The Jargon Lexicon
= I =
=====
I didn't change anything!: interj. An aggrieved cry often
heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The
{canonical} reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the
same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also {one-line fix}.
This is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an
obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software
change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added
to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon
close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the
program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but
which actually {hosed} the code completely.
I see no X here.: Hackers (and the interactive computer
games they write) traditionally favor this slightly marked usage
over other possible equivalents such as "There's no X here!" or
"X is missing." or "Where's the X?". This goes back to the
original PDP-10 {ADVENT}, which would respond in this wise if
you asked it to do something involving an object not present at
your location in the game.
IBM: /I-B-M/ Inferior But Marketable; It's Better
Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning;
Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-{infinite} number of even
less complimentary expansions, including `International Business
Machines'. See {TLA}. These abbreviations illustrate the
considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward the
`industry leader' (see {fear and loathing}).
What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level isn't
so much that they are underpowered and overpriced (though that does
count against them), but that the designs are incredibly archaic,
{crufty}, and {elephantine} ... and you can't *fix* them
-- source code is locked up tight, and programming tools are
expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you've found
them. With the release of the UNIX-based RIOS family this may have
begun to change -- but then, we thought that when the PC-RT came
out, too.
In the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this lexicon now
includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these derive from
some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within IBM's own
beleaguered hacker underground.
IBM discount: n. A price increase. Outside IBM, this
derives from the common perception that IBM products are generally
overpriced (see {clone}); inside, it is said to spring from a
belief that large numbers of IBM employees living in an area cause
prices to rise.
ICBM address: n. (Also `missile address') The form used to
register a site with the Usenet mapping project includes a blank
for longitude and latitude, preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy.
This is actually used for generating geographically-correct maps of
Usenet links on a plotter; however, it has become traditional to
refer to this as one's `ICBM address' or `missile address', and
many people include it in their {sig block} with that name. (A
real missile address would include target altitude.)
ice: n. [coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by
William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for
`Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in
Gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting
to literally kill the intruder). Also, `icebreaker': a program
designed for cracking security on a system.
Neither term is in serious use yet as of mid-1993, but many hackers
find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in
the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be
confused with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit emulator".
idempotent: adj. [from mathematical techspeak] Acting as if
used only once, even if used multiple times. This term is often
used with respect to {C} header files, which contain common
definitions and declarations to be included by several source
files. If a header file is ever included twice during the same
compilation (perhaps due to nested #include files), compilation
errors can result unless the header file has protected itself
against multiple inclusion; a header file so protected is said to
be idempotent. The term can also be used to describe an
initialization subroutine that is arranged to perform some critical
action exactly once, even if the routine is called several times.
If you want X, you know where to find it.: There is a legend
that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of {C}, once responded to demands
for features resembling those of what at the time was a much more
popular language by observing "If you want PL/I, you know where to
find it." Ever since, this has been hackish standard form for
fending off requests to alter a new design to mimic some older
(and, by implication, inferior and {baroque}) one. The case X =
{Pascal} manifests semi-regularly on Usenet's comp.lang.c
newsgroup. Indeed, the case X = X has been reported in discussions
of graphics software (see {X}).
ifdef out: /if'def owt/ v. Syn. for {condition out},
specific to {C}.
ill-behaved: adj. 1. [numerical analysis] Said of an
algorithm or computational method that tends to blow up because of
accumulated roundoff error or poor convergence properties.
2. Software that bypasses the defined {OS} interfaces to do
things (like screen, keyboard, and disk I/O) itself, often in a way
that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or
which is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software.
In the IBM PC/MS-DOS world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true)
to the effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance
penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are
ill-behaved. See also {bare metal}. Oppose {well-behaved},
compare {PC-ism}. See {mess-dos}.
IMHO: // abbrev. [from SF fandom via Usenet; abbreviation for
`In My Humble Opinion'] "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be
avoided, as mistyping something in the wrong case can cause
hard-to-detect errors -- and they look too Pascalish anyhow."
Also seen in variant forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble
Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: prov. [Usenet] Since
{Usenet} first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has grown
exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the
other hand, most people feel the {signal-to-noise ratio} of
Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as
mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the
net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these
gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase
"Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke,
hauled out any time someone grumbles about the {S/N ratio} or
the huge and steadily increasing volume, or the possible loss of a
key node or link, or the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses
post copyrighted material, etc., etc., etc.
in the extreme: adj. A preferred superlative suffix for many
hackish terms. See, for example, `obscure in the extreme' under
{obscure}, and compare {highly}.
inc: /ink/ v. Verbal (and only rarely written) shorthand
for increment, i.e. `increase by one'. Especially used by
assembly programmers, as many assembly languages have an `inc'
mnemonic. Antonym: {dec}.
incantation: n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure
command that one must mutter at a system to attain a desired
result. Not used of passwords or other explicit security features.
Especially used of tricks that are so poorly documented that they
must be learned from a {wizard}. "This compiler normally
locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you
{mutter} the right incantation they will be forced into text
space."
include: vt. [Usenet] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole)
of another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in
a reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response.
See the discussion of inclusion styles under "Hacker Writing
Style". 2. [from {C}] `#include ' has
appeared in {sig block}s to refer to a notional `standard
{disclaimer} file'.
include war: n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a
discussion {thread}, a practice that tends to annoy readers. In
a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as Usenet, this can lead
to {flame}s and the urge to start a {kill file}.
indent style: n. [C programmers] The rules one uses to
indent code in a readable fashion. There are four major C indent
styles, described below; all have the aim of making it easier for
the reader to visually track the scope of control constructs. The
significant variable is the placement of `{' and `}'
with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and to the guard or
controlling statement (`if', `else', `for',
`while', or `do') on the block, if any.
`K&R style' -- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the
examples in {K&R} are formatted this way. Also called `kernel
style' because the UNIX kernel is written in it, and the `One True
Brace Style' (abbrev. 1TBS) by its partisans. The basic indent
shown here is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; four spaces are
occasionally seen, but are much less common.
if (cond) {
}
`Allman style' -- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who
wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called
`BSD style'). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and
Algol. Basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four
spaces are just as common (esp. in C++ code).
if (cond)
{
}
`Whitesmiths style' -- popularized by the examples that came
with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent
per level shown here is eight spaces, but four spaces are
occasionally seen.
if (cond)
{
}
`GNU style' -- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always
four spaces per level, with `{' and `}' halfway between the
outer and inner indent levels.
if (cond)
{
}
Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most
common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly
universal, but is now much less common (the opening brace tends to
get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an `if'
or `while', which is a {Bad Thing}). Defenders of 1TBS
argue that any putative gain in readability is less important than
their style's relative economy with vertical space, which enables
one to see more code on one's screen at once. Doubtless these
issues will continue to be the subject of {holy wars}.
index: n. See {coefficient of X}.
infant mortality: n. It is common lore among hackers (and in
the electronics industry at large; this term is possibly techspeak
by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off
exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until
the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O
devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated
for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and
wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such
failures are often referred to as `infant mortality' problems
(or, occasionally, as `sudden infant death syndrome'). See
{bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}.
infinite: adj. Consisting of a large number of objects;
extreme. Used very loosely as in: "This program produces infinite
garbage." "He is an infinite loser." The word most likely to
follow `infinite', though, is {hair}. (It has been pointed
out that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair.)
These uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. The term
`semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some
resource, is also heard. "This compiler is taking a semi-infinite
amount of time to optimize my program." See also {semi}.
infinite loop: n. One that never terminates (that is, the
machine {spin}s or {buzz}es forever and goes {catatonic}).
There is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's
exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: "The Cray-3 is so fast it can
execute an infinite loop in under 2 seconds!"
Infinite-Monkey Theorem: n. "If you put an {infinite}
number of monkeys at typewriters, eventually one will bash out the
script for Hamlet." (One may also hypothesize a small number of
monkeys and a very long period of time.) This theorem asserts
nothing about the intelligence of the one {random} monkey that
eventually comes up with the script (and note that the mob will
also type out all the possible *incorrect* versions of
Hamlet). It may be referred to semi-seriously when justifying a
{brute force} method; the implication is that, with enough
resources thrown at it, any technical challenge becomes a
{one-banana problem}.
This theorem was first popularized by the astronomer Sir Arthur
Eddington. It became part of the idiom of through the classic
short story "Inflexible Logic" by Russell Maloney, and many
younger hackers know it through a reference in Douglas Adams's
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
infinity: n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in
a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data
type, whatever). 2. `minus infinity': The smallest such value,
not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus
infinity. In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is
2^(N-1) - 1 but minus infinity is -
(2^(N-1)), not -(2^(N-1) - 1). Note also that this
is different from "time T equals minus infinity", which is
closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.
Infocom: n. A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to
1989, that commercialized the MDL parser technology used for
{Zork} to produce a line of text adventure games that remain
favorites among hackers. Infocom's games were intelligent, funny,
witty, erudite, irreverent, challenging, satirical, and most
thoroughly hackish in spirit. The physical game packages from
Infocom are now prized collector's items. The software,
thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were written in a kind
of P-code and distributed with a P-code interpreter core, and
freeware emulators for that interpreter have been written to permit
the P-code to be run on platforms the games never originally
graced.
initgame: /in-it'gaym/ n. [IRC] An {IRC} version of the
venerable trivia game "20 questions", in which one user changes
his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named
entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with
the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a
courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a
4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status,
reality-status. For example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive,
Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can be surprisingly
addictive. See also {hing}.
insanely great: adj. [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also
BSD UNIX people via Bill Joy] Something so incredibly {elegant}
that it is imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant
of {hacker}-natures.
INTERCAL: /in't*r-kal/ n. [said by the authors to stand
for `Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym'] A computer
language designed by Don Woods and James Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL
is purposely different from all other computer languages in all
ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally
unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will
make the style of the language clear:
It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if
one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:
DO :1 <- #0$#256
any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since
this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made
to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have
happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would
be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.
INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used
by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language
has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently
enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an
alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ...
appreciation of the language on Usenet.
interesting: adj. In hacker parlance, this word has strong
connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers
relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out
of the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times".
Oppose {trivial}, {uninteresting}.
Internet address:: n. 1. [techspeak] An absolute network
address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar
is a {sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly
including periods itself. Contrast with {bang path}; see also
{network, the} and {network address}. All Internet machines
and most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a
large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written
since 1980 or so. See also {bang path}, {domainist}.
2. More loosely, any network address reachable through Internet;
this includes {bang path} addresses and some internal corporate
and government networks.
Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the
four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed
by a selection of geographical domains:
com
commercial organizations
edu
educational institutions
gov
U.S. government civilian sites
mil
U.S. military sites
Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in
the U.S. or Canada.
us
sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains
su
sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see {kremvax}).
uk
sites in the United Kingdom
Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty
states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal
abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for
academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other
top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.
interrupt: 1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that
interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts
flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also
{trap}. 2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker.
Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt -- have you seen Joe
recently?" See {priority interrupt}. 3. Under MS-DOS, nearly
synonymous with `system call', because the OS and BIOS routines
are both called using the INT instruction (see {{interrupt list,
the}}) and because programmers so often have to bypass the OS
(going
directly to a BIOS interrupt) to get reasonable
performance.
interrupt list, the:: n. [MS-DOS] The list of all known
software interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for IBM
PCs and compatibles, maintained and made available for free
redistribution by Ralf Brown . As of late
1992, it had grown to approximately two megabytes in length.
interrupts locked out: adj. When someone is ignoring you.
In a restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the
waitress's attention, a hacker might well observe "She must have
interrupts locked out". The synonym `interrupts disabled' is
also common. Variations abound; "to have one's interrupt mask bit
set" and "interrupts masked out" are also heard. See also
{spl}.
IRC: /I-R-C/ n. [Internet Relay Chat] A worldwide "party
line" network that allows one to converse with others in real
time. IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers, each of
which accepts connections from client programs, one per user. The
IRC community and the {Usenet} and {MUD} communities overlap
to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have
discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some Usenet jargon
has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as
{emoticon}s. There is also a vigorous native jargon,
represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'. See also
{talk mode}.
iron: n. Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of
{mainframe} class with big metal cabinets housing relatively
low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern
supercomputers). Often in the phrase {big iron}. Oppose
{silicon}. See also {dinosaur}.
Iron Age: n. In the history of computing, 1961--1971 -- the
formative era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when
ferrite-core {dinosaur}s ruled the earth. The Iron Age began,
ironically enough, with the delivery of the first minicomputer (the
PDP-1) and ended with the introduction of the first commercial
microprocessor (the Intel 4004) in 1971. See also {Stone Age};
compare {elder days}.
iron box: n. [UNIX/Internet] A special environment set up to
trap a {cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough
to be traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the
cracker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed
to keep him interested and logged on. See also {back door},
{firewall machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's
account in "{The Cuckoo's Egg}" of how he made and used
one (see the {Bibliography} in Appendix C). Compare {padded
cell}.
ironmonger: n. [IBM] A hardware specialist (derogatory).
Compare {sandbender}, {polygon pusher}.
ITS:: /I-T-S/ n. 1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an
influential but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for
PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much
AI-hacker jargon derives from ITS folklore, and to have been `an
ITS hacker' qualifies one instantly as an old-timer of the most
venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations,
including transparent file sharing between machines and
terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was
shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run
essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The
shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end
of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see
{high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is
maintaining one `live' ITS site at its computer museum (right
next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is
still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use
(however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). 2. A
mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a
bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see
{troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to
continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language
hand-hacking that supported only monocase 6-character filenames in
one directory per account remains superior to today's state of
commercial art (their venom against UNIX is particularly intense).
See also {holy wars}, {Weenix}.
IWBNI: // Abbreviation for `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare
{WIBNI}.
IYFEG: // [Usenet] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite
Ethnic Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling ethnic jokes on
the net to avoid offending anyone. See {JEDR}.