prepared to deny outright the
   possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of the network
   (see {network, the}).  2. Occasionally, the metaphoric location
   of the mind of a person in {hack mode}.  Some hackers report
   experiencing strong eidetic imagery when in hack mode;
   interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest
   that there are common features to the experience.  In particular,
   the dominant colors of this subjective `cyberspace' are often
   gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of
   marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles, or
   moire patterns.

:cycle: 1. n. The basic unit of computation.  What every hacker
   wants more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper describes 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}, {120 reset}; from the
   phrase `cycle power'. "Cycle the machine again, that serial port's
   still hung."

:cycle crunch: n. A situation wherein the number of people trying
   to use a computer simultaneously has reached the point where no one
   can get enough cycles because they are spread too thin and the
   system has probably begun to {thrash}.  This scenario is an
   inevitable result of Parkinson's Law applied to timesharing.
   Usually the only solution is to buy more computer.  Happily, this
   has rapidly become easier since the mid-1980s, so much so that the
   very term `cycle crunch' now has a faintly archaic flavor; most
   hackers now use workstations or personal computers as opposed to
   traditional timesharing systems.

:cycle drought: n. A scarcity of cycles.  It may be due to a {cycle
   crunch}, but it could also occur because part of the computer is
   temporarily not working, leaving fewer cycles to go around.
   "The {high moby} is {down}, so we're running with only
   half the usual amount of memory.  There will be a cycle drought
   until it's fixed."

:cycle of reincarnation: [coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970] n.
   Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a
   computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose
   peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves 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}, {bit bang}.

:cycle server: n. A powerful machine that exists primarily for
   running large {batch} jobs.  Implies that interactive tasks such as
   editing are done on other machines on the network, such as
   workstations.

= D =
=====

:D. C. Power Lab: n. The former site of {{SAIL}}.  Hackers thought
   this was very funny because the obvious connection to electrical
   engineering was nonexistent --- the lab was named for a Donald C.
   Power.  Compare {Marginal Hacks}.

:daemon: /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ [from the mythological meaning,
   later rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] n.
   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}.  Although the
   meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary
   reflects current (1993) usage.

:dangling pointer: n. A reference that doesn't actually lead
   anywhere (in C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't
   actually point at anything valid).  Usually this 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 it has since
   become much more exclusively {suit}-oriented and boring.

:DAU: /dow/ [German Fidonet] n. German acronym for D"ummster
   Anzunehmender User (stupidest imaginable user).  From the
   engin-eering-slang GAU for Gr"osster Anzunehmender Unfall (worst
   foreseeable accident, esp. of a LNG tank farm plant or something
   with similarly disastrous consequences).See {cretin}, {fool},
   {loser} and {weasel}.

:day mode: n. See {phase} (sense 1).  Used of people only.

:dd: /dee-dee/ [UNIX: from IBM {JCL}] vt. Equivalent to
   {cat} or {BLT}.  Originally the name of a UNIX copy command
   with special options suitable for block-oriented devices; it was
   often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's
   `dd' the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to
   load it back on to a new disk".  The UNIX `dd(1)' was
   designed with a weird, distinctly non-UNIXy keyword option syntax
   reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD
   `Dataset Definition' specification for I/O devices); though the
   command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank.
   The jargon usage is now very rare outside UNIX sites and now nearly
   obsolete even there, as `dd(1)' has been {deprecated} for a
   long time (though it has no exact replacement).  The term has been
   displaced by {BLT} or simple English `copy'.

:DDT: /D-D-T/ n. 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) was also used as the {shell} or top level command
   language used to execute other programs.  3. Any one of several
   specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on early DEC hardware.  The DEC
   PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first
   page of the documentation for DDT 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 (C14-H9-Cl5) should be minimal
     since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive,
     class of bugs.

   Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the
   handbook after the {suit}s took over and DEC became much more
   `businesslike'.

   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 (the
   first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT
   (FLexowriter Interrogation Tape).

:de-rezz: /dee-rez'/ [from `de-resolve' via the movie
   "Tron"] (also `derez') 1. vi. To disappear or dissolve; the
   image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster
   lines and static and then dissolving.  Occasionally used of a
   person who seems to have suddenly `fuzzed out' mentally rather than
   physically.  Usage: extremely silly, also rare.  This verb was
   actually invented as *fictional* hacker jargon, and adopted in
   a spirit of irony by real hackers years after the fact.  2. vt. The
   Macintosh resource decompiler.  On a Macintosh, many program
   structures (including the code itself) are managed in small
   segments of the program file known as `resources'; `Rez' and
   `DeRez' are a pair of utilities for compiling and decompiling
   resource files.  Thus, decompiling a resource is `derezzing'.
   Usage: very common.

:dead: adj. 1. Non-functional; {down}; {crash}ed.  Especially
   used of hardware.  2. At XEROX PARC, software that is working but
   not undergoing continued development and support.

: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}.

:DEADBEEF: /ded-beef/ n. The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for
   freshly allocated memory (decimal -21524111) under a number of
   IBM environments, including the RS/6000.  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.

: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 Star: [from the movie "Star Wars"] 1. The AT&T
   corporate logo, which appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears
   an uncanny resemblance to the Death Star in the movie.  This usage
   is particularly common among partisans of {BSD} UNIX, who tend
   to regard the AT&T versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy.
   Copies still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a
   starscape with a space fighter 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.

:dec: /dek/ v. Common verbal shorthand for decrement, i.e.
   `decrease by one' (one doesn't tend to see the sbbreviation in
   writing or email).  Especially used by assembly programmers, as many
   assembly languages (including those for Intel chips) have a
   `dec' mnemonic.  Antonym: {inc}.

: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: [from nuclear physics] n.,vi. 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.

:DEChead: /dek'hed/ n. 1. A DEC {field servoid}.  Not flattering.
   2. [from `deadhead'] A Grateful Dead fan working at DEC.

:deckle: /dek'l/ [from dec- and {nybble}; the original
   spelling seems to have been `decle'] n. Two {nickle}s;
   10 bits.  Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the
   Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but
   10-bit-wide ROM.

:DED: /D-E-D/ n.  Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out
   LED).  Compare {SED}, {LER}, {write-only memory}.  In the
   early 1970s both Signetics and Texas instruments released DED spec
   sheets as {AFJ}s (suggested uses included "as a power-off
   indicator").

:deep hack mode: n. See {hack mode}.

:deep magic: [poss. from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books] n. 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: [from the traditional Czechoslovakian method of
   assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic
   retribution for an incorrigible punster.  "Oh, ghod, that was
   *awful*!"  "Quick! Defenestrate him!"  2. The act of
   exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a
   full-screen program.  This comes from the dictionary meaning of
   `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window.  3. 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. [proposed] The requirement to support a command-line interface.
   "It has to run on a VT100."  "Curses!  I've been
   defenestrated!"

:defined as: adj. In the role of, usually in an organization-chart
   sense.  "Pete is currently defined as bug prioritizer."  Compare
   {logical}.

:dehose: /dee-hohz/ vt. To clear a {hosed} condition.

:delint: /dee-lint/ v. To modify code to remove problems detected
   when {lint}ing.  Confusingly, this process is also referred to
   as `linting' code.

: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
   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}, {bozotic}.

:demigod: n. A hacker with years of experience, a national reputation,
   and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool,
   or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community.
   To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably
   identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it.  Major
   demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of
   {{UNIX}} and {C}) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of
   {EMACS}).  In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of
   someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major
   software project has been driven to completion by the author's
   veiled hopes of apotheosis.  See also {net.god}, {true-hacker}.

:demo: /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To
   demonstrate a product or prototype.  A far more effective way of
   inducing bugs to manifest than any number of {test} runs,
   especially when important people are watching.  2. n. The act of
   demoing.  "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.

:demo mode: [Sun] n. 1. 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}).

:demon: n. 1. [MIT] 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.  2. [outside MIT] Often used
   equivalently to {daemon} --- especially in the {{UNIX}} world,
   where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly
   archaic.

   Demons in sense 1 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.

:depeditate: /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with
   `decapitate'] vt.  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}.

:deserves to lose: adj. Said of someone who willfully does the
   {Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be
   {marginal}.  What is meant is that one deserves the consequences
   of one's {losing} actions.  "Boy, anyone who tries to use
   {mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" ({{ITS}} fans used to say
   the same thing of {{UNIX}}; many still do.)  See also {screw},
   {chomp}, {bagbiter}.

:desk check: n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code,
   mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs.
   No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast
   compiles, and sophisticated debuggers --- though some maintain
   stoutly that it ought to be.  Compare {eyeball search},
   {vdiff}, {vgrep}.

:despew: /d*-spyoo'/ [USENET] v. To automatically generate a
   large amount of garbage to the net, esp. from an automated posting
   program gone wild.  See {ARMM}.

:Devil 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) --- the standard reference
   book on the internals of {BSD} UNIX.  So called because the
   cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on
   {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of
   the characteristic features of UNIX, the `fork(2)' system
   call).

:devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a
   development group.  See also {doco} and {mango}.

:dickless workstation: n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for
   `diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50
   and other machines designed exclusively to network with an
   expensive central disk server.  These combine all the disadvantages
   of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal
   computers; typically, they cannot even {boot} themselves without
   help (in the form of some kind of {breath-of-life packet}) from
   the server.

:dictionary flame: [USENET] n. 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}.

:digit: n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation.  See also
   {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {DEChead}, {double
   DECkers}, {field circus}.

:dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire
   from a computer or a subroutine from a program.  A standard slogan
   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 among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters',
   esp. the heavy-duty metal-cutting version, but may also refer to a
   kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs.  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.

:ding: n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}.  Usage: rare among hackers,
   but commoner in the {Real World}.  2. `dinged': What happens
   when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about
   something, esp. something 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 1988 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; reflects a perception by hackers that
   these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the
   {mainframe} industry.  In its glory days of the 1960s, it was
   `IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General
   Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac.  RCA and GE sold out
   early, and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,
   Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while.  Honeywell was bought out
   by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 ---
   this was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and in
   1991 AT&T absorbed NCR.  More such earth-shaking unions of doomed
   giants seem inevitable.

:dirtball: [XEROX PARC] n. 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] n. Statement ritually appended to many USENET
   postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating
   the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the
   article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of
   the organization running the machine through which the article
   entered the network.

:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of
   {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers.
   Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton
   Wilson's novel `{Illuminatus!}' as a sort of
   self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners --- it should on no account
   be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes.
   Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from
   `Principia Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of
   Believing What he Reads."  Discordianism is usually connected with
   an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long
   warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a
   malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati.
   See {Religion} under {Appendix B}, {Church of the
   SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.

:disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled
   with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).

:display hack: n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a
   kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures.  Famous display hacks
   include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX
   `rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes,
   and the {X} `kaleid(1)' program.  Display hacks can also be
   implemented without programming by creating text files containing
   numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal;
   one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with
   twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base.  The {hack
   value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of
   the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the
   size of the code.  Syn. {psychedelicware}.

:Dissociated Press: [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired
   by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up,
   Doc?"] n. 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}.  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.

:do protocol: [from network protocol programming] vi. 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).

:doco: /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A
   documentation writer.  See also {devo} and {mango}.

:documentation:: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded,
   steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern
   software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}).  Hackers
   seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist writing it;
   they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line.  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}.

: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.

:domainist: /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet
   address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the
   right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains';
   for example, [e-mail] specifies the machine
   called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the
   top-level domain called com.  See also {big-endian}, sense
   2.  2. Said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how
   to handle domainist addresses.  3. Said of a person (esp. a site
   admin) who prefers domain addressing, supports a domainist mailer,
   or prosyletizes for domainist addressing and disdains {bang
   path}s.  This term is now (1993) semi-obsolete, as most sites have
   converted.

:Don't do that, then!: [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}.

:dongle: /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or {copy protection}
   device for commercial microcomputer programs 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 idea was clever, but it was initially a
   failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way.  Most
   dongles on the market today (1991) will pass data through the port
   and monitor for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines)
   with minimal if any interference with devices further down the line
   --- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles
   for multiple pieces of software.  The devices are still not widely
   used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes
   in general.  2. By extension, any physical electronic key or
   transferrable ID required for a program to function.  Common
   variations on this theme have used parallel or even joystick
   ports.  See {dongle-disk}.

   [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}.

:donuts: n.obs. A collective noun for any set of memory bits.  This
   usage is extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it
   dates from the days of ferrite-{core} memories in which each bit
   was implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop.

:doorstop: n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and
   halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept
   around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup.  "When we
   get another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 will turn into a doorstop."
   Compare {boat anchor}.

:dot file: [UNIX] 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 {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}.

:double DECkers: n. Used to describe married couples in which both
   partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.

:doubled sig: [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included
   twice in a {USENET} article or, less 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 {BIFF}, {pseudo}.

:down: 1. adj. Not operating.  "The up escalator is down" is
   considered a humorous thing to say, 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 hackish.  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 larger `host'
   system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller
   `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral.
   Oppose {upload}.

   However, note that ground-to-space communications has its own usage
   rule for this term.  Space-to-earth transmission is always `down'
   and the reverse `up' regardless of the relative size of the
   computers involved.  So far the in-space machines have invariably
   been smaller; thus the upload/download distinction has been
   reversed from its usual sense.

:DP: /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing.  Listed here because,
   according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a
   {suit}.  See {DPer}.  2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated
   Press}.

:DPB: /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop
   something down in the middle.  Usage: silly.  "DPB yourself into
   that couch there."  The connotation would be that the couch is
   full except for one slot just big enough for one last person to sit
   in.  DPB means `DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10
   instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other
   bits.  Hackish usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function
   of the same name.

:DPer: /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor.  Hackers are absolutely
   amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially.
   *Computers* process data, not people!  See {DP}.

: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 `Green 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: [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2).  Has a connotation
   of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking
   it offline.

:dread high-bit disease: n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a.
   PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having
   their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF.  This of course makes
   transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to
   mention talking to true 8-bit devices.  Folklore had 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 heroicly to cure it.
   Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the
   most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made.  See {meta bit}.
   A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.

:DRECNET: /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning
   filth] n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol
   used in the {VMS} community.  So called because DEC helped write
   the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a
   malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design
   of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible.  See also
   {connector conspiracy}.

:driver: n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program;
   the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution.
   2. [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. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or
   service-bus-i-ness 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
   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}.

:drool-proof paper: n. Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed
   down}, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is
   said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to
   have been `written on drool-proof paper'.  For example, this is
   an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose
   your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."

:drop on the floor: vt. To react to an error condition by silently
   discarding messages or other valuable data.  "The gateway
   ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the
   floor."  Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay
   sites that lose messages.  See also {black hole}, {bit bucket}.

:drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious
   characters appearing on a terminal or console 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}.

:drugged: adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid,
   heading toward {brain-damaged}.  Often accompanied by a
   pantomime of toking a joint (but see {Appendix B}).  2. Of hardware,
   very slow relative to normal performance.

:drum: adj, n.  Ancient techspeak term referring to slow,
   cylindrical magnetic media that were once state-of-the-art
   mass-storage devices.  Under 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, a Real Programmer}" in {Appendix A}.

:drunk mouse syndrome: (also `mouse on drugs') n. A malady
   exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers.  The
   typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move 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.

: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 {bum} 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."

   [For maximal obscurity, the outermost pair of braces above could be
   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'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a
   novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while
   running as {root} under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or
   `mkfs' on a mounted file system.  Compare {adger}.

:dumbed down: adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of
   *over*simplified.  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}.

:dup killer: /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is
   supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may
   have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.

:dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An
   infinite stream of duplicated, near-identical messages on a FidoNet
   {echo}, the only difference being unique or mangled identification
   information applied by a faulty or incorrectly configured system or
   network gateway, thus rendering {dup killer}s ineffective.  If
   such a duplicate message eventually reaches a system through which
   it has already passed (with the original identification
   information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are
   said to be involved in a {dup loop}.

:dusty deck: n. Old software (especially applications) 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}).

   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/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and
   {{byte}}.  Usage: rare and extremely silly.  See also {playte},
   {tayste}, {crumb}.
= E =
=====

:earthquake: [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for
   computer hardware.  Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the
   Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test
   quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.

:Easter egg: [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in
   the U.S. and many parts of Europe] n. 1. A message hidden in the
   object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons
   disassembling or browsing the code.  2. A message, graphic, or
   sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in
   response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,
   intended as a joke or to display program credits.  One well-known
   early Easter egg found in a couple of 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: [IBM] n. 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 derive 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 the Firesign Theater's
   1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the
   phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been
   an influence).  Used in humorously overblown expressions of
   hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"

:EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [abbreviation,
   Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. 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}.

:echo: [FidoNet] n. A {topic group} on {FidoNet}'s echomail
   system.  Compare {newsgroup}.

:eighty-column mind: [IBM] n. 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 is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
   customer base and its thinking.  See {IBM}, {fear and
   loathing}, {card walloper}.

:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road
   mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco
   peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City
   and many portions of which 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 many places.  El Camino Real runs right past
   Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.

   The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ol'/)
   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}.)

: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, the}.

:elegant: [from mathematical usage] adj. 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-Exup'ery, 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}.

:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ [AI community] n. 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 psychoanalyst by re-phrasing 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}.

: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
   `B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. 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.  It includes
   facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive
   mail; 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.

   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',
   `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') 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 arranged in a net work".
   A use from 1480 is given. The word is derived from French
   `emmailleure', network.

:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. 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.

   It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on
   the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980.  He later wrote: "I wish I
   had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for
   posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
   would soon pollute all the world's communication channels."  [GLS
   confirms that he remembers this original posting].

   Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of
   loserhood!  More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that
   you've gone over the line.

:empire: n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a
   game written by Peter Langston many years ago.  Five or six
   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 freeware.  All are
   notoriously addictive.

:engine: n. 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function
   but can't be used without some kind of {front end}.  Today we
   have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer.
   2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot
   of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.

   The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
   pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
   instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity').  This sense had
   not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
   power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
   explains why he named the stored-program computer that
   he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.

:English: 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.  2. The official
   name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System,
   actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of
   grandeur.  The name permits {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. {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/ or /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}.

:EOF: /E-O-F/ [abbreviation, `End Of File'] n. 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 -1 under C
   libraries postdating V6 UNIX, but was originally 0.  2. [UNIX] The
   keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT (End Of
   Transmission) character) that is mapped by the terminal driver into
   an end-of-file condition.  3. Used by extension in non-computer
   contexts when a human is doing something that can be modeled as a
   sequential read and can't go further.  "Yeah, I looked for a list
   of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all
   the library had was a {JCL} manual."  See also
   {EOL}.

:EOL: /E-O-L/ [End Of Line] n. Syn. for {newline}, derived
   perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal.  Now rare, but widely
   recognized and occasionally used for brevity.  Used in the
   example entry under {BNF}.  See also {EOF}.

:EOU: /E-O-U/ n. The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control
   character (End Of User) that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode
   on receipt.  This construction parodies the numerous obscure
   delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when
   it was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers
   (e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT).  It is worth
   remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a
   lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was
   nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in
   front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.

:epoch: [UNIX: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. 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 GMT of November 17,
   1858 (base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides).
   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}.

: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, the: Syn. {epoch}.  Webster's Unabridged makes these words
   almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time rather
   than a point in time.  The {epoch} usage is recommended.

:Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named
   Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
   talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the
   numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre.  There do indeed
   seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than
   the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are
   correlated in some arcane way.  Well-known examples include Eric
   Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style})
   and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about
   fourteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric
   Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more
   than one site.

:Eris: /e'ris/ n. The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion,
   and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and
   she was worshiped by that name in Rome.  Not a very friendly deity
   in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign
   personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the
   adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious
   subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including
   hackerdom.  See {Discordianism}, {Church of the SubGenius}.

:erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ n. [Helsinki University of Technology,
   Finland] n. English-language university slang for electronics.
   Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics
   excites them and makes them warm.

:error 33: [XEROX PARC] n. 1. 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).

: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 this phrase
   has 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
   incompatiblities 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'.

:exa-: /ek's*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:examining the entrails: n. The process of {grovel}ling through
   a {core dump} or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that
   brought a program or system down.  The reference is to divination
   from the entrails of a sacrified animal.  Compare {runes},
   {incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.

:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /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/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n. An executable
   binary file.  Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and
   TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files.  This usage is
   also occasionally found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX
   executables don't have any required suffix.

:exec: /eg-zek'/ vt., 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 a always a program,
   never a person.

:exercise, left as an: [from technical books] Used to complete a
   proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one
   entirely.  The complete phrase is: "The proof [or `the rest'] is
   left as an exercise for the reader."  This comment *has*
   occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors
   possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the
   capabilities of their audiences.

:external memory: n. A memo pad 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.

: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}, {desk check}.

= F =
=====

:face time: n. Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as
   opposed to via electronic links).  "Oh, yeah, I spent some face
   time with him at the last Usenix."

:factor: n. See {coefficient of X}.

:fall over: [IBM] vi. Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}.
   `Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.