The Jargon Lexicon
= M =
=====
M: pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers) [SI] See
{{quantifiers}}.
macdink: /mak'dink/ vt. [from the Apple Macintosh, which
is said to encourage such behavior] To make many incremental and
unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the
subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. "When
I left at 11 P.M. last night, he was still macdinking the
slides for his presentation." See also {fritterware},
{window shopping}.
machinable: adj. Machine-readable. Having the {softcopy}
nature.
machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ n. [pun on `megaflops', a
coinage for `millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second']
Refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by
computer manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to get half
the quoted speed. See {Your mileage may vary}, {benchmark}.
Macintoy: /mak'in-toy/ n. The Apple Macintosh, considered
as a {toy}. Less pejorative than {Macintrash}.
Macintrash: /mak'in-trash`/ n. The Apple Macintosh, as
described by a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from
the *real computer* by the interface. The term {maggotbox}
has been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle area of
North Carolina. Compare {Macintoy}. See also {beige
toaster}, {WIMP environment}, {point-and-drool interface},
{drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}.
macro: /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. A name (possibly followed
by a formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic
expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the
substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This
definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those
won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have
changed over time.
The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged
the use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device.
During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and
sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as {HLL}s, only to fall
from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler
programming (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is
most often used in connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one
of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion
facility (such as TeX or UNIX's [nt]roff suite).
Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective
`macros' is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose
application control language (whether or not the language is
actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities
such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors
(and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).
macro-: pref. Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the
mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical
people) this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend
to restrict the latter to quantification.
macrology: /mak-rol'*-jee/ n. 1. Set of usually complex or
crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in
{LISP}, {TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The art and
science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense 1.
Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike
archeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike
construction. See also {boxology}.
macrotape: /mak'roh-tayp/ n. An industry-standard reel of
tape, as opposed to a {microtape}. See also {round tape}.
maggotbox: /mag'*t-boks/ n. See {Macintrash}. This is
even more derogatory.
magic: adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to
explain; compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third
Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic." "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of
magic bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an
8-bit byte in three instructions." 2. Characteristic of something
that works although no one really understands why (this is
especially called {black magic}). 3. [Stanford] A feature not
generally publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or
a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. Compare
{black magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy
wizardry}.
For more about hackish `magic', see {A Story About `Magic'}
in Appendix A.
magic cookie: n. [UNIX] 1. Something passed between routines
or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a
capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small
data objects that contain data encoded in a strange or
intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on non-UNIX OSes with a
non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell(3)' may
be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to
`fseek(3)', but not operated on in any meaningful way. The
phrase `it hands you a magic cookie' means it returns a result
whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the
same or some other program later. 2. An in-band code for changing
graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or
performing other control functions (see also {cookie}). Some
older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding to
mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a {glitch} (or
occasionally a `turd'; compare {mouse droppings}). See also
{cookie}.
magic number: n. [UNIX/C] 1. In source code, some
non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of
a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line
({hardcoded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a
commented `#define'. Magic numbers in this sense are bad
style. 2. A number that encodes critical information used in an
algorithm in some opaque way. The classic examples of these are
the numbers used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a
linear congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This
sense actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense
1. 3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file
to indicate its type to a utility. Under UNIX, the system and
various applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish
between types of executable file by looking for a magic number.
Once upon a time, these magic numbers were PDP-11 branch
instructions that skipped over header data to the start of
executable code; 0407, for example, was octal for `branch 16 bytes
relative'. Nowadays only a {wizard} knows the spells to create
magic numbers. How do you choose a fresh magic number of your own?
Simple -- you pick one at random. See? It's magic!
*The* magic number, on the other hand, is 7+/-2. See
"The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on
our capacity for processing information" by George Miller, in the
"Psychological Review" 63:81-97 (1956). This classic paper
established the number of distinct items (such as numeric digits)
that humans can hold in short-term memory. Among other things,
this strongly influenced the interface design of the phone system.
magic smoke: n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that
enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is
similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about
combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a
chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work
any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.
Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while
hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing
EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened.
One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that
*after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under
the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs -- the die was
glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased
it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know,
it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke
didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's
Law}.
mail storm: n. [from {broadcast storm}, influenced by
`maelstrom'] What often happens when a machine with an Internet
connection and active users re-connects after extended downtime ---
a flood of incoming mail that brings the machine to its knees.
mailbomb: (also mail bomb) [Usenet] 1. v. To send, or
urge others to send, massive amounts of {email} to a single
system or person, esp. with intent to crash or {spam} the
recipient's system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a perceived
serious offense. Mailbombing is itself widely regarded as a
serious offense -- it can disrupt email traffic or other
facilities for innocent users on the victim's system, and in
extreme cases, even at upstream sites. 2. n. An automatic
procedure with a similar effect. 3. n. The mail sent. Compare
{letterbomb}, {nastygram}, {BLOB} (sense 2).
mailing list: n. (often shortened in context to `list')
1. An {email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though
that word is never used in this connection) for many other email
addresses. Some mailing lists are simple `reflectors',
redirecting mail sent to them to the list of recipients. Others
are filtered by humans or programs of varying degrees of
sophistication; lists filtered by humans are said to be
`moderated'. 2. The people who receive your email when you send
it to such an address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
along with {Usenet}. They predate Usenet, having originated
with the first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used
for private information-sharing on topics that would be too
specialized for or inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though
some of these maintain almost purely technical content (such as the
Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list), others (like the
`sf-lovers' list maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are
recreational, and many are purely social. Perhaps the most
infamous of the social lists was the eccentric bandykin
distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids and
tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most
interesting people in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a
significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,
at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail
software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working
groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project
without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in
this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing
list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors
of Steele-1983.
main loop: n. The top-level control flow construct in an
input- or event-driven program, the one which receives and acts or
dispatches on the program's input. See also {driver}.
mainframe: n. Term originally referring to the cabinet
containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a
room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of
smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s, the
traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe
computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the
connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive
use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating
system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built
by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from
computing's {Stone Age}.
It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that
the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside
of the tiny market for {number-crunching} supercomputers (see
{cray})), having been swamped by the recent huge advances in IC
technology and low-cost personal computing. As of 1993, corporate
America is just beginning to figure this out -- the wave of
failures, takeovers, and mergers among traditional mainframe makers
have certainly provided sufficient omens (see {dinosaurs
mating}).
management: n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished
primarily by their distance from actual productive work and their
chronic failure to manage (see also {suit}). Spoken derisively,
as in "*Management* decided that ...". 2. Mythically, a
vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's minor irritations.
Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgt'; this
derives from the "Illuminatus" novels (see the
{Bibliography} in Appendix C).
mandelbug: /man'del-buhg/ n. [from the Mandelbrot set] A
bug whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make
its behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. This term
implies that the speaker thinks it is a {Bohr bug}, rather than
a {heisenbug}. See also {schroedinbug}.
manged: /mahnjd/ n. [probably from the French `manger'
or Italian `mangiare', to eat; perhaps influenced by English
`mange', `mangy'] adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or
damaged, usually beyond repair. "The disk was manged after the
electrical storm." Compare {mung}.
mangle: vt. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble},
but more violent in its connotations; something that is mangled has
been irreversibly and totally trashed.
mangler: n. [DEC] A manager. Compare {mango}; see also
{management}. Note that {system mangler} is somewhat
different in connotation.
mango: /mang'go/ n. [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] A
manager. Compare {mangler}. See also {devo} and {doco}.
manularity: /man`yoo-la'ri-tee/ n. [prob. fr. techspeak
`manual' + `granularity'] A notional measure of the manual
labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort that
automation is supposed to eliminate. "Composing English on paper
has much higher manularity than using a text editor, especially in
the revising stage." Hackers tend to consider manularity a
symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker confronted
with an apparent requirement to do a computing task {by hand}
will inevitably seize the opportunity to build another tool (see
{toolsmith}).
marbles: pl.n. [from mainstream "lost all his/her
marbles"] The minimum needed to build your way further up some
hierarchy of tools or abstractions. After a bad system crash, you
need to determine if the machine has enough marbles to come up on
its own, or enough marbles to allow a rebuild from backups, or if
you need to rebuild from scratch. "This compiler doesn't even
have enough marbles to compile {hello, world}."
marginal: adj. 1. Extremely small. "A marginal increase in
{core} can decrease {GC} time drastically." In everyday
terms, this means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if
you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort
through it. 2. Of extremely small merit. "This proposed new
feature seems rather marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small
probability of {win}ning. "The power supply was rather
marginal anyway; no wonder it fried."
Marginal Hacks: n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into
which the Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the 1980s
(from the {D. C. Power Lab}).
marginally: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only
marginally better than at Small Eating Place." See {epsilon}.
marketroid: /mar'k*-troyd/ n. alt. `marketing slime',
`marketeer', `marketing droid', `marketdroid'. A member
of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises users
that the next version of a product will have features that are not
actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to
implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or
one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient,
buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare {droid}.
Mars: n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker
Dream Gone Wrong. Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10
compatible computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group):
the multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25M, and the
never-built superprocessor SC-40M. These machines were marvels of
engineering design; although not much slower than the unique
{Foonly} F-1, they were physically smaller and consumed less
power than the much slower DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4
machines. They were also completely compatible with the DEC KL10,
and ran all KL10 binaries (including the operating system) with no
modifications at about 2--3 times faster than a KL10.
When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems Concepts
should have made a bundle selling their machine into shops with a
lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their spring
1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the
PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of
1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers
running Systems Concepts were much better at designing machines
than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed itself
to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually
improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates
continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously;
they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and
failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other
hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the
KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first
SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made
the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or
UNIX boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being
purchased by CompuServe.
This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for
hackers: if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to
learn Real World moves.
martian: n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source
address of the test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means
that it will come back labeled with a source address that is
clearly not of this earth. "The domain server is getting lots of
packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a martian filter?"
massage: vt. Vague term used to describe `smooth'
transformations of a data set into a different form, esp.
transformations that do not lose information. Connotes less pain
than {munch} or {crunch}. "He wrote a program that massages
X bitmap files into GIF format." Compare {slurp}.
math-out: n. [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)]
A paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other
formal notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device
for concealing the fact that it is actually {content-free}. See
also {numbers}, {social science number}.
Matrix: n. [FidoNet] 1. What the Opus BBS software and
sysops call {FidoNet}. 2. Fanciful term for a {cyberspace}
expected to emerge from current networking experiments (see
{network, the}). 3. The totality of present-day computer
networks.
maximum Maytag mode: n. What a {washing machine} or, by
extension, any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that
it's shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced load. If
prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming
{walking drives}.
Mbogo, Dr. Fred: /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ n. [Stanford]
The archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem, esp. an
incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye
doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry
Cleaning." The name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the
original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician
on the old "Addams Family" TV show. Compare {Bloggs
Family, the}, see also {fred}.
meatware: n. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.
meeces: /mees'*z/ n. [TMRC] Occasional furry visitors who
are not {urchin}s. [That is, mice. This may no longer be in
live use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the early-1960s
cartoon character Mr. Jinx: "I hate meeces to *pieces*!" ---
ESR]
meg: /meg/ n. See {{quantifiers}}.
mega-: /me'g*/ pref. [SI] See {{quantifiers}}.
megapenny: /meg'*-pen`ee/ n. $10,000 (1 cent *
10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer
cost and performance figures.
MEGO: /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/ [`My Eyes Glaze Over', often
`Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over', attributed to the futurologist
Herman Kahn] Also `MEGO factor'. 1. n. A {handwave} intended
to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the
listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is going
on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by engineers and
contains a high proportion of {TLA}s. 2. excl. An appropriate
response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers, often refers not
to behavior that causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing
reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of
technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.
meltdown, network: n. See {network meltdown}.
meme: /meem/ n. [coined by analogy with `gene', by
Richard Dawkins] An idea considered as a {replicator}, esp.
with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating
them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase `meme
complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an
organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an
(epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex;
each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often
misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes
acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool-
and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of
adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of
hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably
obvious reasons.
meme plague: n. The spread of a successful but pernicious
{meme}, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into giving
their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's
religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given
point by the historical fact that `joiner' ideologies like
Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have
exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by
collapses to small reservoir populations.
memetics: /me-met'iks/ n. [from {meme}] The study of
memes. As of mid-1994, this is still an extremely informal and
speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least
statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson and others.
Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers, who like
to see themselves as the architects of the new information
ecologies in which memes live and replicate.
memory farts: n. The flatulent sounds that some DOS box
BIOSes (most notably AMI's) make when checking memory on bootup.
memory leak: n. An error in a program's dynamic-store
allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded
memory, leading to eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion.
Also (esp. at CMU) called {core leak}. These problems were
severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address spaces, and
special "leak detection" tools were commonly written to root them
out. With the advent of virtual memory, it is unfortunately easier
to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory (although when you run
out of memory on a VM machine, it means you've got a *real*
leak!). See {aliasing bug}, {fandango on core}, {smash
the stack}, {precedence lossage}, {overrun screw}, {leaky
heap}, {leak}.
memory smash: n. [XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that
doesn't point to what you think it does. This occasionally reduces
your machine to a rubble of bits. Note that this is subtly
different from (and more general than) related terms such as a
{memory leak} or {fandango on core} because it doesn't imply
an allocation error or overrun condition.
menuitis: /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n. Notional disease suffered by
software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no
escape. Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the
flexibility of command-line or language-style interfaces,
especially those customizable via macros or a special-purpose
language in which one can encode useful hacks. See
{user-obsequious}, {drool-proof paper}, {WIMP
environment}, {for the rest of us}.
mess-dos: /mes-dos/ n. Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often
followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See
{{MS-DOS}}. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe
MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application
size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness (see
{fear and loathing}). Also `mess-loss', `messy-dos',
`mess-dog', `mess-dross', `mush-dos', and various
combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is even sometimes
called `Domestos' after a brand of toilet cleanser.
meta: /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/
adj.,pref. [from analytic philosophy] One level of
description up. A metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation
used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to
describe language. This is difficult to explain briefly, but much
hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels.
See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
meta bit: n. The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on
in character values 128--255. Also called {high bit}, {alt
bit}, or {hobbit}. Some terminals and consoles (see
{space-cadet keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others
(including, *mirabile dictu*, keyboards on IBM PC-class
machines) have an ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.
Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of
8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things
were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit
bytes. The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see {space-cadet
keyboard}) generated hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.
metasyntactic variable: n. A name used in examples and
understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any
random member of a class of things under discussion. The word
{foo} is the {canonical} example. To avoid confusion,
hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like
it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common
convention is that any filename beginning with a
metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be
deleted at any time.
To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables
is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for
related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here
are a few common signatures:
{foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, quuux, quuuux...:
MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to
early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at
Stanford), {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s
and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts
{qux} before {quux}.
bazola, ztesch:
Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
{foo}, {bar}, thud, grunt:
This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated
variables include {gorp}.
{foo}, {bar}, fum:
This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC.
{fred}, {barney}:
See the entry for {fred}. These tend to be Britishisms.
{corge}, {grault}, {flarp}:
Popular at Rutgers University and among {GOSMACS} hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat:
Cambridge University (England).
shme
Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short
/e/.
{foo}, {bar}, zot
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, wibble
New Zealand.
toto, titi, tata, tutu
France.
pippo, pluto, paperino
Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the
Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.
aap, noot, mies
The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to
learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.
Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and {baz}
nearly so). The compounds {foobar} and `foobaz' also enjoy
very wide currency.
Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf}
and {mumble}, for example. See also {{Commonwealth Hackish}}
for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great
Britain and the Commonwealth.
MFTL: /M-F-T-L/ [abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language']
1. adj. Describes a talk on a programming language design that is
heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about
semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any
content (see {content-free}). More broadly applied to talks ---
even when the topic is not a programming language -- in which the
subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at
the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical
MFTL talk". 2. n. Describes a language about which the developers
are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one
else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the
originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his
MFTL."
The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away
from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it
in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is
"Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On
the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write
its own compiler is beneath contempt. See {break-even point}.
(On a related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the
generality and utility of a language and the operating system under
which it is compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program
acceptable as input to the FORTRAN compiler?" In other words, can
you write programs that write programs? (See {toolsmith}.)
Alarming numbers of (language, OS) pairs fail this test,
particularly when the language is FORTRAN; aficionados are quick to
point out that {UNIX} (even using FORTRAN) passes it handily.
That the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who
have had the good fortune to have worked only under modern systems
which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types".)
mickey: n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has
been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for
animation graphics performance.
mickey mouse program: n. North American equivalent of a
{noddy} (that is, trivial) program. Doesn't necessarily have
the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just
mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very
useful.
micro-: pref. 1. Very small; this is the root of its use as
a quantifier prefix. 2. A quantifier prefix, calling for
multiplication by 10^(-6) (see {{quantifiers}}).
Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to
fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced in
standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one CS
professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures
as a microcentury -- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also
{attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, and especially
{microfortnight}). 3. Personal or human-scale -- that is,
capable of being maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one
human being. This sense is generalized from `microcomputer',
and is esp. used in contrast with `macro-' (the corresponding
Greek prefix meaning `large'). 4. Local as opposed to global (or
{macro-}). Thus a hacker might say that buying a smaller car to
reduce pollution only solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of
getting to work might be better solved by using mass transit,
moving to within walking distance, or (best of all) telecommuting.
MicroDroid: n. [Usenet] A Microsoft employee, esp. one who
posts to various operating-system advocacy newsgroups. MicroDroids
post follow-ups to any messages critical of Microsoft's operating
systems, and often end up sounding like visiting Mormon
missionaries.
microfloppies: n. 3.5-inch floppies, as opposed to 5.25-inch
{vanilla} or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete 8-inch variety.
This term may be headed for obsolescence as 5.25-inchers pass out
of use, only to be revived if anybody floats a sub-3-inch floppy
standard. See {stiffy}, {minifloppies}.
microfortnight: n. 1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time
in the Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec.
(A furlong is 1/8th of a mile; a firkin is 1/4th of a barrel; the
mass unit of the system is taken to be a firkin of water). The VMS
operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set
with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the
time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date
and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus.
This time is specified in microfortnights!
Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and
{nanofortnight} have also been reported.
microLenat: /mi:`-kroh-len'-*t/ n. The unit of
{bogosity}, written uL; the consensus is that this is
the largest unit practical for everyday use. The microLenat,
originally invented by David Jefferson, was promulgated as an
attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured
graduate student} at CMU. Doug had failed the student on an
important exam 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.
microReid: /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. See {bogosity}.
Microsloth Windows: /mi:'kroh-sloth` win'dohz/ n.
Hackerism for `Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the
IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with
{mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a
fast 486. Also just called `Windoze', with the implication that
you can fall asleepm waiting for it to do anything; the latter term
is extremely common on Usenet. Compare {X}, {sun-stools}.
microtape: /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a
DECtape, as opposed to a {macrotape}. A DECtape is a small
reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch
wide. Unlike those for today's {macrotape}s, microtape drivers
allowed random access to the data, and therefore could be used to
support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done
purely for {hack value}, as they were far too slow for practical
use). In their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways
one would now use a floppy disk: as a small, portable way to save
and transport files and programs. Apparently the term
`microtape' was actually the official term used within DEC for
these tapes until someone coined the word `DECtape', which, of
course, sounded sexier to the {marketroid}s; another version of
the story holds that someone discovered a conflict with another
company's `microtape' trademark.
middle-endian: adj. Not {big-endian} or
{little-endian}. Used of perverse byte orders such as 3-4-1-2
or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of
minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See {NUXI
problem}. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American
mm/dd/yy style of writing dates.
milliLampson: /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n. A unit of talking speed,
abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. The
eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor
highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak
faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes
widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and
actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer
architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said, with
some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he
is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries
to keep up with his speeding brain.
minifloppies: n. 5.25-inch {vanilla} floppy disks, as
opposed to 3.5-inch or {microfloppies} and the now-obsolescent
8-inch variety. At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart
Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody paid any
attention. See {stiffy}.
MIPS: /mips/ n. [abbreviation] 1. A measure of computing
speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per Second' (that's
10^6 per second, not 2^(20)!); often rendered by
hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in
other unflattering ways. This joke expresses a nearly universal
attitude about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said
attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers
and {marketroid}s. The singular is sometimes `1 MIP' even
though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also {KIPS}
and {GIPS}. 2. Computers, especially large computers,
considered abstractly as sources of {computron}s. "This is
just a workstation; the heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement."
3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company; among
other things, they designed the processor chips used in DEC's 3100
workstation series. 4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per
Second' (a joke, prob. from sense 1).
misbug: /mis-buhg/ n. [MIT] An unintended property of a
program that turns out to be useful; something that should have
been a {bug} but turns out to be a {feature}. usage: rare.
Compare {green lightning}. See {miswart}.
misfeature: /mis-fee'chr/ or /mis'fee`chr/ n. A feature
that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate
for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a
deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a
bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies
that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its
long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted
(which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all). A
misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve,
because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical
change to the structure of the system involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise
because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes
for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature
because trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change
(possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah,
it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six
characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory
space and we're stuck with it for now."
Missed'em-five: n. Pejorative hackerism for AT&T System V
UNIX, generally used by {BSD} partisans in a bigoted mood. (The
synonym `SysVile' is also encountered.) See {software bloat},
{Berzerkeley}.
missile address: n. See {ICBM address}.
miswart: /mis-wort/ n. [from {wart} by analogy with
{misbug}] A {feature} that superficially appears to be a
{wart} but has been determined to be the {Right Thing}. For
example, in some versions of the {EMACS} text editor, the
`transpose characters' command exchanges the character under the
cursor with the one before it on the screen, *except* when the
cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters
before the cursor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps
surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been found through
extensive experimentation to be what most users want. This feature
is a miswart.
moby: /moh'bee/ [MIT: seems to have been in use among
model railroad fans years ago. Derived from Melville's "Moby
Dick" (some say from `Moby Pickle').] 1. adj. Large, immense,
complex, impressive. "A Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob."
"Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the Harvard-Yale
game." (See "{The Meaning of `Hack'}").
2. n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see below). For
a 680[234]0 or VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is
4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes). 3. A title of address
(never of third-person reference), usually used to show admiration,
respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker. "Greetings,
moby Dave. How's that address-book thing for the Mac going?"
4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in `moby sixes',
`moby ones', etc. Compare this with {bignum} (sense 3):
double sixes are both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not
bignums (the use of `moby' to describe double ones is sarcastic).
Standard emphatic forms: `Moby foo', `moby win', `moby loss'.
`Foby moo': a spoonerism due to Richard Greenblatt. 5. The
largest available unit of something which is available in discrete
increments. Thus, ordering a "moby Coke" at the local fast-food
joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it's an explicit
request for the largest size they sell.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory added to
the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered unimaginably huge
when it was installed in the 1960s (at a time when a more typical
memory size for a timesharing system was 72 kilobytes). Thus, a
moby is classically 256K 36-bit words, the size of a PDP-6 or
PDP-10 moby. Back when address registers were narrow the term was
more generally useful, because when a computer had virtual memory
mapping, it might actually have more physical memory attached to it
than any one program could access directly. One could then say
"This computer has 6 mobies" meaning that the ratio of physical
memory to address space is 6, without having to say specifically
how much memory there actually is. That in turn implied that the
computer could timeshare six `full-sized' programs without having
to swap programs between memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces
are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto
a machine, so most systems have much *less* than one
theoretical `native' moby of {core}. Also, more modern
memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make the `moby
count' less significant. However, there is one series of
widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be revived ---
the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly {brain-damaged}
segmented-memory designs. On these, a `moby' would be the
1-megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a
PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit bytes).
mockingbird: n. Software that intercepts communications
(especially login transactions) between users and hosts and
provides system-like responses to the users while saving their
responses (especially account IDs and passwords). A special case
of {Trojan horse}.
mod: vt.,n. 1. Short for `modify' or `modification'.
Very commonly used -- in fact the full terms are considered
markers that one is being formal. The plural `mods' is used
esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in
hardware or software, most esp. with respect to {patch} sets
or a {diff}. 2. Short for {modulo} but used *only* for
its techspeak sense.
mode: n. A general state, usually used with an adjective
describing the state. Use of the word `mode' rather than
`state' implies that the state is extended over time, and
probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is
being carried out. "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode." In its
jargon sense, `mode' is most often attributed to people, though
it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. In
particular, see {hack mode}, {day mode}, {night mode},
{demo mode}, {fireworks mode}, and {yoyo mode}; also
{talk mode}.
One also often hears the verbs `enable' and `disable' used in
connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of
saying "I'm going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode
now". One might also hear a request to "disable flame mode,
please".
In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that
certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain
functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a
document in the UNIX editor `vi', one must type the "i" key,
which invokes the "Insert" command. The effect of this command
is to put vi into "insert mode", in which typing the "i" key
has a quite different effect (to wit, it inserts an "i" into the
document). One must then hit another special key, "ESC", in
order to leave "insert mode". Nowadays, modeful interfaces are
generally considered {losing} but survive in quite a few widely
used tools built in less enlightened times.
mode bit: n. A {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects
between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The
connotations are different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are
mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly
read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program.
The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the
Program Status Word of the IBM 360. Another was the bit on a
PDP-12 that controlled whether it ran the PDP-8 or the LINC
instruction set.
modulo: /mod'yu-loh/ prep. Except for. An
overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one can consider
saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 = 22 mod 9).
"Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that {GC} bug."
"I feel fine today modulo a slight headache."
molly-guard: /mol'ee-gard/ n. [University of Illinois] A
shield to prevent tripping of some {Big Red Switch} by clumsy or
ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers
improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer's toddler
daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later
generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and
networking equipment.
Mongolian Hordes technique: n. [poss. from the Sixties
counterculture expression `Mongolian clusterfuck' for a public
orgy] Development by {gang bang}. Implies that large numbers of
inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed
by a few skilled ones. Also called `Chinese Army technique'; see
also {Brooks's Law}.
monkey up: vt. To hack together hardware for a particular
task, especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely {crufty}
and consciously temporary solution. Compare {hack up},
{kluge up}, {cruft together}.
monkey, scratch: n. See {scratch monkey}.
monstrosity: 1. n. A ridiculously {elephantine} program or
system, esp. one that is buggy or only marginally functional.
2. adj. The quality of being monstrous (see `Overgeneralization' in the
discussion of jargonification). See also {baroque}.
monty: /mon'tee/ n. 1. [US Geological Survey] A program
with a ludicrously complex user interface written to perform
extremely trivial tasks. An example would be a menu-driven, button
clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows program for listing directories.
The original monty was an infamous weather-reporting program, Monty
the Amazing Weather Man, written at the USGS. Monty had a
widget-packed X-window interface with over 200 buttons; and all
monty actually *did* was {FTP} files off the network.
2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as `Monty' or as `the
Full Monty'] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or
compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with
a normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM.
Generally used of a PC, UNIX workstation etc. to mean `fully
populated with' memory, disk-space or some other desirable
resource. This usage is possibly derived from a TV commercial for
Del Monte fruit juice, in which one of the characters insisted on
"the full Del Monte". Compare American {moby}.
Moof: /moof/ [MAC users] 1. n. The call of a
semi-legendary creature, properly called the {dogcow}. (Some
previous version of this entry claimed, incorrectly, that Moof was
the name of the *creature*.) 2. adj. Used to flag software
that's a hack, something untested and on the edge. On one Apple
CD-ROM, certain folders such as "Tools & Apps (Moof!)" and
"Development Platforms (Moof!)", are so marked to indicate that
they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned by the powers
that be. When you open these folders you cross the boundary into
hackerland.
Moore's Law: /morz law/ prov. The observation that the
logic density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed
the curve (bits per square inch) = 2^((t - 1962)) where
t is time in years; that is, the amount of information storable on
a given amount of silicon has roughly doubled every year since the
technology was invented. See also {Parkinson's Law of Data}.
moose call: n. See {whalesong}.
moria: /mor'ee-*/ n. Like {nethack} and {rogue}, one
of the large PD Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games,
available for a wide range of machines and operating systems. The
name is from Tolkien's Mines of Moria; compare {elder days},
{elvish}. The game is extremely addictive and a major consumer
of time better used for hacking.
MOTAS: /moh-tahz/ n. [Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate
Sex, after {MOTOS} and {MOTSS}] A potential or (less often)
actual sex partner. See also {SO}.
MOTOS: /moh-tohs/ n. [acronym from the 1970 U.S. census
forms via Usenet: Member Of The Opposite Sex] A potential or (less
often) actual sex partner. See {MOTAS}, {MOTSS}, {SO}.
Less common than MOTSS or {MOTAS}, which have largely displaced
it.
MOTSS: /mots/ or /M-O-T-S-S/ n. [from the 1970
U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The Same Sex, esp. one
considered as a possible sexual partner. The gay-issues newsgroup
on Usenet is called soc.motss. See {MOTOS} and {MOTAS},
which derive from it. See also {SO}.
mouse ahead: vi. Point-and-click analog of `type ahead'.
To manipulate a computer's pointing device (almost always a mouse
in this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or command
buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in
anticipation of the program accepting the input. Handling this
properly is rare, but it can help make a {WIMP environment} much
more usable, assuming the users are familiar with the behavior of
the user interface.
mouse around: vi. To explore public portions of a large
system, esp. a network such as Internet via {FTP} or
{TELNET}, looking for interesting stuff to {snarf}.
mouse belt: n. See {rat belt}.
mouse droppings: n. [MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that
are not properly restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a
particular location on the screen, producing the appearance that
the mouse pointer has left droppings behind. The major causes for
this problem are programs that write to the screen memory
corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without
hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not quite
support the graphics mode in use.
mouse elbow: n. A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome
resulting from excessive use of a {WIMP environment}.
Similarly, `mouse shoulder'; GLS reports that he used to get this
a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.
mouso: /mow'soh/ n. [by analogy with `typo'] An error in
mouse usage resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic
garbage on the screen. Compare {thinko}, {braino}.
MS-DOS:: /M-S-dos/ n. [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A
{clone} of {{CP/M}} for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by
hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since.
Numerous features, including vaguely UNIX-like but rather broken
support for subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines, were
hacked into 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two
or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS
programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to
use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The
resulting mess is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often
known simply as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other
similarly abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the
mid-1960s, when it was attached to IBM's first disk operating
system for the 360). The name further annoys those who know what
the term {operating system} does (or ought to) connote; DOS is
more properly a set of relatively simple interrupt services. Some
people like to pronounce DOS like "dose", as in "I don't work on
dose, man!", or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs
(a slogan button in wide circulation among hackers exhorts:
"MS-DOS: Just say No!"). See {mess-dos}, {ill-behaved}.
mu: /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question
"Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you
have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes"
is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and
then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have
one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians
and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a
Japanese word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered
because it depends on incorrect assumptions". Hackers tend to be
sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have
adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word `mu' is
actually from Chinese, meaning `nothing'; it is used in
mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not
recognize the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly
derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following
well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle:
A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu
retorted, "Mu!"
See also {has the X nature}, {AI Koans}, and Douglas
Hofstadter's "G"odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"
(pointer in the {Bibliography} in Appendix C.
MUD: /muhd/ n. [acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt.
Multi-User Dimension] 1. A class of {virtual reality}
experiments accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat
forums with structure; they have multiple `locations' like an
adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a
simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build
more structure onto the database that represents the existing
world. 2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often lowercased
and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going mudding', etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU-
form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the
University of Essex's DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of
that game still exist today and are sometimes generically called
BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated,
unfortunately, by earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name
MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British
Telecom (the motto: "You haven't *lived* 'til you've
*died* on MUD!"); however, this is false -- Richard Bartle
explicitly placed `MUD' in PD in 1985. BT was upset at this, as
they had already printed trademark claims on some maps and posters,
which were released and created the myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the
MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD).
Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social
interaction. Because these had an image as `research' they
often survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This,
together with the fact that Usenet feeds have been spotty and
difficult to get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish
social interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and
quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large
hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom
(some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the
early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants)
tended to emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative
world-building as opposed to combat and competition. In 1991, over
50% of MUD sites are of a third major variety, LPMUD, which
synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems
with the extensibility of TinyMud. The trend toward greater
programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly,
with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month.
There is now (early 1991) a move afoot to deprecate the term
{MUD} itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of
names corresponding to the different simulation styles being
explored. See also {bonk/oif}, {FOD}, {link-dead},
{mudhead}, {talk mode}.
muddie: n. Syn. {mudhead}. More common in Great Britain,
possibly because system administrators there like to mutter
"bloody muddies" when annoyed at the species.
mudhead: n. Commonly used to refer to a {MUD} player who
eats, sleeps, and breathes MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail
their degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however, that
they made wizard level. When encountered in person, on a MUD, or
in a chat system, all a mudhead will talk about is three topics:
the tactic, character, or wizard that is supposedly always unfairly
stopping him/her from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD;
why the specific game he/she has experience with is so much better
than any other; and the MUD he or she is writing or going to write
because his/her design ideas are so much better than in any
existing MUD. See also {wannabee}.
To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the
Zuni/Hopi legend of the mudheads or `koyemshi', mythical
half-formed children of an unnatural union. Figures representing
them act as clowns in Zuni sacred ceremonies. Others may recall
the `High School Madness' sequence from the Firesign Theater album
"Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers", in which there
is a character named "Mudhead".
multician: /muhl-ti'shn/ n. [coined at Honeywell,
ca. 1970] Competent user of {{Multics}}. Perhaps oddly, no one
has ever promoted the analogous `Unician'.
Multics:: /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "MULTiplexed Information
and Computing Service"] An early (late 1960s) timesharing
operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT, GE, and
Bell Laboratories. Multics was very innovative for its time ---
among other things, it introduced the idea of treating all devices
uniformly as special files. All the members but GE eventually
pulled out after determining that {second-system effect} had
bloated Multics to the point of practical unusability (the
`lean' predecessor in question was {CTSS}). Honeywell
commercialized Multics after buying out GE's computer group, but it
was never very successful (among other things, on some versions one
was commonly required to enter a password to log out). One of the
developers left in the lurch by the project's breakup was Ken
Thompson, a circumstance which led directly to the birth of
{{UNIX}}. For this and other reasons, aspects of the Multics
design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See also
{brain-damaged} and {GCOS}.
multitask: n. Often used of humans in the same meaning it
has for computers, to describe a person doing several things at
once (but see {thrash}). The term `multiplex', from
communications technology (meaning to handle more than one channel
at the same time), is used similarly.
mumblage: /muhm'bl*j/ n. The topic of one's mumbling (see
{mumble}). "All that mumblage" is used like "all that
stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion
works, or like "all that crap" when `mumble' is being used as
an implicit replacement for pejoratives.
mumble: interj. 1. Said when the correct response is too
complicated to enunciate, or the speaker has not thought it out.
Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance
to get into a long discussion. "Don't you think that we could
improve LISP performance by using a hybrid reference-count
transaction garbage collector, if the cache is big enough and there
are some extra cache bits for the microcode to use?" "Well,
mumble ... I'll have to think about it." 2. [MIT] Expression
of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as an informal vote
of consensus in a meeting: "So, shall we dike out the COBOL
emulation?" "Mumble!" 3. Sometimes used as an expression of
disagreement (distinguished from sense 2 by tone of voice and other
cues). "I think we should buy a {VAX}." "Mumble!" Common
variant: `mumble frotz' (see {frotz}; interestingly, one does
not say `mumble frobnitz' even though `frotz' is short for
`frobnitz'). 4. Yet another {metasyntactic variable}, like
{foo}. 5. When used as a question ("Mumble?") means "I
didn't understand you". 6. Sometimes used in `public' contexts
on-line as a placefiller for things one is barred from giving
details about. For example, a poster with pre-released hardware in
his machine might say "Yup, my machine now has an extra 16M of
memory, thanks to the card I'm testing for Mumbleco." 7. A
conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn't
want to bother spelling out, but which can be {glark}ed from
context. Compare {blurgle}. 8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism
used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless.
munch: vt. [often confused with {mung}, q.v.] To
transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large
amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related
to {crunch} and nearly synonymous with {grovel}, but connotes
less pain.
munching: n. Exploration of security holes of someone else's
computer for thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager.
Compare {cracker}. See also {hacked off}.
munching squares: n. A {display hack} dating back to the
PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which
employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X
XOR T for successive values of T -- see {HAKMEM} items
146--148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing
squares that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated
as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing
effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the LISP machine,
have been christened `munching triangles' (try AND for XOR and
toggling points instead of plotting them), `munching w's', and
`munching mazes'. More generally, suppose a graphics program
produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic
form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively
simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is
likely to be referred to as `munching foos'. [This is a good
example of the use of the word {foo} as a {metasyntactic
variable}.]
munchkin: /muhnch'kin/ n. [from the squeaky-voiced little
people in L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz"] A
teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking BASIC or something else
equally constricted. A term of mild derision -- munchkins are
annoying but some grow up to be hackers after passing through a
{larval stage}. The term {urchin} is also used. See also
{wannabee}, {bitty box}.
mundane: n. [from SF fandom] 1. A person who is not in
science fiction fandom. 2. A person who is not in the computer
industry. In this sense, most often an adjectival modifier as in
"in my mundane life...." See also {Real World}.
mung: /muhng/ vt. [in 1960 at MIT, `Mash Until No Good';
sometime after that the derivation from the {{recursive acronym}}
`Mung Until No Good' became standard; but see {munge}] 1. To
make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable changes.
See {BLT}. 2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally
maliciously. The system only mungs things maliciously; this is a
consequence of {Finagle's Law}. See {scribble}, {mangle},
{trash}, {nuke}. Reports from {Usenet} suggest that the
pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in speech, but the spelling
`mung' is still common in program comments (compare the
widespread confusion over the proper spelling of {kluge}).
3. The kind of beans of which the sprouts are used in Chinese food.
(That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at
{TMRC}; it was already in use there in 1958. Peter Samson
(compiler of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it may originally
have been onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact)
being twanged. However, it is known that during the World Wars,
`mung' was army slang for the ersatz creamed chipped beef better
known as `SOS', and it seems quite likely that the word in fact
goes back to Scots-dialect {munge}.
munge: /muhnj/ vt. 1. [derogatory] To imperfectly
transform information. 2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine,
data structure or the whole program. 3. To modify data in some way
the speaker doesn't need to go into right now or cannot describe
succinctly (compare {mumble}).
This term is often confused with {mung}, which probably was
derived from it. However, it also appears the word `munge' was in
common use in Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s,
as a verb, meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and
as a noun, meaning the result of munging something up (the
parallel with the {kluge}/{kludge} pair is amusing).
Murphy's Law: prov. The correct, *original* Murphy's
Law reads: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one
of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do
it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because
it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the
challenges of design for {luser}s. For example, you don't make a
two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP'; if it
matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design
asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under {magic smoke}).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled
experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test
human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment
involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of
the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued
to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong
way around. Murphy then made the original form of his
pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp)
quoted at a news conference a few days later.
Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical
cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years
had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination,
changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything
that can go wrong, will"; this is sometimes referred to as
{Finagle's Law}. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants
clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!
music:: n. A common extracurricular interest of hackers
(compare {{science-fiction fandom}}, {{oriental food}}; see also
{filk}). Hackish folklore has long claimed that musical and
programming abilities are closely related, and there has been at
least one large-scale statistical study that supports this.
Hackers, as a rule, like music and often develop musical
appreciation in unusual and interesting directions. Folk music is
very big in hacker circles; so is electronic music, and the sort of
elaborate instrumental jazz/rock that used to be called
`progressive' and isn't recorded much any more. The hacker's
musical range tends to be wide; many can listen with equal
appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Gentle Giant, Pat
Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, King Sunny
Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the Brandenburg Concerti.
It is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much higher
concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would expect
from a similar-sized control group of {mundane} types.
mutter: vt. To quietly enter a command not meant for the
ears, eyes, or fingers of ordinary mortals. Often used in `mutter
an {incantation}'. See also {wizard}.