BBS Toolkit/BBS Toolkit.iso/remote/cookie34.zip/MEANING.DAT

Text File | 1992-01-11 | 12KB | 406 lines

%Hackers dictionair

Assumed Decimal Point:
  Located two positions to the right of a programmer's current salary in
  estimating his own worth.

Bit:
  The increment by which programmers slowly go mad.

Chaining:
  A method of attaching programmers to desks to speed up output.

Checkpoint:
  The location from which a programmer must forget in order to be successful.

Core Storage:
  A receptacle for the center section of apples.

Counter:
  A device over which martinis are served.

Disassembler:
  An unattended five year old child.

Error:
  What someone else has made when he disagrees with your computer output.

External Storage:
  A wastebasket.

Fixed Word Length:
  Four-letter words used by programmers in a state of confusion.

Floating Control:
  A characteristic exhibited when you have to go to the restroom but
  cannot leave the computer.

Floating Point:
   The absolute limit before floating control is lost.

Flow Chart:
  A graphic representation of the fastest route to the restroom.

Input:
  Food, whiskey, beer, asprin, etc.

Macro:
  The last halU}of an expression of surprise: "Holy Macro".

Memory Dump
  Amnesia.

Programmer:
  A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate opjects.

Beginner:
   A person who believes more than one sixteenth of a computer
   salseperson's spiel.

Advanced User:
   A person who has managed to remove a computer from its packing materials.

Power User:
   A person who has mastered the brightness and contrast controls on
   any computer's moniter.

Sales Associate:
   A former cheese-monger who has recently traded mascarpone for MS-DOS

Sales Manager:
   Last week's new sales associate.


Bonus cookie!
  Lucky you! YES YOU! The just got a bonus cookie..... Which means,
  15 WHOLE MINUTES extra online time today!
+T15
  Oh? You also want a real cookie? Oh well... you can't have everything!


Consultant:
   A former sales associate who has mastered at least one tenth of
   the D-BASE 3 Plus Manual.

Systems Integrator:
   A former consultant who understands the term "AUTOEXEC.BAT".

Warranty:
   Disclaimer.

Service:
   Cursory examination, followed by the utterance of the phrase
   "It can't be ours" and either of the words "hardware" or "software."

Support:
   The mailing of advertising literature to customers who have returned
   a registration card.

Alpha Test Version:
   Too buggy to be released to the paying public.

Beta Test Version:
   Still too buggy to be released.

Release Version:
   Alternate pronounciation of "beta test version."

Enhanced:
   Less awful in some ways than the previous model, and less likely
   to work as expected.

Convertible:
  Transformable from a second-rate computer to a first-rate doorstop
  or paperweight. (Lexicoginal note:replaces the term "junior.")

Upgraded:
  Didn't work the first time.

Upgraded and Improved:
  Didn't work the second time.

Fast (6MHz):
  Nowhere near fast enough.

Superfast (8MHz):
  Not fast enough.

Blindingly Fast (10MHz):
  Almost fast enough.

Astoundingly Fast (12MHz):
  Fast enough to work only intermittently.

Memory-Resident:
  Ready at the press of a key to disable any currently running program.

Multitasking:
  A clever method of simultaneously slowing down the multitude of computer
  programs that insist on running too fast.

Encryption:
  A powerful algorithmic encoding technique employed in the creation
  of computer manuals.

Desktop Publishing:
  A system of software and hardware enabling users to create documents with
  a cornucopia of typefaces and graphics and the intellectual content
  of a Formica slab; often used in conjunction with encryption.

High Resolution:
  Having nothing to do with graphics on an IBM-compatible microcomputers.

FCC-Certified:
  Guaranteed not to interfere with radio or television reception until you
  add the cable required to make it work.

American:
  Italian or Taiwanese, as in "American Telephone and Telegraph."

American-Made:
  Assembled in America from parts made abroad.

Windows:
  A slow-moving relation of the rodent family rarely seen near computers but
  commonly found in specially marked packages of display cards, turbo cards,
  and Grape-Nuts Cereal.

TopView:
  The official position of IBM brass that an abysmally slow character-based
  multitasking program is the product of the future.

Shareware:
  Software usually distinguished by its awkward user interfaces,
  skimpy manuals, lack of official user support, and particularly its free
  distribution and upgrading via simple disk copying; eg. PC-DOS.

DOS-SHELL:
  An educational tool forcing computer users to learn new methods of doing
  what they already can.

UNIX:
  Sterile experts who attempt to palm off bloated, utterly arcane,
  and confusing operating systems on rational human beings.

EMS:
  Emergency Medical Service; often summoned incases of apoplexy
  induced by attempts to understand extended,expanded, or enhanced
  memory specifications.

Videotex:
  A moribund electronic service offering people the privlege
  of paying to read the weather on their TV screens instead of
  having Willard Scott read it to them free while they brush their
  teeth.

Artificial Intelligence:
  The amazing, human-like ability of a computer program to understand that
  the letter y means "yes" and the letter n means "no."

Electronic Mail:
  A communications system with built-in delays and errors designed to emulate
  those of the United States Postal Service.

C-py Pr-t-ct--n:
  An obscenity unfit to print and fast disappearing from common parlance.

Turbo Card:
  A device that increases an older-model computer's speed almost enough to
  compensate for the time wasted in getting it to work.

Laser Printer:
  A xerographic copying machine with additional malfunctioning parts.

Workstation:
  A computer or terminal slavishly linked to a mainframe that does not offer
  game programs.

RISC:
  The gamble that a computer directly compatible with nothing else on the
  planet may actually have decent software written for it someday.

AUTOEXEC.BAT:
  A sturdy aluminum or wooden shaft used to coax AT hard disks into
  performing properly.

Plotter:
  A terroristic hypodermic device used to inject graphic representations of
  boring data into boring meetings.

Clone:
  One of the many advanced-technology computers IBM is beginning to
  wish it had built.

CD-ROM:
  An optical device with storage sufficieent to hold billions
  of predictions claiming it will revolutionize the information
  industry.

IBM Porduct Centers:
  Historical landmarks forever memoralizing the concept of
  "list price only."

IBM:
  Somewhat like an IBM product; in current parlance, invariably followed
  by the word "compatible."

IBM Compatible:
  Not IBM compatible.

Fully IBM Compatible:
  Somewhat IBM compatible, but won't run IBM BASIC programs.

100% IBM Compatible:
  Compatible with most available hardware and software, but not with the
  blockbusters IBM always intriduces the day after tomorrow.

Lap-Top:
  Smaller and lighter than the average secretary.

Portable:
  Smaller and lighter than the average refrigerator.

Transportable:
  Neither chained to a wall nor attached to an alarm system.

Hard Disk:
  A device that allows users to delete vast quantities of data with simple
  mnemonic commands.

Mouse:
  A peripheral originally christened "vermiform appendix" because of its
  functional resemblance, renamed for its appropriateness as a cat toy.

Printer:
  An electromechanical paper-shredding device.

Modem:
  A peripheral used in the unsuccesful attempt to get two computer to
  communicate with each other.

Network:
  An electronic means of allowing more than one person at a time to corrupt,
  trash, or otherwise cause permanent damage to useful information.

Documentation:
  A perplexing linen-bound accessory resorted to only in situations of dire
  need when friends and dealers are unavailable, usually employed solely as
  a decorative bookend.

User-Friendly:
  Supplied with a full-color manual.

Very User-Friendly:
  Supplied with a disk and audiotape so the user needent bother with the
  full-color manual.

Extremely User-Friendly:
  Supplied with a mouse so that the user needent bother with the disk and
  audiotape, the full color manual, or the program itself.

Easy to Learn:
  Hard to use.

Easy to Use:
  Hard to learn.

Easy to Learn and Use:
  Won't do what you want it to.

Powerful:
  Hard to learn and use.

Menu-Driven:
  Easy to learn.

Copy Protection:
  (1) A clever method of preventing incompetent pirates from stealing
      software and legitimate customers from using it;

Copy Protection:
  (2) a means of distinguishing honest users from thieves by preventing
      larceny by the former but not by the latter.

Warranty:
  An unconditional guarantee that the program purchased is actually included
  on the disk in the box.

Version 1.0:
  Buggier than Maine in June; eats data.

Version 1.1:
  Eats data only occasionally, upgrade free to avoid litigation by
  disgruntled users of version 1.0.

Version 2.0:
  The version origionally planned as the first release (except for a
  couple of data-eating bugs that just won't seem to go away), no free
  upgrades or the company would go bankrupt.

Version 3.0:
  The revision in the works when the company goes bankrupt.

Spreadsheet:
  A program that gives the user quick and easy access to a wide variety of
  highly detailed reports based on highly inaccurate assumptions.

Word Processor:
  Software that magically transforms its user into a professional author.

Though Processor:
  An electronic version of the intended outline procedure that thinking
  people instantly abandon upon graduation from high school.

Business Graphics:
  Popular with managers who understand neither decimals, fractions,
  percentages, Roman numerals, but have more than a passing acquaintance
  with pies and bars.

Database Manager:
  A program that allows the user to manipulate data in every conceivable way
  except the absolutely essential one he or she concieves of the day after
  entering 20 megabytes of raw information.

Project Manager:
  Software for generating fantasy scenarios of amazing optimism;
  proven in computer firms, where it is extremely successful at scheduling
  advertising campaigns for unavailable products.

Integrated Software:
  A single product that deftly performs hundreds of functions the user never
  needs and awkwardly performs the halfdozen he uses constantly.

Windows:
  A method of dividing a computer screen into two or more unusably tiny
  portions.

Now Available:
  Available any day now.

Available Soon:
  Available in a year or so.

Available May 1:
  Version 1.0 may ship to dealers August 1.

Standard:
  Similar to something else on the market.

Backup:
  The duplicate copy of crucial data that no one bothered to make;
  used only in an abstract sense.

Computer Journalist:
  (1) A data processing manager who can't write a coherent English sentence;

Computer Journalist:
  (2) A writer who can produce a definitive opinion on a product after
      spending an hour with its manual;

Computer Journalist:
  (3) A person with an insatiable lust for free hardware and software;

Computer Journalist:
  (4) A harmless drudge.