Phoenix Rising BBS/phoenixrising.zip/phoenixrising/vir-docs/jargon.arj/JARGON1

Text File | 1990-06-14 | 66KB | 1,285 lines

========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.1.1 (DRAFT) 12 JUN 1990  =========

INTRODUCTION
   This `jargon file' is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers.

   The original `jargon file' was a collection of hacker slang from
technical cultures including 1) the MIT AI Lab, 2) the Stanford
AI lab, 3) the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, 3) Carnegie-
Mellon University, 4) Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Some entries
dated back to the early 1970s. This version was published as _The_
Hacker's_Dictionary_ in 1983.

   This new version casts a wider net than the old jargon file;
its aim is to cover not just AI but all the technical computing
cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than
half of the entries now derive from USENET and the C and UNIX
communities.

    The present maintainers of the jargon file are Guy L. Steele
([e-mail]) and Eric S. Raymond ([e-mail]). Send
all additions, corrections and correspondence relating to the
jargon file to [e-mail].


CREDITS
   The original jargon file was compiled by Guy L. Steele Jr., Raphael
Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin, with assistance from the MIT and
Stanford AI communities and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Some contributions were submitted via the ARPAnet from miscellaneous
sites. The `old' jargon file was last revised in 1983; its revisions
are all un-numbered and may be collectively considered `Version 1'.

   Version 2.1: the jargon file reorganization and massive additions
were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX,
C, USENET and microcomputer-based slang were added at that time (as
well as Appendix A, The Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey). Some
obsolescent usages (mostly PDP-10 derived) were moved to appendix B.

   Our thanks to all the USENETters who contributed entries and
encouragement. Special thanks to our Scandinavian correspondent Per
Lindberg ([e-mail]), author of the remarkable Swedish language
'zine _Hackerbladet_, for bring FOO! comics to our attention and
smuggling the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon file out to
us. Also special gratitude to ace hacker/linguist Joe Keane
([e-mail]) for helping us improve the pronunciation guides.

FORMAT FOR NEW ENTRIES
   Try to conform to the format already being used -- 70 character
lines, 3-character indentations, pronunciations in parentheses,
etymologies in brackets, single-space after def'n numbers and word
classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set.

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

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

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

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



NOTES ON JARGON CONSTRUCTION
   There are some standard methods of jargonification which became
established quite early (i.e before 1970), spreading from such sources
as the MIT Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers and John
McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include:

Verb doubling: a standard construction is to double a verb and use it
   as a comment on what the implied subject does.  Often used to
   terminate a conversation.  Typical examples involve WIN, LOSE,
   HACK, FLAME, BARF, CHOMP:
    "The disk heads just crashed."  "Lose, lose."
    "Mostly he just talked about his @#!!$% crock.  Flame, flame."
    "Boy, what a bagbiter!  Chomp, chomp!"

Soundalike slang: similar to Cockney rhyming slang.  Often made up on
   the spur of the moment.  Standard examples:
    Boston Globe => Boston Glob
    Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American
    New York Times => New York Slime
    Prime Time => Slime Time
    government property - do not duplicate (seen on keys)
        => government duplicity - do not propagate
   Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in
   a standard jargon word:
    Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal
    Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall
    Data General => Dirty Genitals

The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the
   syllable "P"; from the LISP convention of appending the letter "P"
   to denote a predicate (a Boolean-valued function).  The question
   should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't.  (See T and NIL.)
     At dinnertime: "Foodp?"  "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!"
     "State-of-the-world-P?"  (Straight) "I'm about to go home."
                  (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state."
   [One of the best of these is a Gosperism (i.e., due to Bill
   Gosper).  When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to know
   whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized
   bowl of soup.  His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" --GLS]

Peculiar nouns: MIT AI hackers love to take various words and add the
   wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a
   standard rule to nonuniform cases.  Examples:
        porous => porosity
        generous => generosity
    Ergo:    mysterious => mysteriosity
        ferrous => ferrocity

    Other examples: winnitude, disgustitude, hackification.

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

Spoken inarticulations: Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan"
   are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be
   used.  It has been suggested that this usage derives from the
   impossibility of representing such noises in a com link.  Another
   expression sometimes heard is "complain!", meaning "I have a
   complaint!"

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

Hacker speech style (a variety of the precisionist English normally
spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical
fields) is fairly constant everywhere. Of the four other listed
constructions, verb doubling and peculiar noun formations have become
quite general; but rhyming slang is still largely confined to MIT and
other large universities, and the P convention is found only where
LISPers flourish.

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

    MONSTROSITY BRAIN-DAMAGE  BUG  SCREW  LOSE  MISFEATURE
    CROCK  KLUGE  HACK  WIN  FEATURE  ELEGANCE PERFECTION

The last is never actually attained.

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

   The pronunciation keys in the jargon listing use the following
   simple system:

   1) Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an apostrophe
      or back-apostrophe follows each accented syllable (the
      back apostrophe marks a secondary accent in some words of
      four or more syllables).

   2) Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter
      "g" is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); "ch"
      is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter "j" is
      the sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter "s" is
      always as in "pass", never a z sound (but it is sometimes
      doubled at the end of syllables to emphasize this). The
      digraph `dh' is the th of `these clothes', not of `thick'.

    3) Vowels are represented as follows:

    a    back, that
    ah    father, palm
    ar    far, mark
    aw    flaw, caught
    ay    bake, rain
    e    less, men
    ee    easy, ski
    eir    their, software
    i    trip, hit
    ie    life, sky
    o    cot, top
    oh    flow, sew
    oo    loot, through
    or    more, door
    ow    out, how
    oy    boy, coin
    uh    but, some
    u    put, foot
    y    yet
    yoo    few
    [y]oo    oo with optional `fronting' as in `news' (noos or nyoos).

An at-sign is used for the "schwa" sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the
one that is often written with an upside-down "e"). The schwa vowel is
omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, "kitten" and
"color" would be rendered "kit'n" and "kul'r".

THE JARGON ITSELF

               =  =

@BEGIN [primarily CMU] with @End, used humorously in writing to
   indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text.  From
   the SCRIBE command of the same name.  For example:
    @Begin(Flame)
    Predicate logic is the only good programming language.
    Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot.  Also,
    computers should be tredecimal instead of binary.
    @End(Flame)
   On USENET, this construct would more frequently be rendered as
   <FLAME ON> and <FLAME OFF>.

            = A =

ABEND (ab'end) n. Abnormal termination (of software); crash; lossage.
   Derives from an error message on the IBM 360, but has passed into
   more general use.

ACK (ak) interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 000110] Acknowledge.
   Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream "Yo!"). An
   appropriate response to PING. 2. [prob. from _Bloom_County_] An
   exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "Oop ack!".
   Semi-humorous.

ADGER (adj'r) [UCLA] v. To make a bonehead move that could have been
   forseen with a slight amount of mental effort, i.e., "He started
   removing files and promptly adgered the whole project".

AD-HOCKERY (ad-hok'@r-ee) [Purdue] n. Gratuitous assumptions made
   inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the
   appearance of semi-intelligent behavior, but are in fact entirely
   arbitrary.

ADVENT (ad'vent) n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
   implemented on the PDP-10 by MIT hackers Dave Lebling, Mark Blank
   and Don R. Woods as a demo for a natural-language parser they were
   hacking on at the time.  Now better known as Adventure, but the
   TOPS-10 operating system only permitted 6-letter filenames. "A huge
   green fierce snake bars the way!"

ALIASING SCREW (ayl'ee-@-sing) [C programmers] n. A class of subtle
   programming errors which can arise in code that does dynamic
   allocation via malloc(3).  If more than one pointer addresses
   (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
   storage is freed through one alias and then referenced through
   another, leading to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage
   depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc
   ARENA. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias
   allocated core. See also PRECEDENCE SCREW, SMASH THE STACK,
   FANDANGO ON CORE, MEMORY LEAK, OVERRUN SCREW.

ALT BIT (ahlt bit) [from alternate?] adj. See META BIT.

ANGLE BRACKETS (ang'@l brak'@ts) [primarily MIT] n. Either of the
   characters "<" and ">".  See BROKET.

APP (ap) n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
   program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to do
   for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend
   not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in
   hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors,
   games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all
   those apps. Oppose TOOL, OPERATING SYSTEM.

ARENA (a-ree'nuh) [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by
   brk(2) and sbrk(2) and used by malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So
   named from a semi-mythical "malloc: corrupt arena" message
   supposedly emitted when some early versions became terminally
   confused. See OVERRUN SCREW, ALIASING SCREW, MEMORY LEAK, SMASH THE
   STACK.

ARG (arg) n. Abbreviation for "argument" (to a function), used so
   often as to have become a new word. Compare PARAM, VAR.

ASBESTOS LONGJOHNS (as-bes't@s long'jons), UNDIES (uhn'dees), or
   OVERCOAT (o'vr-koht) n. Metaphoric garments often donned by USENET
   posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
   FLAMAGE.

ASCII (as'kee) Common slang names for ASCII characters are collected
   here. See individual entries for BANG, CLOSE, EXCL, OPEN, QUES,
   SEMI, SHRIEK, SPLAT, TWIDDLE, WHAT, WOW, and YIU-SHANG WHOLE FISH.
   This list is snarfed from USENET circa 1983. Single characters are
   listed in ASCII order, followed by multiples. For each character,
   "official" names appear first, then others in order of popularity
   (more or less).

    !   exclamation point, exclamation, bang, factorial, excl, ball-bat,
        smash, shriek, cuss, wow, hey
    "   double quote, quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears
    #   pound sign, number sign, sharp, crunch, mesh, hex, hash,
        flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, octothorp (from
        Bell System)
    $   dollar sign, currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC),
        escape (from TOPS-10), ding, big-money
    %   percent sign, percent, mod, double-oh-seven
    &   ampersand, amper, and, address (from C), andpersand
    '   apostrophe, single quote, quote, prime, tick, irk, pop, spark
    ()  open/close parenthesis, left/right parenthesis, paren/thesis,
        parenthisey, unparenthisey, open/close round bracket, ears,
        so/already, wax/wane
    *   asterisk, star, splat, wildcard, gear, dingle, mult ("multiply")
    +   plus sign, plus, add, cross, intersection
    ,   comma, tail
    -   hyphen, dash, minus sign, worm
    .   period, dot, decimal point, radix point, point, full stop, spot
    /   virgule, slash, stroke, slant, diagonal, solidus, over, slat
    :   colon, two-spot
    ;   semicolon, semi, hybrid
    <>  angle brackets, brokets, left/right angle, less/greater than,
        read from/write to, from/into, from/toward, in/out, comesfrom/
        gozinta (all from UNIX), funnel, brokets, crunch/zap, suck/blow
    =   equal sign, equals, quadrathorp, gets, half-mesh
    ?   question mark, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh, quark
    @   at sign, at, each, vortex, whorl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail,
        ape, cat
    V   vee, book
    []  square brackets, left/right bracket, bracket/unbracket, bra/ket,
        square/unsquare, U turns
    \   reversed virgule, backslash, bash, backslant, backwhack, backslat,
        escape (from UNIX)
    ^   circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to
        the power of"), fang
    _   underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm
    `   grave accent, grave, backquote, left quote, open quote, backprime,
        unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, back tick, push
    {}  open/close brace, left/right brace, brace/unbrace, curly bracket,
        curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, embrace/bracelet
    |   vertical bar, bar, or, v-bar, spike, pipe, gozinta, thru,
        pipesinta (last four from UNIX)
    ~   tilde, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, swung dash, enyay

ASSEMBLER (as'em-bler) 1. A program translator that allows human
   beings to generate machine code using mnemonics and symbolic names
   for memory locations rather than raw binary; distinguished from an
   HLL (q.v.) by the fact that a single assembler step generally maps
   to a single machine instruction (see also LANGUAGES OF CHOICE). 2.A
   NANOBOT which is a physical REPLICATOR.  (This is the "official"
   term, coined by Eric Drexler; see NANOTECHNOLOGY).

AUTOMAGICALLY (aw-toh-maj'i-klee, aw-toh-maj'i-kl-ee) adv.
   Automatically, but in a way which, for some reason (typically
   because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too
   trivial), I don't feel like explaining to you.  See MAGIC.
   Example: Some programs which produce XGP output files spool them
   automagically.

            = B =

BACKBONE CABAL (bak'bohn k@-bawl') n. Semi-mythical group of
   large-site administrators who pushed through the GREAT RENAMING and
   reined in the chaos of USENET during most of the 1980s. The cabal
   mailing list disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal
   catfight, but the net hardly noticed.

BACK DOOR (bak dor) n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately
   left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this
   is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come
   out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field
   service or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Historically, back
   doors have often lurked in systems longer than any one expected or
   planned, and a few have become widely known. The famous RTM worm of
   late 1988, for example, used a back door in the BSD UNIX
   sendmail(1) utility. See also IRON BOX, CRACKER, WORM, LOGIC BOMB.

BACKGROUND (bak'grownd) v.,adj. A task running in background is
   detached from the terminal where it was started and running at a
   lower priority (oppose FOREGROUND). Nowadays this term is primarily
   associated with UNIX, but it was appears first to have been used in
   this sense on OS/360. By extension, to do a task "in background" is
   to do it whenever FOREGROUND matters are not claiming your
   undivided attention, and "to background" something means to
   relegate it to a lower priority. Compare SLOPSUCKER.

BAD THING (bad thing) n. Something which can't possibly result in
   improvement of the subject.  This term is always capitalized, as in
   "Replacing all of the 9600 baud modems with bicycle couriers would
   be a Bad Thing." Oppose GOOD THING.

BAGBITER (bag'biet-@r) 1. n. Equipment or program that fails, usually
   intermittently.  2. BAGBITING: adj. Failing hardware or software.
   "This bagbiting system won't let me get out of SPACEWAR."  Usage:
   verges on obscenity.  Grammatically separable; one may speak of
   "biting the bag".  Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS,
   BARFUCIOUS.

BAMF (bamf) [from comix] interj. Notional sound made by a person or
   object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used
   in VIRTUAL REALITY (q.v.) electronic fora when a character wishes
   to make a dramatic entrance or exit.

BANG (bang) 1. n. Common alternate name for EXCL (q.v.), especially at
   CMU and when used in pronouncing a BANG PATH (q.v.) in spoken
   hackish.  See SHRIEK. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly
   "I have achieved enlightenment!" or "The dynamite has cleared out
   my brain!". Often used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a
   THINKO immediately after one has been called on it.

BANG PATH (bang path) n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address
   specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the
   addressee, so called because each hop is signified by a BANG sign.
   Thus the path "...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me" directs correspondents
   to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known
   location accessible to everybody) and from there through the
   machine "foovax" to the account of user "me" on "barbox". See
   INTERNET ADDRESS and NETWORK.

BAR (bar) 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after FOO and before
   BAZ.  "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR.  FOO calls
   BAR..."  2.  Often appended to FOO to produce FOOBAR.

BARF (barf) [from the "layman" slang, meaning "vomit"] 1. interj. Term
   of disgust.  See BLETCH.  2. v. Choke, as on input.  May mean to
   give an error message.  "The function `=' compares two fixnums or
   two flonums, and barfs on anything else."  3. BARFULOUS,
   BARFUCIOUS: adj. Said of something which would make anyone barf, if
   only for aesthetic reasons. See CHOKE, GAG.

BAUD BARF (bawd barf) n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when
   using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line
   speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the
   same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the connection.

BAZ (baz) 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after FOO and BAR and
   before QUX.  "Suppose we have three functions FOO, BAR, and BAZ.
   FOO calls BAR, which calls BAZ..." 2. Occasionally appended to FOO
   to produce FOOBAZ.

BELLS AND WHISTLES (belz and hwis'@lz) [by analogy with locomotives]
   n. Features added to a program or system to make it more FLAVORFUL
   from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its
   utility for its primary function. Distinguished from CHROME which
   is intended to attract users.

BENCHMARK (bench'mark) n. An inaccurate measure of computer
   performance.  As in "In the computer industry, there are three
   kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."

BERKLIX (ber'kliks) n.,adj. Contraction of Berkeley UNIX. See BSD. Not
   used at Berkeley itself. [This one, in my experience, is more
   common among suit-wearers attempting to sound "hip" than hackers --
   ESR]

BERZERKELY (b@r-zer'klee) [from the name of a now-deceased record
   label] n. Humorous, often-used distortion of "Berkeley" used esp.
   to refer to the practices or products of the BSD UNIX hackers.

BIG-ENDIAN (big'-en-di-@n) adj. Describes a computer architecture in
   which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word, lower byte addresses have
   higher significance (the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most
   processors including the IBM 370 family and the PDP-10 and the
   Intel and Motorola microprocessor families and the various RISC
   designs current in 1990 are big-endian. See LITTLE-ENDIAN.

BIG IRON (big ie'@rn) n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers.  Used
   generally of number crunching supercomputers such as Crays, but can
   include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes.
   Believed to have originated in the title of a paper given at a
   Usenix, "Unix on Big Iron". Term of approval, compare DINOSAUR.

BIG RED SWITCH (big red swich) [IBM] n. The power switch on a
   computer, esp. on an IBM-PC where it really is large and red. As in
   "This !@%$% BITTY BOX is hung again, time to hit the big red
   switch".

BIGNUMS (big'nuhms) [from Macsyma] n. 1. In backgammon, large numbers
   on the dice.  2. Multiple-precision (sometimes infinitely
   extendable) integers and, through analogy, any very large numbers.
   3. EL CAMINO BIGNUM: El Camino Real, a street through the San
   Francisco peninsula that originally extended (and still appears in
   places) all the way to Mexico City.  It was termed "El Camino
   Double Precision" when someone noted it was a very long street, and
   then "El Camino Bignum" when it was pointed out that it was
   hundreds of miles long.

BINARY (bie'na-ree) n. The object code for a program.

BIT BANG (bit bang) n. Transmission of data on a serial line
   accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the
   appropriate times (popular on certain early models of PRIME
   computers, presumably when UARTs were too expensive; and on archaic
   Z-80 micros with a Zilog PIO but no SIO). The technique is a simple
   loop with eight OUT, SHIFT, OUT etc for each byte.  Input is more
   interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the same
   time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the wannabees.

BIT BUCKET (bit buhk'@t) n. The great data sink in the sky. Data that
   is discarded is said to "go to the bit bucket". On UNIX, often used
   for /dev/null. Sometimes amplified as THE GREAT BIT BUCKET IN THE
   SKY.

BIT DECAY (bit d@-kay') n. See SOFTWARE ROT. People with a physics
   background tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle
   decay.

BIT ROT (bit rot) n. See SOFTWARE ROT.

BITBLT (bit'blit, bit'belt) n. [from BLT, q.v.] 1. One of a closely
   related family of algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of
   bits between main and display memory on a bit-mapped device, or
   between two areas of either main or display memory (the requirement
   to do the right thing in the case of overlapping source and
   destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky). 2. An early
   experimental bit-mapped terminal at Bell Labs, later commercialized
   as the AT&T 5620.

BITTY BOX (bit'ee boks) n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive
   or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the
   thought of developing for it. Especially used of small,
   obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines like the Atari
   800X, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, or TRS-80. 2. More generally, the
   opposite of `real computer' (see GET A REAL COMPUTER). Pejorative.
   See also MESS-DOS, TOASTER, and TOY.

BIXIE (biks'ee) n. Synonym for EMOTICON used on BIX (the Byte
   Information Exchange); BIXers believe the emoticon was invented
   there.

BLAST (blast) v.,n. Synonym for BLT (q.v.), used esp. for large data
   sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of SNARF. Usage:
   uncommon.

BLAZER (blay'zr) n. Nickname for the Telebit Trailblazer, an expensive
   but extremely reliable and effective high-speed modem, popular at
   UNIX sites that pass large volumes of EMAIL and USENET news.

BLETCH (blech) [from German "brechen", to vomit (?)] 1. interj. Term
   of disgust.  2. BLETCHEROUS: adj. Disgusting in design or function.
   "This keyboard is bletcherous!"  Usage: slightly comic.

BLINKENLIGHTS (blink'@n-lietz) n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a
   mainframe CPU.  Derives from the last word of the famous
   blackletter-Gothic "ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!" notice in
   mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer
   rooms in the English-speaking world. The following text ran: "Das
   computermachine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.  Ist
   easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit
   spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das
   rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen
   und watch das blinkenlichten." This silliness dates back at least
   as far as the London University ATLAS site in the 1960s, but
   (judging by the idioms) was probably composed by an American at
   some still-earlier date.

BLOCK (blok) [From computer science usage] 1. vi. To delay while
   waiting for something.  "We're blocking until everyone gets here."
   2. in BLOCK ON vt. To block, waiting for (something).  "Lunch is
   blocked on Phil's arrival."

BLOCK TRANSFER COMPUTATIONS (blok trans'fer kom-pyoo-tay'shns) n.
   From the Dr. Who television series: in the show, it referred to
   computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not
   be performed by machines.  Used to refer to any task that should be
   expressible as an algorithm in theory, but isn't.

BLOW AWAY (bloh @-way') v. To remove files and directories from
   permanant storage with extreme prejudice, generally by accident.
   Oppose NUKE.

BLOW OUT (bloh owt) v. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as
   serious as CRASH AND BURN. See BLOW PAST.

BLOW PAST (bloh past) v. To BLOW OUT despite a safeguard.  "The server
   blew past the 5K reserve buffer."

BLT (blit, belt [very rarely]) v. To transfer a large contiguous package
   of information from one place to another.  This usage has outlasted
   the PDP-10 BLock Transfer instruction for which it derives.  See
   DD, CAT, BLAST, SNARF, Appendix B.

BLUE GLUE (bloo gloo) [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network
   Architecture) an incredibly losing and bletcherous protocol suite
   widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better.
   See FEAR AND LOATHING.

BLUE GOO (bloo goo) n. Term for "police" NANOBOTS intended to prevent
   GRAY GOO (q.v.), denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put
   ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and to promote
   truth, justice, and the American way, etc., etc. See
   NANOTECHNOLOGY.

BNF (bee-en-ef) n. Hacker acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a
   metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
   languages, command sets and the like. Widely used for language
   descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must
   usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this BNF
   for a postal address:

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

   <name-part> ::= <first-name> [<middle-part>] <last-name>

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

   <street-address> ::= [<apt>] <street-number> <street-name>

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

   This translates into English as: A postal-address consists of
   a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a
   zip-code part. A name-part consists of a first-name followed
   by an optional middle-part followed by a last-name. A middle-part
   consists of either a middle name or a middle initial followed
   by a dot. A street address consists of an optional apartment
   specifier followed by a street number, followed by a street name.
   A zip-part consts of a town-name, followed by a state code,
   followed by a zip code. Note that many things such as the format
   of a first-name, apartment specifier or zip-code are left
   unspecified. These are presumed to be obvious from context or
   detailed in another part of the specification the BNF is part of.

BOA (bo'uh) [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the
   floor in DINOSAUR PENS. It is rumored within IBM that 370 channel
   cables are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the
   boas get dangerous...

BOAT ANCHOR (boht an'kr) n. Like DOORSTOP (q.v.) but more severe,
   implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or
   useless.

BOGOMETER (boh-goh'm@-tr) n. An instrument to measure BOGOSITY,
   generally a conversational device, as in "my bogometer is reading
   in the red on that idea" or "I think you just bent the needle on my
   bogometer".

BOGON (bo'gon) [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
   doubtless reinforced by the similarity to "Vogon"] n. 1. The
   elementary particle of bogosity (see QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS).  For
   instance, "the ethernet is emitting bogons again," meaning that it
   is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query
   packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having
   the reply bit set instead of the query bit.  3. Any bogus or
   incorrectly formed packet sent on a network.  4. By extension, used
   to refer metasyntactically to any bogus thing, such as "I'd like to
   go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon."

BOGON FILTER (bo'gon fil'tr) n.  Any device, software or hardware,
   which limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons.
   Example: "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and
   the VAXen and now we're getting fewer dropped packets."

BOGOSITY (boh-gos-@-tee) n. 1. The degree to which something is BOGUS
   (q.v.).  At CMU, bogosity is measured with a bogometer; typical
   use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener
   might raise his hand and say, "My bogometer just triggered."  The
   agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (uL). 2. The
   potential field generated by a bogon flux; see QUANTUM
   BOGODYNAMICS.

BOGUS (boh'guhs) [WPI, Yale, Stanford] adj. 1. Non-functional.  "Your
   patches are bogus."  2. Useless.  "OPCON is a bogus program."  3.
   False.  "Your arguments are bogus."  4. Incorrect.  "That algorithm
   is bogus."  5. Silly.  "Stop writing those bogus sagas."  (This
   word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of
   RANDOM.)  [Etymological note from Lehman/Reid at CMU: "Bogus" was
   originally used (in this sense) at Princeton, in the late 60s.  It
   was used not particularly in the CS department, but all over
   campus.  It came to Yale, where one of us (Lehman) was an
   undergraduate, and (we assume) elsewhere through the efforts of
   Princeton alumni who brought the word with them from their alma
   mater.  In the Yale case, the alumnus is Michael Shamos, who was a
   graduate student at Yale and is now a faculty member here.  A
   glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was
   first popularized (e.g., autobogophobia: the fear of becoming
   bogotified).]

BOHR BUG (bor buhg) [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable BUG; one
   which manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined
   set of conditions. Antonym of HEISENBUG.

BOINK (boynk) [USENET] 1. To have sex with; compare BOUNCE, sense #3.
   2. After the original Peter Korn "Boinkcon" USENET parties, used
   for almost any net social gathering, e.g.  Miniboink, a small boink
   held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota
   in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San
   Francisco Bay Area.

BONDAGE-AND-DISCIPLINE LANGUAGE (bon'd@j @n dis'@-plin lang'w@j) A
   language such as Pascal, APL, or Prolog that, though ostensibly
   general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of
   "right programming" even though said theory is demonstrably
   inadequate for systems or even vanilla general-purpose programming.
   See LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.

BOOT (boot) [from "by one's bootstraps"] v.,n. To load and initialize
   the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer slang
   (having become jargon in the strict sense), but the following
   variants still are. COLD BOOT: a boot from a power- off condition.
   WARM BOOT: a reboot with the CPU and all devices already powered
   up, as after a hardware reset or software crash.

BOTTLENECKED (bot'l-nekt) adj. 1. Used by hackers specifically to
   describe hardware under which performance is usually limited by
   contention for one particular resource (such as disk, memory or
   processor CLOCKS); see BALANCED. 2. Less often, applied to the
   software analogue of sense #1, a slow code section or algorithm
   through which all computation must pass (see also HOT SPOT).

BOUNCE (bowns) v. 1. [UNIX] An electronic mail message which is
   undeliverable and returns an error notification to the sender is
   said to `bounce'. See also BOUNCE MESSAGE. 2. [Stanford] To play
   volleyball. "Bounce, bounce! Stop wasting time on the computer and
   get out to the court!" 3. To engage in sexual intercourse.

BOUNCE MESSAGE (bowns mes'@j) [UNIX] n. Notification message returned
   to sender by a site unable to relay EMAIL to the intended INTERNET
   ADDRESS recipient or the next link in a BANG PATH (see BOUNCE).
   Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a
   down relay site.  Bounce messages can themselves fail, with
   occasionally ugly results; see SORCERER'S APPRENTICE MODE.

BOXEN (bok'sn) pl n. [back-formation from VAXEN] Fanciful plural of
   `box' often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen', used to
   describe commodity UNIX hardware. The implication is that any two
   UNIX boxen are interchangeable.

BRAIN-DAMAGED (brayn'dam-@jd) [generalization of "Honeywell Brain
   Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain
   utter cretinisms in MULTICS] adj. Obviously wrong; CRETINOUS;
   DEMENTED.  There is an implication that the person responsible must
   have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better.
   Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it
   is unusable.

BRANCH TO FISHKILL (branch to fish'kill) [IBM, from the location of
   one of their facilities] n. Any unexpected jump in a program that
   produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See HYPERSPACE.

BREAK (brayk) v. 1. To cause to be broken (in any sense).  "Your
   latest patch to the system broke the TELNET server."  2. (of a
   program) To stop temporarily, so that it may be examined for
   debugging purposes.  The place where it stops is a BREAKPOINT.

BREAKAGE (brayk'@j) [IBM] n. The extra people that must be added to an
   organization because its master plan has changed; used esp. of
   software and hardware development teams.

BRITTLE (bri'tl) adj. Said of software that's easily broken.  Often
   describes the results of a research effort that were never intended
   to be robust, but equally can apply commercially developed
   software.

BROADCAST STORM (brod'kast storm) n. An incorrect packet broadcast
   on a network that causes most hosts to respond all at once,
   typically with wrong answers that start the process over again.
   Also called NETWORK MELTDOWN. See also CHERNOBYL PACKET.

BROKEN (broh'kn) adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs).  2.
   Behaving strangely; especially (of people), exhibiting extreme
   depression.

BROKET (broh'k@t, broh'ket) [by analogy with "bracket": a "broken
   bracket"] (primarily Stanford) n. Either of the characters "<" and
   ">".  (At MIT, and apparently in THE REAL WORLD (q.v.) as well,
   these are usually called ANGLE BRACKETS.)

BRUTE FORCE AND IGNORANCE (broot fohrs @nd ig'nohr-ans) n. A popular
   design technique at many software houses. Dogmatic adherence to
   design methodologies tends to encourage it. Characteristic of early
   LARVAL STAGE programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it.
   Often abbreviated BFI, as in: "Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's
   strictly from BFI."  Compare BOGOSITY.

BSD (bee-ess-dee) n. [acronym for Berkeley System Distribution] a
   family of UNIX versions for the DEC VAX developed by Bill Joy and
   others at UC Berkeley starting around 1980, incorporating TCP/IP
   networking enhancements and many other features. The BSD versions
   (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and commercial versions derived from them
   (SunOS and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the UNIX world
   until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after about 1986,
   and are still widely popular. See UNIX, USG UNIX.

BUCKY BITS (buh'kee bits) [primarily Stanford] n. The bits produced by
   the CTRL and META shift keys on a Stanford (or Knight) keyboard. It
   is rumored that these were in fact named for Buckminster Fuller
   during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Unfortunately,
   legend also has it that "Bucky" was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when
   *he* was consulting at Stanford and that he first suggested the
   idea of the meta key, so its bit was named after him. DOUBLE BUCKY:
   adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys.  "The command to burn all
   LEDs is double bucky F." See also META BIT, COKEBOTTLE.

BUFFER OVERFLOW (buhf'r oh'vr-floh) n. What typically happens when an
   OS or application is fed data faster than it can buffer and process
   it. Used metaphorically of human mental processes. Ex. "Sorry, I
   got four phone calls in three minutes last night and lost your
   message to a buffer overflow."

BUG (buhg) [from telephone terminology, "bugs in a telephone cable",
   blamed for noisy lines] n. An unwanted and unintended property of a
   program, esp. one which causes it to malfunction. See FEATURE.

BULLETPROOF (bul'@t-proof) adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation
   considered extremely robust; lossage-resistant; capable of
   correctly recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This
   is a rare and valued quality.

BUM (buhm) 1. v. To make highly efficient, either in time or space,
   often at the expense of clarity.  "I managed to bum three more
   instructions."  2. n. A small change to an algorithm to make it
   more efficient.  Usage: somewhat rare. See TUNE.

BUMP (buhmp) v. Synonym for increment.  Has the same meaning as C's ++
   operator. Used esp. of counter variables, pointers (see POINTER
   ARITHMETIC) and index dummies in for, while, and do-until loops.

BURBLE (ber'bl) v. Like FLAME, but connotes that the source is truly
   clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of
   deep contempt.

BUSY-WAIT (bi'zee-wayt) v. To wait on an event by SPINning through a
   tight or timed-delay loop that checks for the event on each pass,
   as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing
   execution on another part of the task. A wasteful technique, best
   avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may
   hog the processor.

BUZZ (buhz) v. To run in a very tight loop, perhaps without guarantee
   of getting out. See SPIN.

BWQ [bee duhb'l-yoo kyoo) [IBM] n. Buzz Word Quotient. Usually roughly
   proportional to BOGOSITY. See TLA.

BYTESEXUAL (biet-seks'u-@l) adj. Said of hardware, denotes
   willingness to compute or pass data in either BIG ENDIAN or LITTLE
   ENDIAN format (depending, presumably, on a mode bit somewhere).

            = C =

C (see) n. 1. The third letter of the Latin alphabet. 2. The name of a
   programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie during the early
   1970s and first used to implement UNIX (q.v.). So called because
   many features derived from an earlier interpreter named 'B' in
   commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL; before Bjarne Stroustrup
   settled the question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate
   over whether C's successor should be named `D' or 'P'.  C became
   immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the
   dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications
   programming. See LANGUAGES OF CHOICE.

CAMBRIDGE NOTATION (kaym'brij no-ta'shn) [LISP] n. The now-standard
   way of writing LISP expressions as nested lists, with parens and
   spaces; as opposed to the earlier and technically purer practice of
   writing full S-expressions with cons dots. Supposedly invented as a
   KLUGE because a full parser for S-expressions would have been
   harder to write.

CAN (can) v. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when
   the person doing the deed is an operator, as in CANNED FROM THE
   CONSOLE. Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can that
   print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!". Synymous with GUN.

CANONICAL (k@-nahn'i-kl) adj. The usual or standard state or manner
   of something.  A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI
   Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon.  Over his loud
   objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in
   his presence, and eventually it began to sink in.  Finally, in one
   conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion
   without thinking.  Steele: "Aha!  We've finally got you talking
   jargon too!"  Stallman: "What did he say?"  Steele: "He just used
   `canonical' in the canonical way."

CASTERS UP MODE (cas'trz uhp mohd) [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for
   `broken' or `down'.

CAT (cat) [from UNIX cat(1)] v. To spew an entire (notionally large)
   file to the screen or some other output sink without pause; by
   extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared target or
   with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage: considered
   silly. Rare outside UNIX sites. See also DD, BLT.

CATATONIA (kat-@-toh'nee-uh) n. A condition of suspended animation
   in which the system is in a wedged (CATATONIC) state.

CDR (ku'dr) [from LISP] v. With "down", to trace down a list of
   elements.  "Shall we cdr down the agenda?"  Usage: silly.

CELL-REPAIR MACHINES (sel r:-peir' m:-sheens') n. An often-discussed
   probable consequence of NANOTECHNOLOGY; NANOBOTS specifically
   programmed to repair tissue at the cellular level. Possible uses
   include reversing freezing damage from CRYONICS procedures and
   correction of mutagen-damaged DNA (including eradication of
   retrovirii and oncogenes).

CHAD (chad) n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after
   they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called
   SELVAGE and PERF. 2. obs. the confetti-like paper bits punched out
   of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff'.

CHAIN (chayn) [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] v. When used of
   programming languages, refers to a statement that allows a parent
   executable to hand off execution to a child without going through
   the OS command interpreter. The state of the parent program is lost
   and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be
   common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for
   backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in
   particular most UNIX programmers will think of this as an EXEC.
   Oppose the more modern SUBSHELL.

CHAR (keir; [rarely] char) n. Shorthand for `character'. Esp. used by
   C programmers, as `char' is C's typename for character data.

CHASE POINTERS (chays uh poyn'tr) v. To go through multiple levels of
   indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure.
   Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very
   common data type.

CHERNOBYL PACKET (cher-no'b@l pa'k@t) n. An IP Ethergram with both
   source and destination Ether and IP address set as the respective
   broadcast address. So called because it induces NETWORK MELTDOWN.

CHINESE RAVS (chie'neez ravs) [MIT] n. Pot-stickers. Kuo-teh. Gyoza.
   Oriental dumplings, especially when pan-fried rather than steamed.
   A favorite hacker appetizer. See ORIENTAL FOOD, STIR-FRIED RANDOM.

CHOKE (chohk) vi.  To reject input, often ungracefully.  Examples: "I
   tried building X, but cpp choked on all those #define's." See BARF,
   GAG.

CHOMP (chomp) v. To lose; to chew on something of which more was
   bitten off than one can.  Probably related to gnashing of teeth.
   See BAGBITER.  A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting
   of the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet,
   and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a
   biting action.  The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb
   Doubling).

CHRISTMAS TREE PACKET (krist'm@s tree pa'k@t) n. A packet with every
   single option set for whatever protocol is in use.

CHROME (krohm) [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. Showy features
   added to attract users, but which contribute little or nothing to
   the power of a system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome!"
   Distinguished from BELLS AND WHISTLES by the fact that the former
   are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for
   featurefulness.

CHURCH OF THE SUB-GENIUS (cherch @v dh@ suhb-gee'-ny@s) A mutant
   offshoot of DISCORDIANISM launched in 1981 as a spoof of
   fundamentalist Christianity by the "Rev." Ivan Stang, a brilliant
   satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich
   source of bizarre imagery and references such as: "Bob" the divine
   drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists and the
   Stark Fist of Removal. Much Sub-Genius theory is concerned with the
   acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of "slack".

CLASSIC C (klas'ik see) n.  The C programming language as defined in
   the first edition of the book ``The C Programming Language'' by
   ``Brian W.  Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie'' with some small
   additions.  It is also known as ``K & R C.''  The name came into
   use during the standardisation process for C by the ANSI X3J11
   committee.

CLOCKS (kloks) n. Processor logic cycles, so called because each
   generally corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing.
   The relative execution times of instructions on a machine are
   usually discussed in `clocks' rather than absolute fractions of a
   second.

CLONE (klohn) n. 1. An exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone
   of their product."  2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their
   product is a clone of our product." 3. A PC-BUS/ISA or
   EISA-compatible 80x86 based microcomputer (in-context shorthand for
   "PC clone"). 3. In the construction UNIX CLONE: An OS designed to
   deliver a UNIX-lookalike environment sans UNIX license fees, or
   with additional "mission-critical" features such as support for
   real-time programming.

CLOSE (klohz) n. Abbreviation for "close (or right) parenthesis", used
   when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity.  See OPEN.

CLUSTERGEEKING (kluh'ster-gee`king) [CMU] n. An activity defined by
   spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than
   most people spend breathing.

COBOL FINGERS (koh'bol fing'grs) n. Reported from Sweden, a
   (hypothetical) disease one might get from programming in COBOL. The
   language requires extremely voluminous code. Programming too much
   in COBOL causes the fingers to wear down (by endless typing), until
   short stubs remain. This malformity is called COBOL FINGERS. "I
   refuse to type in all that source code again, it will give me cobol
   fingers!"

CODE GRINDER (kohd grien'dr) n. 1. A SUIT-wearing minion of the sort
   hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to
   implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable
   horrors. This is about as far from hackerdom as you can get and
   still touch a computer. Connotes pity. See REAL WORLD. 2. Used of
   or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative
   ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive
   technique, rule-boundedness, and utter lack of imagination.

CODE POLICE (kohd p@-lees') [by analogy with "thought police"] n. A
   mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into
   one's office and arrest one for violating style rules. May be used
   either "seriously" (to underline a claim that a particular style
   violation is dangerous) or (more often) ironically (to suggest that
   the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive
   weenies).

CODEWALKER (kohd'wok-r) n. A program component that traverses other
   programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front
   ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database
   front-ends. As in "This language extension would require a
   codewalker to implement."

COKEBOTTLE (kohk'bot-l) n. Any very unusual character.  MIT people
   used to complain about the "control-meta-cokebottle" commands at
   SAIL, and SAIL people complained right back about the
   "altmode-altmode-cokebottle" commands at MIT. Since the demise of
   the SPACE-CADET KEYBOARD this is no longer a serious usage, but may
   be invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or
   non-intuitive keystroke command.

COME FROM (kuhm fruhm) n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to
   the `go to'; COME FROM <label> would cause the referenced label to
   act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it
   control would quietly fall through to the statement following the
   COME FROM. COME FROM was first proposed in a Datamation article in
   1973 that parodied the then-raging `structured programming' wars
   (see CONSIDERED HARMFUL). It was actually implemented for the first
   time seventeen years later, in C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL,
   RETROCOMPUTING); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from
   shock.

COMPRESS (k@m-pres') [UNIX] v. When used witchout a qualifier,
   generally refers to CRUNCHing of a file using a particular C
   implementation of Lempel-Ziv compression by James A. Woods et. al.
   and widely circulated via USENET. Use of CRUNCH (q.v.) itself in
   this sense is rare among UNIX hackers.

COMPUTER GEEK (kuhm-pyoo-tr geek) n.  One who eats [computer] bugs
   for a living. One who fulfills all of the dreariest negative
   stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced
   monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be
   used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare
   black-on-black usage of "nigger". A computer geek may be either a
   fundamentally clueless individual or a true-hacker in LARVAL STAGE.
   Also called TURBO NERD, TURBO GEEK. See also CLUSTERGEEKING.

COMPUTRON (kom-pyoo-tron) n. A notional unit of computing power
   combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned
   roughly in instructions-per- sec times megabytes-of-main-store
   types megabytes-of-mass-storage.  "That machine can't run GNU
   Emacs, it doesn't have enough computrons!" This term is usually
   used in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible
   commodity good like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See BITTY
   BOX, GET A REAL COMPUTER, TOY, CRANK.

CONNECTOR CONSPIRACY (k@-nek'ter k@n-spi'r@h-see) [probably came into
   prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose
   connectors match anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers
   (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up
   with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff,
   thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface
   devices.

CONS (kons) [from LISP] 1. v. To add a new element to a list.  2.
   CONS UP: v. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an
   example".

CONSIDERED HARMFUL (k@n-si'derd harm'fl) adj. Edsger Dijkstra's
   infamous March 1968 CACM note, _Goto_Statement_Considered_Harmful_,
   fired the first salvo in the "structured programming" wars. In the
   years since then a number of both serious papers and parodies have
   borne titles of the form "X considered Y" in reference to it. The
   "structured programming" wars eventually blew over with the
   realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has
   remained as a persistent minor in-joke.

COOKIE MONSTER (ku'kee mon'str) n. Any of a family of early (1970s)
   hacks reported on ITS and elswhere that would lock up either the
   victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the operator's
   console (on a batch mainframe), repeatedly demanding "I WANT A
   COOKIE". The required responses ranged in complexity from "HAVE A
   COOKIE" upward. See also WABBIT.

COPYLEFT (kop'ee-left) n. 1. The copyright notice carried by GNU
   EMACS and other Free Software Foundation software granting re-use
   and reproduction rights to all comers. 2. By extension, any
   copyright notice intended to achieve similar aims.

CORE (kor) n. Main storage or DRAM. Dates from the days of
   ferrite-core memory; now archaic, but still used in the UNIX
   community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like
   same.

CORE DUMP (kor duhmp) n. [from UNIX] 1. Catastrophic program failure
   due to internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans passing out
   or registering extreme shock. Usage: rare.

CORE WARS (kohr wohrz) n. A game between "assembler" programs in a
   simulated machine, where the objective is to kill your opponent's
   program by overwriting it. This was popularized by A.K. Dewdney's
   column in _Scientific_American_. It is rumored that the game is a
   civilized version of an amusement common on pre-MMU multitasking
   machines.

CORGE (korj) n. Yet another meta-syntactic variable, invented by Mike
   Galleher and propagated by the Gosmacs documentation. See GRAULT.

CP/M (see-pee-em) [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
   microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for Z-80 based
   machines, very popular in the late 1970s until virtually wiped out
   by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981 (legend has it
   that Kildall's company blew their chance to write the PC's OS
   because Kildall decided to spend the day IBM's reps wanted to meet
   with him enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private plane).
   Many of its features and conventions strongly resemble those of
   early DEC operating systems such as OS9, RSTS and RSX-11.  See
   MS-DOS, OPERATING SYSTEM.

CRACKER (krak'r) n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined c.
   1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of HACKER,
   see definition #6.

CRANK (krank) [from automotive slang] v. Verb used to describe the
   performance of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This
   box cranks about 6 MegaFLOPS, with a burst mode of twice that on
   vectorized operations"

CRASH (krash) 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure.  Most often
   said of the system (q.v., definition #1), sometimes of magnetic
   disk drives.  "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk
   crash."  A disk crash which entails the read/write heads dropping
   onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also
   be referred to as a "head crash".  2. v. To fail suddenly.  "Has
   the system just crashed?"  Also used transitively to indicate the
   cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both).
   "Those idiots playing SPACEWAR crashed the system."  3. Sometimes
   said of people hitting the sack after a long HACKING RUN, see GRONK
   OUT.

CRASH AND BURN (krash @n bern) v.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode
   of the conclusion of the car chase scene from Steve McQueen's
   "Bullitt".  Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer and
   lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and
   burn generators.

CRAWLING HORROR (kraw'lng hor'@r) n. Ancient crufty hardware or
   software that forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site
   refuse to let die. Like DUSTY DECK or GONKULATOR, but connotes that
   the thing described is not just an irritation but an active menace
   to health and sanity.  "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay
   us to maintain one big Fortran II application from nineteen-sixty-X
   that's a real crawling horror...". Compare WOMBAT.

CRAY (kray) n. 1. One of the line of supercomputers designed by Cray
   Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all.

CRAYON (krayon) n. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers.  More
   specifically implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,
   probably male, and and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective
   of gender).  Unicos systems types who have a Unix background tend
   not to be described as crayons.

CREEPING FEATURITIS (kree'ping fee-ch@r-ie't@s) n. Describes a
   systematic tendency to load more CHROME onto systems at the expence
   of whatever ELEGANCE they may have posessed when originally
   designed. See FEEPING CREATURITIS.  "You know, the main problem
   with BSD UNIX has always been creeping featuritis".

CRETIN (kre'tn) 1. n. Congenital LOSER (q.v.).  2. CRETINOUS: adj.
   See BLETCHEROUS and BAGBITING.  Usage: somewhat ad hominem.

CRIPPLEWARE (krip'@l-weir) n. SHAREWARE which has some important
   functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users
   to pay for a working version. See also GUILTWARE.

CRLF (ker'lif, sometimes krul'lif) n. A carriage return (CR) followed
   by a line feed (LF).  See TERPRI.

CROCK (krok) [from mainstream "crock of shit"] n. 1. An awkward
   feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner.
   Example: Using small integers to represent error codes without the
   program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, UNIX
   make(1)) is a crock.  2. Also, a technique that works acceptably
   but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for
   example depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit
   patterns so that you can use instructions as data words too; a
   tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure.

CROSS-POST (kros'pohst) [USENET] To post an article to several
   newsgroups or topics.

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!"

CRUFTY (kruhf'tee) [from "cruddy"] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly
   overly complex.  "This is standard old crufty DEC software".  Hence
   CRUFT, n. shoddy construction.  2. Unpleasant, especially to the
   touch, often with encrusted junk.  Like spilled coffee smeared with
   peanut butter and catsup.  Hence CRUFT, n. disgusting mess.  3.
   Generally unpleasant.  CRUFTY or CRUFTIE n. A small crufty object
   (see FROB); often one which doesn't fit well into the scheme of
   things.  "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties
   (or, random cruft)."  [Note: Does CRUFT have anything to do with
   the Cruft Lab at Harvard?  I don't know, though I was a Harvard
   student. - GLS]

CRUFT TOGETHER, CRUFT UP (kruhft too-ge'thr, kruhft uhp) v. To throw
   together something ugly but temporarily workable. Like v. KLUGE,
   but more pejorative. See CRUFTY.

CRUNCH (kruhnch) v. 1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or
   complicated way.  Connotes an essentially trivial operation which
   is nonetheless painful to perform.  The pain may be due to the
   triviality being imbedded in a loop from 1 to 1000000000.  "FORTRAN
   programs do mostly number crunching."  2. To reduce the size of a
   file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations
   completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman
   code.  (The file ends up looking like a paper document would if
   somebody crunched the paper into a wad.)  Since such compression
   usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as
   counting repeated characters (such as spaces) the term is doubly
   appropriate.  (This meaning is usually used in the construction
   "file crunch(ing)" to distinguish it from "number crunch(ing)".)
   See COMPRESS.  3. n. The character "#".  Usage: used at Xerox and
   CMU, among other places. See ASCII.

CRUNCHA CRUNCHA CRUNCHA (kruhnchah kruhnchah kruhnchah) interj. An
   encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in
   serious GROVELLING. Also describes a notional sound made by
   grovelling hardware. See WUGGA WUGGA.

CRYONICS (kry-o'niks) n. The practice of freezing oneself in hopes of
   being revived in the future by CELL REPAIR MACHINES. A possible
   route to technological immortality already taken by 1990 by more
   than a handful of persons with terminal illnesses.

CTSS (see-tee-ess-ess) n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early
   (1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing
   operating systems. Cited here because it was ancestral to MULTICS,
   UNIX, and ITS (q.v.).

CUBING (kyoo'bing) [parallel with "tubing"] v. 1. Hacking on an IPSC
   (Intel Personal SuperComputer) hypercube.  "Louella's gone cubing
   AGAIN!!"  2. An indescribable form of self-torture, see sense #1.

CUSPY (kuhs'pee) [from the DEC acronym CUSP, for Commonly Used System
   Program, i.e., a utility program used by many people] [WPI] adj. 1.
   (of a program) Well-written.  2. Functionally excellent.  A program
   which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy.  See
   RUDE.

CYBERPUNK (sie'ber-puhnk) [orig. by SF critic Garder Dozois] n.,adj. A
   subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making
   novel _Neuromancer_. Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and
   the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the
   role of computers and hackers in futures in ways hackers have since
   found both irritatingly naive and tremendously stimulating.
   Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived
   but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series. See CYBERSPACE, ICE,
   GO FLATLINE.

CYBERSPACE (sie'ber-spays) n. Notional "information-space" loaded with
   visual cues and navigable with brain-computer interfaces called
   "cyberspace decks"; a characteristic prop of CYBERPUNK SF. At time
   of writing (1990) serious efforts to construct VIRTUAL REALITY
   interfaces modelled explicitly on CYBERSPACE are already under way,
   using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular
   TV headsets. Few hackers are prepared to outright deny the
   possibility of a cyberspace someday evolving out of THE NETWORK.