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Title: The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992

Editor: Eric S. Raymond
Guy L. Steele

Release date: August 1, 1992 [eBook #38]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JARGON
FILE, VERSION 2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992 ***

This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang

illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.

This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely
used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on
what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to
which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy
of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number,
as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation
form: "Jargon File 2.9.10" or "The on-line hacker Jargon File, version
2.9.10, 01 JUL 1992".)

The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the
years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to
maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it.
Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions
from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference
related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and
distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors include:

Eric Raymond eric@snark.thyrsus.com (215)-296-5718

Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good
form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work or
commercial product. We may have additional information that would be
helpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only
the letter of the File but its spirit as well.

All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor
are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as
freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file.

From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and
formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer
editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have a bound
paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these.
They often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The
two `authorized' editions so far are described in the Revision History
section; there may be more in the future.

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

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

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures
of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for
background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe
here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social
communication, and technical debate.

The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes,
villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a
group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by
rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and
conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 35 years old.

As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their
culture together —- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the
community and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual,
*not* knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as an
outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a

{suit}. All human cultures use slang in this threefold way —- as a tool of
communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion.

Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in
the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect
in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states
of *consciousness*. There is a whole range of altered states and problem-
solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into
conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of
Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite of
hackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious
ways. As a simple example, take the distinction between a {kluge} and an
{elegant} solution, and the differing connotations attached to each. The
distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into
the nature of the generative processes in program design and asserts
something important about two different kinds of relationship between the
hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this
kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.

But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very
conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be
common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are
pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of us
before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures of the
modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process. Hackers, by
contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for
conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique
combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the
discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the electronic
media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to
both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and

superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a
uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.

Hackish slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions. For example, it has recently become
fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context' communication,
and to classify cultures by the preferred context level of their languages and
art forms. It is usually claimed that low-context communication
(characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained
utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity,
individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication
(elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated
with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and
tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around
extremely low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily
"low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context slang
style?

The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation
of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture
—- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation
called the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers themselves for over 15
years. This one (like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes
`topic entries' which collect background or sidelight information on hacker
culture that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries.

Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the
material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at
least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-
provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make
strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of

these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been
genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or
pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that
*everyone's* sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not
particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent
viewpoints is.

The reader with minimal computer background who finds some
references incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not
felt it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences —-
fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture —- will benefit from
them.

A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in
{appendix A}. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to
{appendix B}, "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker". {Appendix C} is a
bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced or
described the hacker culture.

Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between
description and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier
versions of the Jargon File have played a central role in spreading hacker
language and the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations,
and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise.

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

Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the
term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations.

However, the ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File', and
hackish slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the jargon
there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish what a *linguist* would
call hackers' jargon —- the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks,
technical papers, and manuals.

To make a confused situation worse, the line between hackish slang and
the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy,
and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider
technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do
not speak or recognize hackish slang.

Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of
usage permit about the distinctions among three categories:
*`slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-
technicalsubcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
*`jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' languagepeculiar to
hackers —- the subject of this lexicon.
*`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming,
computerscience, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.

This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of
this lexicon.

The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of techspeak
originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of jargon into
techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from overgeneralization
of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the "Jargon Construction"
section below).

In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicates
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.

A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems,
languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore
that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical
historical background necessary to understand other entries to which they
are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon words are
listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; where the text does not
specify that a straight technical sense is under discussion, these are marked
with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some entries have a primary sense
marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings explained in terms of it.

We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of
terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the lexicon,
for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many hackish
usages have been independently reinvented multiple times, even among the
more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative
processes underlying hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so
powerful as to create substantial parallelism across separate cultures and
even in different languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate
innovations so quickly that `first use' is often impossible to pin down. And,
finally, compendia like this one alter what they observe by implicitly
stamping cultural approval on terms and widening their use.

:Revision History: ==================

The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from technical
cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), and others
of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt,

Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was
begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until the plug
was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named
AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably
earlier ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the
Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to
the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may
be collectively considered `Version 1'.

In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on
the SAIL computer, {FTP}ed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that it
was hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his directory as
AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.

The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' means numbered with
a version number) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin
and Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought
of correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium had already
become widely known as the Jargon File.

Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and
Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently
kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations).

The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman
was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related
coinages.

In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of
the File published in Russell Brand's `CoEvolution Quarterly' (pages 26-35)
with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the
Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the File's first paper
publication.

A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass
market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as `The
Hacker's Dictionary' (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The
other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin)
contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff
Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as `Steele-
1983' and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors.

Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively stopped
growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to freeze the file
temporarily to facilitate the production of Steele-1983, but external
conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to become permanent.

The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts
and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware
and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT, most AI
work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time, the
commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and
brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and
out West in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISP machines for MIT; the
central MIT-AI computer became a {TWENEX} system rather than a host
for the AI hackers' beloved {ITS}.

The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although
the SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource
until 1991. Stanford became a major {TWENEX} site, at one point

operating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most
of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD
UNIX standard.

In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File
were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at Digital
Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already dispersed, moved on
to other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors
thought was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how
wide its influence was to be.

By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had
grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained
off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT and
Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hackish
language and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other
trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related
materials such as the AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of
sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic
exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at
large accelerated tremendously —- but the Jargon File, having passed from
living document to icon, remained essentially untouched for seven years.

This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon-1
(a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after careful
consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about 80% of the
Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries
introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.

This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim is to
cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical computing
cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the

entries now derive from {USENET} and represent jargon now current in
the C and UNIX communities, but special efforts have been made to collect
jargon from other cultures including IBM PC programmers, Amiga fans,
Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world.

Eric S. Raymond <eric@snark.thyrsus.com> maintains the new File with
assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. <gls@think.com>; these are the persons
primarily reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in
acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of Steele-
1983. Please email all additions, corrections, and correspondence relating to
the Jargon File to jargon@thyrsus.com (UUCP-only sites without
connections to an autorouting smart site can use …!uunet!snark!jargon).

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

The 2.9.6 version became the main text of `The New Hacker's
Dictionary', by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6.
The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the Jargon
File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it
available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker
community.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as
major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon
File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric S.
Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.). Someday, the
next maintainer will take over and spawn `version 3'. Usually later versions
will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is
generally no point in keeping old versions around.

Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance,
and to the hundreds of USENETters (too many to name here) who
contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several of the
old-timers on the USENET group alt.folklore.computers, who contributed
much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable historical
perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Bernie
Cosell <cosell@bbn.com>, Earl Boebert <boebert@SCTC.com>, and Joe
Morris <jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>.

We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished
linguists. David Stampe <stampe@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu> and Charles
Hoequist <hoequist@bnr.ca> contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane
<jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us improve the pronunciation guides.

A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian A.
LaMacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for us to use
material from the `TMRC Dictionary'; also, Don Libes
<libes@cme.nist.gov> contributed some appropriate material from his
excellent book `Life With UNIX'. We thank Per Lindberg <per@front.se>,
author of the remarkable Swedish-language 'zine `Hackerbladet', for
bringing `FOO!' comics to our attention and smuggling one of the IBM
hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Thanks also to
Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ASCII
pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And our gratitude to Marc
Weiser of XEROX PARC <Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com> for securing
us permission to quote from PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a
copy.

It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of Mark
Brader <msb@sq.com> to the final manuscript; he read and reread many
drafts, checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of
thoughtful comments, and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor
usage bobbles. Mr. Brader's rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence,
wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of language
made his help invaluable, and the sustained volume and quality of his input
over many months only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the
slimmest of margins.

Finally, George V. Reilly <gvr@cs.brown.edu> helped with TeX arcana
and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions; Steve Summit

<scs@adam.mit.edu> contributed a number of excellent new entries and
many small improvements to 2.9.10; and Eric Tiedemann
<est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric,
amphigory, and philosophunculism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The USENET culture has one *tripling* convention unrelated to this; the
names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first and

paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "Muppet
Show" reference); other classics include alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg,
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk,
sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom, and
alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill.

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

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

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

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

This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas
hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.

:The `-P' convention: ——————————- Turning a word into a
question by appending the syllable `P'; from the LISP convention of
appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function).
The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See {T}
and {NIL}.)

At dinnertime:
Q: "Foodp?"
A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!"

At any time:
Q: "State-of-the-world-P?"
A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home."
A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state."

On the phone to Florida:
Q: "State-p Florida?"
A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?"

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

:Overgeneralization: —————————— A very conspicuous
feature of jargon is the frequency with which techspeak items such as
names of program tools, command language primitives, and even assembler

opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find
amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the best-known examples)
UNIX hackers often {grep} for things rather than searching for them. Many
of the lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind.

Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many
hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to
make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform
cases (or vice versa). For example, because

porous => porosity generous => generosity

hackers happily generalize:

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

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

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

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

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

Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms.
Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary noted that the
defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese', and includes an entry which implies
that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces}. On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note,
almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and
{boxen} in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are
sometimes treated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny
plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and
`Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {UNIX},
{TWENEX} in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never
used; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin
singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested
to general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.

The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or a
fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon plural
suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply.

This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of
what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical
creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but to amuse, and
never at the expense of clarity.

:Spoken inarticulations: ———————————— Words such as
`mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where their referent might
more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from
the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in

electronic mail (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been
showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expression
sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!"

:Anthromorphization: —————————— Semantically, one rich
source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize
hardware and software. This isn't done in a na"ive way; hackers don't
personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling empathy with it, nor do they
mystically believe that the things they work on every day are `alive'. What
*is* common is to hear hardware or software talked about as though it has
homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and desires. Thus,
one hears "The protocol handler got confused", or that programs "are
trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that "its goal in life is to
X". One even hears explanations like "… and its poor little brain couldn't
understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things this way actually
seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because it's instinctively
natural to think of anything with a really complex behavioral repertoire as
`like a person' rather than `like a thing'.

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

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

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

The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the reliability
of software:

broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof
armor-plated

Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth hackish (it is
rare in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers.

Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest in
hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have
even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious
people.

:Hacker Writing Style: ======================

We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for form-
versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish writing.
One correspondent reports that he consistently misspells `wrong' as `worng'.
Others have been known to criticize glitches in Jargon File drafts by
observing (in the mode of Douglas Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or
"Bad speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are
often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are confusing;
`dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common (similarly, a
hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd today", rather
than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sort of thing is quite common and is
enjoyed by all concerned.

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much
to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase, and
so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write:
"Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect according
to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and
the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to
hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them.
Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of
programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading.
When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra
characters can be a real pain in the neck.

Consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like this:

Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".

Standard usage would make this

Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."

but that would be very bad — because the reader would be prone to type
the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in `vi(1)' dot repeats the last
command accepted. The net result would be to delete *two* lines!

The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.

Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great Britain,
though the older style (which became established for typographical reasons
having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still
accepted there. `Hart's Rules' and the `Oxford Dictionary for Writers and
Editors' call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting.

Another hacker quirk is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes
and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes for marking
and reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports of speech or
text included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this
as correct general usage, but mainstream American English has gone to
using double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears
marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I
checked with USENET —- ESR]. One further permutation that is definitely
*not* standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by using
apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on
string and character literal syntax in some programming languages
(reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals display the
apostrophe in typewriter style, as a vertical single quote).

One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of UNIX hackers
in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally all-lowercase
(including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to
remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. It
is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part
of their internal representation (the `spelling') and cannot be overridden
without mental effort (an appropriate reflex because UNIX and C both
distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to {lossage}). A way of
escaping this dilemma is simply to avoid using these constructions at the
beginning of sentences.

There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to
the effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance
to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information
they can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect
that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry
very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and

loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between `loose' form and `tight'
content in jargon is a substantial part of its humor!

Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis
conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and
these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when
normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.

One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS
`LOUD', and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a
person who goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop
shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!".

Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify
emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the *hell*?" even
though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a
footnote mark. The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this
is particularly common with book titles; for example, "It is often alleged
that Joe Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert
Heinlein's earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other
forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen
(it's claimed that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to
the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling over).
Finally, words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of
carets (^) under them on the next line of the text.

There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which
emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which
suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very
young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word with the `*'
character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to consider that an

action is taking place or that a sound is being made. Examples: *bang*,
*hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.

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

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

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

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

Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2^8 = 256'. This goes all
the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow' that
later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's original
BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the `bc(1)' and `dc(1)' UNIX
tools, which have probably done most to reinforce the convention on
USENET. The notation is mildly confusing to C programmers, because `^'
means bitwise {XOR} in C. Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a
late-1990 snapshot of USENET. It is used consistently in this text.

In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper
fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed fractions (`3-
1/2'). The major motive here is probably that the former are more readable
in a monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter
might be read as `three minus one-half'. The decimal form is definitely

preferred for fractions with a terminating decimal representation; there may
be some cultural influence here from the high status of scientific notation.

Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small
numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a
form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example, one
year is about 3e7 seconds long.

The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately';
that is, `~50' means `about fifty'.

On USENET and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
relational operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=', `>', and `<', `>=',
and `=<' are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, `<>', is
also recognized, and occasionally one sees `/=' for not-equals (from Ada,
Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for
`not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or
`clueless'.

A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages
to express ideas in a natural-language text. For example, one might see the
following:

I resently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was
right, and the racing stripe on the case looked kind
of neat, but its performance left something to be
desired.

#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's

net speeds?
#endif /* FLAME */

I guess they figured the price premium for true
frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
you're on a *very* tight budget.

#include <disclaimer.h>
—
== Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)

In the above, the `#ifdef'/`#endif' pair is a conditional compilation syntax
from C; here, it implies that the text between (which is a {flame}) should be
evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch FLAME.
The `#include' at the end is C for "include standard disclaimer here"; the
`standard disclaimer' is understood to read, roughly, "These are my personal
opinions and not to be construed as the official position of my employer."

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

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

Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence where
you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that number in
English. So, hackers prefer to write `1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies'
or `1970's' (the latter looks like a possessive).

It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use
multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is almost
certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses
(like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a
more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing
systems to their limits is in operation.

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

Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD `Mail(1)' was the
first message agent to support inclusion, and early USENETters emulated
its style. But the TAB character tended to push included text too far to the
right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly
wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which an inclusion
leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in EMACS and
a few mailers), the use of leading `>' or `> ' became standard, perhaps
owing to its use in `ed(1)' to display tabs (alternatively, it may derive from
the `>' that some early UNIX mailers used to quote lines starting with
"From" in text, so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message
headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their `>' leaders, so the `nesting
level' of a quotation is visually apparent.

A few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they are
automatically generated. One particularly ugly one looks like this:

/* Written hh:mm pm Mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in <group> */
/* ————— "Article subject, chopped to 35 ch" ————— */
<quoted text>
/* End of text from local:group */

It is generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called
`notesfiles'. The overall trend, however, is definitely away from such
verbosity.

The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a
followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on USENET: the
fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless
posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely
of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was
responding to what. Consequently, around 1984, new news-posting
software evolved a facility to automatically include the text of a previous
article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster chose. The poster was
expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The result has been that, now,
careless posters post articles containing the *entire* text of a preceding
article, *followed* only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree".

Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and
there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip
over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles
containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' — but this too
has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of
zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message
below the rejection threshold.

Because the default mailers supplied with UNIX and other operating
systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions

using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-
inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail.

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

Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting effect
on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which emotional
state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about other parties
except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has both good and bad
effects. The good one is that it encourages honesty and tends to break down
hierarchical authority relationships; the bad is that it may encourage
depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps in response to this,
experienced netters often display a sort of conscious formal politesse in
their writing that has passed out of fashion in other spoken and written
media (for example, the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).

Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with
people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face to face.

Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity
of expression. It may well be that future historians of literature will see in it
a revival of the great tradition of personal letters as art.

:Hacker Speech Style: =====================

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

This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken
by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In
contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant
throughout hackerdom.

It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative
questions —- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often
confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done
so much programming that distinguishes between

if (going) {

and

if (!going) {

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

For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them.
The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative
knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.

Here's a related quirk. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a
question like "So, are you working on finding that bug *now* or leaving it
until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes,
I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!").

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

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

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

Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to
often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical
conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that
are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported
here.

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

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

:Pronunciation Guide: =====================

Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that
are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious
compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to
be interpreted using the following conventions:

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

2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is
always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather

than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge".
The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is
the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim".

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

4. Vowels are represented as follows:

a
back, that
ar
far, mark
aw
flaw, caught
ay
bake, rain
e
less, men
ee
easy, ski
eir
their, software
i
trip, hit
i:
life, sky
o
father, palm
oh

flow, sew
oo
loot, through
or
more, door
ow
out, how
oy
boy, coin
uh
but, some
u
put, foot
y
yet, young
yoo
few, chew
[y]oo
/oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)

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

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

:Other Lexicon Conventions: ===========================

Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the
letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream

dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters
are sorted after Z. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.

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

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

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

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

Prefix * is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage.

We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style
section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of
text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word
being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an
utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered
with single quotes.

References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX facilities
(some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed over
USENET). The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section
(n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C
library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system
administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed
roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries.

Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized
here:

abbrev.
abbreviation
adj.
adjective
adv.
adverb
alt.
alternate
cav.
caveat
esp.
especially
excl.
exclamation
imp.
imperative
interj.
interjection
n.
noun

obs.
obsolete
pl.
plural
poss.
possibly
pref.
prefix
prob.
probably
prov.
proverbial
quant.
quantifier
suff.
suffix
syn.
synonym (or synonymous with)
v.
verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
var.
variant
vi.
intransitive verb
vt.
transitive verb

Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two
possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is
markedly less common than the primary.

Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to
have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of
abbreviations used in etymologies:

Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Cambridge
the university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
DEC
The Digital Equipment Corporation
Fairchild
The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group
Fidonet
See the {Fidonet} entry
IBM
International Business Machines
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab
culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups, including the
Tech Model Railroad Club
NRL
Naval Research Laboratories
NYU
New York University

OED
The Oxford English Dictionary
Purdue
Purdue University
SAIL
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at Stanford
University)
SI
From Syst`eme International, the name for the standard
conventions of metric nomenclature used in the sciences
Stanford
Stanford University
Sun
Sun Microsystems
TMRC
Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC)
at
MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from `An Abridged Dictionary
of the TMRC Language', originally compiled by Pete Samson in 1959
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
UK
the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)
USENET
See the {USENET} entry
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of
PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s
XEROX PARC
XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research

in
user interface design and networking
Yale
Yale University

Some other etymology abbreviations such as {UNIX} and {PDP-10}
refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems,
processors, or other environments. The fact that a term is labelled with any
one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to
that culture. In particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in
quite general use. We have tried to give some indication of the distribution
of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in
the introduction conspire to make these indications less definite than might
be desirable.

A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These
are usually generalizations suggested by editors or USENET respondents in
the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These
are *not* represented as established jargon.

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

All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be
considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this File,
and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be edited
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Try to conform to the format already being used —- head-words
separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries), cross-
references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries), pronunciations in
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numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set (7-
bit printable, no high-half characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one
of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has
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We are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered.
There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific
computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in
numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language
design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!

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

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

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

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

= A = =====

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

:ABEND: [ABnormal END] /ah'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. Abnormal termination
(of software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives from an error message on the
IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously mainly by {code
grinder}s. Usually capitalized, but may appear as `abend'. Hackers will try
to persuade you that ABEND is called `abend' because it is what system
operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day,
and hence is from the German `Abend' = `Evening'.

:accumulator: n. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a
synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been
around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is
quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers,
for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in
`A' derive from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually,
from `arithmetic'). Confusingly, though, an `A' register name prefix may
also stand for `address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A
register being used for arithmetic or logic (as opposed to addressing or a
loop index), especially one being used to accumulate a sum or count of
many items. This use is in context of a particular routine or stretch of code.
"The FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket (esp.
among old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this reviewed? Sure,
just put it in the accumulator." (See {stack}.)

:ACK: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110]
Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream
*Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}. 2. [from the comic
strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "Ack
pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK)
and is distinguished by a following exclamation point. 3. Used to politely
interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point (see {NAK}).

Thus, for example, you might cut off an overly long explanation with "Ack.
Ack. Ack. I get it now".

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

:ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions made
inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance
of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact entirely arbitrary. For example,
fuzzy-matching input tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol
table can make it look as though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-
case code to cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a
program to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some
cleaner and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity' (/ad-
hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also {ELIZA effect}.

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

probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast,
{elephantine} bulk.

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

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

:ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at computer-
refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don
Woods. Now better known as Adventure, but the {{TOPS-10}} operating
system permitted only 6-letter filenames. See also {vadding}.

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

Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `Colossal

Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up
is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.

:AFJ: n. Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate
April Fool's hoaxes are a hallowed tradition on USENET and Internet; see
{kremvax} for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal
holiday marked by customary observances on the hacker networks.

:AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with `NP-
complete' (see {NP-})] adj. Used to describe problems or subproblems in
AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a solution to the `strong AI
problem' (that is, the synthesis of a human-level intelligence). A problem
that is AI-complete is, in other words, just too hard.

Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem'
(building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural
Language Problem' (building a system that can understand and speak
a natural language as well as a human). These may appear to be
modular, but all attempts so far (1991) to solve them have foundered
on the amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to
require. See also {gedanken}.

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

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

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

:airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-
engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine
airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that
simplicity increases robustness (see also {KISS Principle}). It is
correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put
all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really
*good* basket.

:aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in
code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc(3)' or equivalent. If
more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it
may happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved)
through one alias and then referenced through another, which may lead to
subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation
strategies that never alias allocated core. Also avoidable by use of higher-
level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see
{GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash},
{overrun screw}, {spam}.

Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with
C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.

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

:alpha particles: n. See {bit rot}.

:alt: /awlt/ 1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}. 2. n. The
`clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals
that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {feature
key}). Some Mac hackers, confusingly, reserve `alt' for the Option key. 3.
n.obs. [PDP-10; often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII
ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some older
terminals. Also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character was almost never
pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in {TECO}, or under TOPS-10 —-
always alt, as in "Type alt alt to end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the
system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This was probably because alt is
more convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by another
alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character, for that matter).

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

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

:Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common LISP: The Language', by Guy L.
Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990). Note that
due to a technical screwup some printings of the second edition are actually
of a color the author describes succinctly as "yucky green". See also {{book
titles}}.

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

:amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&'
operator.

:amper: n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
ASCII 0100110) character. See {{ASCII}} for other synonyms.

:angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by
typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than
sign.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.

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

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

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

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

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

:app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for
their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of
the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term
excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems,
though a user would consider all those to be apps. Oppose {tool},
{operating system}.

:arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed {archive} from a
group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible program.
Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method is falling into
disuse, having been replaced by newer compression techniques. See {tar
and feather}, {zip}.

:arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving
program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System
Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark
infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC outperformed ARC
on both compression and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it
introduced a new compression type that could be disabled for backward-
compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs
(both SEA and PKWare are small companies); as part of the settlement, the
name of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA
for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when
PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better
compression algorithms.

:archive: n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file by a
program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)', or {arc} for shipment or
archiving (sense 2). See also {tar and feather}. 2. A collection of files or

archives (sense 1) made available from an `archive site' via {FTP} or an
email server.

:arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by `brk(2)'
and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic storage. So named from a
semi-mythical `malloc: corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when
some early versions became terminally confused. See {overrun screw},
{aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}.

:arg: /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as
to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine
function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2
args." Compare {param}, {parm}, {var}.

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

:asbestos: adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one
from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos longjohns} and
{asbestos cork award}, but it is used more generally.

:asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer} so
consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and
distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the
`asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as to the intended application of
the cork should consult the etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is
agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required
to earn this dubious dignity —- but there is no agreement on *which* few.

:asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET}
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit {flamage}. This
is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages. Also `asbestos underwear',
`asbestos overcoat', etc.

:ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
/as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including an early version of ASCII) used fewer. This
change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters —- a major
{win} —- but it did not provide for accented letters or any
other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S
and the ae-ligature
which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how.

Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names —- some
formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
characters are collected here. See also individual entries for {bang},
{excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat}, {twiddle}, and
{Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.

This list derives from revision 2.3 of the USENET ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the particularly
silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. Ordinary parentheticals
provide some usage information.

!
Common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>.

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

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

#
Common: <number sign>; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp;
{crunch}; hex; [mesh]; octothorpe. Rare: flash; crosshatch;
grid; pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}.

$
Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck;
cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of
ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].

%
Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].

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

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

()
Common: left/right paren; left/right parenthesis; left/right;
paren/thesis; open/close paren; open/close; open/close
parenthesis; left/right banana. Rare: so/al-ready;
lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; open/close round
bracket, parenthisey/unparenthisey; [wax/wane]; left/right
ear.

*
Common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear;
dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see
{glob}); {Nathan Hale}.

+
Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].

,
Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].

-
Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.

.
Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix
point; full stop; [spot].

/
Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare:
diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].

:
Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].

;
Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],
pit-thwong.

<>
Common: <less/greater than>; left/right angle bracket;
bra/ket; left/right broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read
from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out;
crunch/zap (all from UNIX); [angle/right angle].

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

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

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

V
Rare: [book].

[]
Common: left/right square bracket; <opening/closing bracket>;

bracket/unbracket; left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare;
[U turn/U turn back].

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

^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare:
chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of');
fang; pointer (in Pascal).

_
Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare:
score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].

`
Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote;
<grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark];
unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push;
<opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote.

{}
Common: open/close brace; left/right brace; left/right
squiggly; left/right squiggly bracket/brace; left/right curly
bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace;
curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; left/right squirrelly;
[embrace/bracelet].

|
Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:

<vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from
UNIX); [spike].

~
Common: <tilde>; squiggle; {twiddle}; not. Rare: approx;
wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].

The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S.
but a bad idea; {{Commonwealth Hackish}} has its own, rather more
apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards
the pound graphic
happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes
call `#' on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the
American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned
commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights
on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash'
outside the U.S.

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

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

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

and `&' on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See
also {splat}.

The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's
other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more
and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of international
networks continues to increase (see {software rot}). Hardware and
software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that
ASCII is the universal character set; this is a a major irritant to people
who want to use a character set suited to their own languages.
Perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating
`national' character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a
*smaller* subset common to all those in use.

:ASCII art: n. The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character
set (mainly `|', `-', `/', `\', and `+'). Also known as `character graphics' or
`ASCII graphics'; see also {boxology}. Here is a serious example:

o——)||(—+—|<——+ +————-o + D O
L )||( | | | C U
A I )||( +—>|-+ | +-\/\/-+—o - T
C N )||( | | | | P
E )||( +—>|-+—)—-+—)|—+-o U
)||( | | | GND T
o——)||(—+—|<——+—————+

A power supply consisting of a full wave
rectifier circuit feeding a capacitor input filter
circuit

Figure 1.

And here are some very silly examples:

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

Figure 2.

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

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

Figure 3.

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

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

Figure 4.

:attoparsec: n. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by
10^(-18). A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is
thus 3.26 * 10^(-18) light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1
attoparsec/{microfortnight} equals about 1 inch/sec). This unit is reported
to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K.
See {micro-}.

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

:automagically: /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k*l-ee/ adv.
Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too
complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't
feel like explaining to you. See {magic}. "The C-INTERCAL compiler
generates C, then automagically invokes `cc(1)' to produce an executable."

:avatar: [CMU, Tektronix] n. Syn. {root}, {superuser}. There are quite a
few UNIX machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar'
rather than `root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked
the term `superuser', and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at
Tektronix.

:awk: 1. n. [UNIX techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text
data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the
name is from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a
declaration-free approach to variable typing and declarations, associative
arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also {Perl}. 2. n. Editing term
for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal {regexp}
facilities (for example, one containing a {newline}). 3. vt. To process data
using `awk(1)'.

= B = =====

:back door: n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place
by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not always sinister;
some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged
accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's
maintenance programmers.

Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known.
The infamous {RTM} worm of late 1988, for example, used a back
door in the {BSD} UNIX `sendmail(8)' utility.

Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed
the existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have
qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. The
C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login'
command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a
password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system
whether or not an account had been created for him.

Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from
the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to

recompile the compiler, you have to *use* the compiler —- so
Thompson also arranged that the compiler would *recognize when it
was compiling a version of itself*, and insert into the recompiled
compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to
allow Thompson entry —- and, of course, the code to recognize itself
and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done
this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the
original sources, leaving his back door in place and active but with no
trace in the sources.

The talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as
"Reflections on Trusting Trust", `Communications of the
ACM 27', 8 (August 1984), pp. 761—763.

Syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also
{iron box}, {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}.

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

:backbone site: n. A key USENET and email site; one that processes a
large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of
the regional coordinators for the USENET maps. Notable backbone sites as
of early 1991 include uunet and the mail machines at Rutgers University,
UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University,
and the University of Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}.

:backgammon:: See {bignum}, {moby}, and {pseudoprime}.

:background: n.,adj.,vt. To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever
{foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to
background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now,
we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing
problem in background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a
reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner'
(which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity).
Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up
for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon
encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare {amp off},
{slopsucker}.

Technically, a task running in background is detached from the
terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority);
oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated
with {{UNIX}}, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on
OS/360.

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

:backward combatability: /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ [from `backward
compatibility'] n. A property of hardware or software revisions in which
previous protocols, formats, and layouts are discarded in favor of `new and
improved' protocols, formats, and layouts. Occurs usually when making the
transition between major releases. When the change is so drastic that the old
formats are not retained in the new version, it is said to be `backward
combatable'. See {flag day}.

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

because of bugginess. See {working as designed}.

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

:bag on the side: n. An extension to an established hack that is supposed
to add some functionality to the original. Usually derogatory, implying that
the original was being overextended and should have been thrown away,
and the new product is ugly, inelegant, or bloated. Also v. phrase, `to hang a
bag on the side [of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C …." "They
want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting system."

:bagbiter: /bag'bi:t-*r/ n. 1. Something, such as a program or a computer,
that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text
editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a
bagbiter!" 2. A person who has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or
otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly.
Synonyms: {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}. 3. adj. `bagbiting' Having the
quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't let me compute the
factorial of a negative number." Compare {losing}, {cretinous},
{bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under
{chomp}). 4. `bite the bag' vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps
crashing every 5 minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting the bag."
The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene,

possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current usage they have
become almost completely sanitized.

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

:bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from old X-Men comics] interj. Notional sound made
by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often
used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD}) electronic {fora} when a character
wishes to make a dramatic entrance or exit. 2. The sound of magical
transformation, used in virtual reality {fora} like sense 1. 3. [from `Don
Washington's Survival Guide'] n. Acronym for `Bad-Ass Mother Fucker',
used to refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters on an LPMUD or
other similar MUD.

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

:banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I know
how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where
or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One
may say `there is a banana problem' of an algorithm with poorly defined or
incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design
that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance},
{creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under {HAKMEM}, which describes a
banana problem in a {Dissociated Press} implementation. Also, see {one-
banana problem} for a superficially similar but unrelated usage.

:bandwidth: n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical
meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person,
or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics, but I
missed some of the detail —- not enough bandwidth, I guess." Compare
{low-bandwidth}. 2. Attention span. 3. On {USENET}, a measure of
network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how
items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth.

:bang: 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001), especially
when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In {elder days}
this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers
preferring {excl} or {shriek}; but the spread of UNIX has carried `bang'
with it (esp. via the term {bang path}) and it is now certainly the most
common spoken name for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for non-
emphatic written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except
possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the exact
characters `foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See {shriek},
{{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved
enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often used to
acknowledge that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has
been called on it.

:bang on: vt. To stress-test a piece of hardware or software: "I banged on
the new version of the simulator all day yesterday and it didn't crash once. I
guess it is ready for release." The term {pound on} is synonymous.

:bang path: n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying
hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so
called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang} sign. Thus, for example,
the path …!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me directs people to route their mail to
machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to

everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of
user me on barbox.

In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers
became commonplace, people often published compound bang
addresses using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from
*several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might
be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example: …!{seismo, ut-
sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were
not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause
week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by
both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get
lost. See {{Internet address}}, {network, the}, and {sitename}.

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

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

:bare metal: n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares
and delusions as an {operating system}, an {HLL}, or even assembler.
Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which
refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} needed to create these basic
tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like

building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to
test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the
compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development
environment. 2. `Programming on the bare metal' is also used to describe a
style of {hand-hacking} that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular
hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on
crocks such as overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described
in {The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer} (in {appendix A}), interleaving
of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's
rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the
relative costs of programming time and machine resources have changed,
but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial
embedded systems. See {real programmer}.

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

:barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj. Term of
disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the Val\-speak "gag me
with a spoon". (Like, euwww!) See {bletch}. 2. vi. To say "Barf!" or emit
some similar expression of disgust. "I showed him my latest hack and he
barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he literally
vomited. 3. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable input. May mean to

give an error message. Examples: "The division operation barfs if you try to
divide by 0." (That is, the division operation checks for an attempt to divide
by zero, and if one is encountered it causes the operation to fail in some
unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.) "The text editor barfs if you
try to read in a new file before writing out the old one." See {choke},
{gag}. In Commonwealth hackish, `barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or
`vom'. {barf} is sometimes also used as a {metasyntactic variable}, like
{foo} or {bar}.

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

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

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

:barney: n. In Commonwealth hackish, `barney' is to {fred} (sense #1) as
{bar} is to {foo}. That is, people who commonly use `fred' as their first
metasyntactic variable will often use `barney' second. The reference is, of
course, to Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the Flintstones cartoons.

:baroque: adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive.
Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the
connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not
pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce random

variations to its letterform output. Now *that* is baroque!" See also
{rococo}.

:BartleMUD: /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs derived from the original
MUD game by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw (see {MUD}).
BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but
friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descriptions, so a player is
likely to come across `brand172', for instance (see {brand brand brand}).
Bartle has taken a bad rap in some MUDding circles for supposedly
originating this term, but (like the story that MUD is a trademark) this
appears to be a myth; he uses `MUD1'.

:BASIC: n. A programming language, originally designed for
Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has
since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. This is
another case (like {Pascal}) of the bad things that happen when a language
deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A
novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10—20 lines) very
easily; writing anything longer is (a) very painful, and (b) encourages bad
habits that will bite him/her later if he/she tries to hack in a real language.
This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so
common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards
a year.

:batch: adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely
than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a
normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive
command input are often referred to as `batch mode' switches. A `batch file'
is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program
running in batch mode. 2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "I
finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I

guess they'll turn the electricity back on next week…" 3. Accumulation of a
number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency.
"I'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to
take to the recycling center."

:bathtub curve: n. Common term for the curve (resembling an
end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs)
that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time:
initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's
lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'. See also {burn-in
period}, {infant mortality}.

:baud: /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per
second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second.
The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this
coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or
stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these nuances but blithely
ignore them.

Histotical note: this was originally a unit of telegraph signalling
speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at the
International Telegraph Conference of 1927, and named after J.M.E.
Baudot (1845-1903), the French engineer who constructed the first
successful teleprinter.

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

a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced
ones can identify particular speeds.

:baz: /baz/ n. 1. The third {metasyntactic variable} "Suppose we have
three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which calls
BAZ…." (See also {fum}) 2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this usage
the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, producing an effect not
unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/. 3. Occasionally appended to
{foo} to produce `foobaz'.

Earlier versions of this lexicon derived `baz' as a Stanford
corruption of {bar}. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the
{TMRC} lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined
TMRC in 1958. He says "It came from `Pogo'. Albert the Alligator,
when vexed or outraged, would shout `Bazz Fazz!' or `Rowrbazzle!'
The club layout was said to model the (mythical) New England
counties of Rowrfolk and Bassex (Rowrbazzle mingled with
(Norfolk/Suffolk/Middlesex/Essex)."

:bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1. Any electronic
bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems running on personal micros,
less frequently of a USENET {newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a
newsgroup generally marks one either as a {newbie} fresh in from the BBS
world or as a real old-timer predating USENET). 2. At CMU and other
colleges with similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin
boards. 3. The term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to refer to a old-
fashioned, non-electronic cork memo board. At CMU, it refers to a
particular one outside the CS Lounge.

In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the name
of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or `market
bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read bboards may

be referred to by name alone, as in (at CMU) "Don't post for-sale ads
on general".

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

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

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

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

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

:bells and whistles: [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs] n.
Features added to a program or system to make it more {flavorful} from a
hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its
primary function. Distinguished from {chrome}, which is intended to

attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back
and add some bells and whistles." No one seems to know what
distinguishes a bell from a whistle.

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

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

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

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

:berserking: vi. A {MUD} term meaning to gain points *only* by killing
other players and mobiles (non-player characters). Hence, a Berserker-
Wizard is a player character that has achieved enough points to become a
wizard, but only by killing other characters. Berserking is sometimes

frowned upon because of its inherently antisocial nature, but some MUDs
have a `berserker mode' in which a player becomes *permanently* berserk,
can never flee from a fight, cannot use magic, gets no score for treasure, but
does get double kill points. "Berserker wizards can seriously damage your
elf!"

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

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

:beta: /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n. 1. In the {Real
World}, software often goes through two stages of testing: Alpha (in-house)
and Beta (out-house?). Software is said to be `in beta'. 2. Anything that is
new and experimental is in beta. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is
still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Beta software is
notoriously buggy, so `in beta' connotes flakiness.

Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release
(potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it
available to selected customers and users. This term derives from
early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at
IBM but later standard throughout the industry. `Alpha Test' was the
unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta Test' was initial system
test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware.
The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done
before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a
demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified.

The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed
on early samples of the production design.

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

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

:BiCapitalization: n. The act said to have been performed on trademarks
(such as {PostScript}, NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver,
EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by
nonstandard capitalization. Too many {marketroid} types think this sort of
thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare {studlycaps}.

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

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

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

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

:Big Red Switch: [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the
`Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch on an
IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This !@%$% {bitty box} is hung
again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." Sources at IBM report that, in tune
with the company's passion for {TLA}s, this is often abbreviated as `BRS'
(this has also become established on FidoNet and in the PC {clone} world).
It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired
a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent
machines physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed
back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see

also {molly-guard}). Compare {power cycle}, {three-finger salute}, {120
reset}; see also {scram switch}.

:Big Room, the: n. The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and
intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny
night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations. "He
can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."

:big win: n. Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered high-
temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared
incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big
win!" See {win big}.

:big-endian: [From Swift's `Gulliver's Travels' via the famous paper `On
Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace' by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, dated
April 1, 1980] adj. 1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a
given multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte has the
lowest address (the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most processors,
including the IBM 370 family, the {PDP-10}, the Motorola microprocessor
families, and most of the various RISC designs current in mid-1991, are
big-endian. See {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. 2. An
{{Internet address}} the wrong way round. Most of the world follows the
Internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the
computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the U.K. the Joint
Networking Team had decided to do it the other way round before the
Internet domain standard was established; e.g., me@uk.ac.wigan.cs. Most
gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in their mailers to handle this, but can still
be confused. In particular, the address above could be in the U.K. (domain
uk) or Czechoslovakia (domain cs).

:bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MacLISP] n. 1. [techspeak] A
multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. More

generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at the United
States Budget? There's bignums for you!" 2. [Stanford] In backgammon,
large numbers on the dice are called `bignums', especially a roll of double
fives or double sixes (compare {moby}, sense 4). See also {El Camino
Bignum}.

Sense 1 may require some explanation. Most computer languages
provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer integers are
usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than than
2^(31) (2,147,483,648) or (on a losing {bitty box}) 2^(15) (32,768).
If you want to work with numbers larger than that, you have to use
floating-point numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or
seven decimal places. Computer languages that provide bignums can
perform exact calculations on very large numbers, such as 1000! (the
factorial of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998 times … times 2
times 1). For example, this value for 1000! was computed by the
MacLISP system using bignums:

40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071
46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048
00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669
94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950
59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910
56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476
63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241
74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791
43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534
52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155
86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785
89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151
02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126

48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215
66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975
60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535
34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394
50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200
01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317
81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760
88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780
88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403
12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565
81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786
90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614
39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665
26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348
34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946
59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272
24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657
24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756
55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623
77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446
64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179
97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459
01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819
37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013
74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233
44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278
28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355
42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988
25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994
87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018

21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636
77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230
56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577
79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000.

:bigot: n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular computer,
language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see {religious issues}).
Usually found with a specifier; thus, `cray bigot', `ITS bigot', `APL bigot',
`VMS bigot', `Berkeley bigot'. True bigots can be distinguished from mere
partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even
when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the
favored tool. It is said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much."
Compare {weenie}.

:bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `Binary digIT'] n. 1. [techspeak]
The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a
yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes are equally probable. 2.
[techspeak] A computational quantity that can take on one of two values,
such as true and false or 0 and 1. 3. A mental flag: a reminder that
something should be done eventually. "I have a bit set for you." (I haven't
seen you for a while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you something.) 4.
More generally, a (possibly incorrect) mental state of belief. "I have a bit set
that says that you were the last guy to hack on EMACS." (Meaning "I think
you were the last guy to hack on EMACS, and what I am about to say is
predicated on this, so please stop me if this isn't true.")

"I just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating that you
intend only a short interruption for a question that can presumably be
answered yes or no.

A bit is said to be `set' if its value is true or 1, and `reset' or `clear'
if its value is false or 0. One speaks of setting and clearing bits. To
{toggle} or `invert' a bit is to change it, either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to
0. See also {flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}.

The term `bit' first appeared in print in the computer-science sense
in 1949, and seems to have been coined by early computer scientist
John Tukey. Tukey records that it evolved over a lunch table as a
handier alternative to `bigit' or `binit'.

:bit bang: n. Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by
rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the appropriate times. The technique
is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte.
Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the
same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {wannabee}s.

Bit bang was used on certain early models of Prime computers,
presumably when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z80
micros with a Zilog PIO but no SIO. In an interesting instance of the
{cycle of reincarnation}, this technique is now (1991) coming back
into use on some RISC architectures because it consumes such an
infinitesimal part of the processor that it actually makes sense not to
have a UART.

:bit bashing: n. (alt. `bit diddling' or {bit twiddling}) Term used to
describe any of several kinds of low-level programming characterized by
manipulation of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble}, and other smaller-than-character-
sized pieces of data; these include low-level device control, encryption

algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some
flavors of graphics programming (see {bitblt}), and assembler/compiler
code generation. May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge
(more usually the former). "The command decoding for the new tape driver
looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs."
See also {bit bang}, {mode bit}.

:bit bucket: n. 1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical
receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a
shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to
the bit bucket'. On {{UNIX}}, often used for {/dev/null}. Sometimes
amplified as `the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost
mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed
according to {Finagle's Law}; important mail is much more likely to end up
in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of
getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by
mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network. 3.
The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses: "Flames about this
article to the bit bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's
mailbox with flames. 4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I mailed
you those figures last week; they must have ended in the bit bucket."
Compare {black hole}.

This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion
that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This
appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about
which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that
trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it
was actually pulling them `out of the bit box'. See also {chad box}.

Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the
`parity preservation law', the number of 1 bits that go to the bit bucket
must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in bits filling
up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can empty a full bit
bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.

:bit decay: n. See {bit rot}. People with a physics background tend to
prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. See also {computron},
{quantum bogodynamics}.

:bit rot: n. Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence of which
has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features
will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if `nothing has
changed'. The theory explains that bits decay as if they were radioactive. As
time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will become
increasingly garbled.

There actually are physical processes that produce such effects
(alpha particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip
packages, for example, can change the contents of a computer
memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can
corrupt files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and computers
are built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate for them). The
notion long favored among hackers that cosmic rays are among the
causes of such events turns out to be a myth; see the {cosmic rays}
entry for details.

The term {software rot} is almost synonymous. Software rot is the
effect, bit rot the notional cause.

:bit twiddling: n. 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see {tune}) in
which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable

improvement, often with the result that the code has become
incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for
some pointless goal. 3. Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act
of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it
back to a known state.

:bit-paired keyboard: n. obs. (alt. `bit-shift keyboard') A non-standard
keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33
and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The
ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see {EOU}), so the only way to generate
the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The
design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could
be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In
order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it
already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic
bit pattern on one key.

Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:

high low bits
bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001
010 ! " # $ % & ' ( )
011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a
Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not*
the weirdest variant of the {QWERTY} layout widely seen, by the
way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing)
arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches.

When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s,
there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards

should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype
keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to
make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives
became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To a
hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical —- and
because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type,
there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards
to the typewriter standard.

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

:bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a family of closely related
algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of bits between main and
display memory on a bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either
main or display memory (the requirement to do the {Right Thing} in the
case of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt
tricky). 2. Synonym for {blit} or {BLT}. Both uses are borderline
techspeak.

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

ASCII/RFC-822 world with annoying regularity. BITNET is also notorious
as the apparent home of {BIFF}.

:bits: n.pl. 1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file
formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare {core dump},
sense 4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as
contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon File; does
anyone know where I can get the bits?". See {softcopy}, {source of all good
bits} See also {bit}.

:bitty box: /bit'ee boks/ n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or
incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of
developing software on or for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent,
single-tasking-only personal machines such as the Atari 800, Osborne,
Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. [Pejorative] More generally, the
opposite of `real computer' (see {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-
dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}.

:bixie: /bik'see/ n. Variant {emoticon}s used on BIX (the Byte
Information eXchange). The {smiley} bixie is <@_@>, apparently
intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others have
been reported.

:black art: n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication)
mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems
area (compare {black magic}). VLSI design and compiler code
optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of
black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once
standard textbooks had been written, became merely {heavy wizardry}. The
huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around
new computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made

both the term `black art' and what it describes less common than formerly.
See also {voodoo programming}.

:black hole: n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously
between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a {bounce
message}) it is commonly said to have `fallen into a black hole'. "I think
there's a black hole at foovax!" conveys suspicion that site foovax has been
dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). The
implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself.
Compare {bit bucket}.

:black magic: n. A technique that works, though nobody really
understands why. More obscure than {voodoo programming}, which may
be done by cookbook. Compare also {black art}, {deep magic}, and {magic
number} (sense 2).

:blargh: /blarg/ [MIT] n. The opposite of {ping}, sense 5; an exclamation
indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a quantum of unhappiness.
Less common than {ping}.

:blast: 1. vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data sends over a
network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage: uncommon. The variant
`blat' has been reported. 2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense
3). Sometimes the message `Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?'
would appear in the command window upon logout.

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

:bletch: /blech/ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit, poss. via
comic-strip exclamation `blech'] interj. Term of disgust. Often used in
"Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.

:bletcherous: /blech'*-r*s/ adj. Disgusting in design or function;
esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This
keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are
misplaced.) See {losing}, {cretinous}, {bagbiter}, {bogus}, and {random}.
The term {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so described;
similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast, something that is `losing' or
`bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also {bogus} and
{random}, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the
above.

:blinkenlights: /blink'*n-li:tz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a
computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. Derives from the last word of the famous
blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about
half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One version ran in
its entirety as follows:

ACHTUNG! ALLES
LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das
computermachine ist nicht fuer
gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
Ist easy schnappen der
springenwerk, blowenfusen und
poppencorken mit spitzensparken.
Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das
dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken
sichtseeren keepen das cotten-
pickenen hans in das pockets muss;
relaxen und watchen das
blinkenlichten.

This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford
University and had already gone international by the early 1960s,
when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site.
There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually
do end with the word `blinkenlights'.

In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers
have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in
fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:

ATTEN
TION
This room
is
fullfilled
mit
special
electronis
che
equippme
nt.
Fingergra
bbing and
pressing
the
cnoeppkes
from the
computers
is allowed
for die
experts

only! So
all the
"lefthande
rs" stay
away and
do not
disturben
the
brainstor
ming von
here
working
intelligenc
ies.
Otherwise
you will
be out
thrown
and
kicked
anderswh
ere! Also:
please
keep still
and only
watchen
astaunishe
d the
blinkenlig
hts.

See also {geef}.

:blit: /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part of a
computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being
used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The storage allocator
picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high memory, and
then blits it all back down again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast},
{snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a
large array of bits while moving them. 2. All-capitalized as `BLIT': an early
experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later
commercialized as the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from `Bell Labs
Intelligent Terminal' is incorrect.)

:blitter: /blit'r/ n. A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to
perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped
graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but in
1991 the trend is away from them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}).
Syn. {raster blaster}.

:blivet: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning
"ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable problem.
2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3.
A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that
it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but
unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during
a customer demo.

This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among
experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it
seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to
hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing
trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to

depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit
together in an impossible way.

:BLOB: [acronym, Binary Large OBject] n. Used by database people to
refer to any random large block of bits which needs to be stored in
a database, such as a picture or sound file. The essential point
about a BLOB is that it's an object you can't interpret within the
database itself.

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

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

:blow an EPROM: /bloh *n ee'prom/ v. (alt. `blast an EPROM', `burn an
EPROM') To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded
system. This term arises because the programming process for the
Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs) that preceded present-day
Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories (EPROMs) involved
intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. Thus, one was said to
`blow' (or `blast') a PROM, and the terminology carried over even though
the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.

:blow away: vt. To remove (files and directories) from permanent
storage, generally by accident. "He reformatted the wrong

partition and blew away last night's netnews." Oppose {nuke}.

:blow out: vi. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as
serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow past}, {blow up},
{die horribly}.

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

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

:BLT: /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. Synonym for {blit}. This is
the original form of {blit} and the ancestor of {bitblt}. It referred to any
large bit-field copy or move operation (one resource-intensive memory-
shuffling operation done on pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS, and TOPS-
10 was sardonically referred to as `The Big BLT'). The jargon usage has
outlasted the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT}
derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always means
`Branch if Less Than zero'.

:Blue Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references
on the page-layout and graphics-control language {PostScript} (`PostScript
Language Tutorial and Cookbook', Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985,
QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN 0-201-10179-3); the other two official guides are
known as the {Green Book}, the {Red Book}, and the {White Book}
(sense 2). 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation', David
Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64, ISBN 0-201-11371-63
(this is also associated with green and red books). 3. Any of the 1988
standards issued by the CCITT's ninth plenary assembly. Until now, they

have changed color each review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1992 would
be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to
be dropped before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400
email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book
titles}}.

:Blue Glue: [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an
incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol widely
favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The official IBM
definition is "that which binds blue boxes together." See {fear and
loathing}. It may not be irrelevant that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a
3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the
removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. A correspondent at U.
Minn. reports that the CS department there has about 80 bottles of the stuff
hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as `using
the blue glue'.

:blue goo: n. Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray
goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the
stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and promote truth, justice, and the American
way, etc. See {{nanotechnology}}.

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

:blurgle: /bler'gl/ [Great Britain] n. Spoken {metasyntactic variable}, to
indicate some text which is obvious from context, or which is already
known. If several words are to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or
trebled. "To look for something in several files use `grep string blurgle

blurgle'." In each case, "blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced
by the file you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, sense 6.

:BNF: /B-N-F/ n. 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a
metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming
languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used for language
descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must usually be
learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this BNF for a U.S. postal
address:

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

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

<name-part> ::= <personal-part> <last-name> [<jr-part>]
<EOL> | <personal-part> <name-part>

<street-address> ::= [<apt>] <house-num> <street-name> <EOL>

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

This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a
name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code
part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial
followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part
followed by a last name followed by an optional `jr-part' (Jr., Sr., or
dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a
name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering
the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or
initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier,
followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part
consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state

code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that
many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment
specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed to be
obvious from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also
{parse}. 2. The term is also used loosely for any number of variants
and extensions, possibly containing some or all of the {regexp}
wildcards such as `*' or `+'. In fact the example above isn't the pure
form invented for the Algol-60 report; it uses `[]', which was
introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now
universally recognized. 3. In {{science-fiction fandom}}, BNF means
`Big-Name Fan' (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan
started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions;
this confused the hacker contingent terribly.

:boa: [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a
{dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of
their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have been
coiled for some time. It is rumored within IBM that channel cables for the
370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas get
dangerous —- and it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers
uses the trademark `Anaconda'.

:board: n. 1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes used even for
USENET newsgroups. 2. An electronic circuit board (compare {card}).

:boat anchor: n. 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe; implies that the
offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. "That was a working
motherboard once. One lightning strike later, instant boat anchor!" 2. A
person who just takes up space.

:BOF: /B-O-F/ or /bof/ n. Abbreviation for the phrase "Birds Of a
Feather" (flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or bull

session scheduled on a conference program. It is not clear where or when
this term originated, but it is now associated with the USENIX conferences
for UNIX techies and was already established there by 1984. It was used
earlier than that at DECUS conferences, and is reported to have been
common at SHARE meetings as far back as the early 1960s.

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

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

:bogon: /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but
doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's
`Vogons'; see the Bibliography in {appendix C}] n. 1. The elementary
particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). For instance, "the
Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an
erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain
resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3.
Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By
synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch
with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is
bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage,
but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1—4. See also {bogosity},
{bogus}; compare {psyton}, {fat electrons}, {magic smoke}.

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

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

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

:bogosity: /boh-go's*-tee/ n. 1. The degree to which something is
{bogus}. At CMU, bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; in a seminar,
when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and
say "My bogometer just triggered". More extremely, "You just pinned my

bogometer" means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus
that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible
reading (one might also say "You just redlined my bogometer"). The
agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat /mi:k`roh-len'*t/ (uL). The
consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. 2. The
potential field generated by a {bogon flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}.
See also {bogon flux}, {bogon filter}, {bogus}.

Historical note: The microLenat was invented as an attack against
noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate student}.
Doug had failed the student on an important exam for giving only "AI
is bogus" as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally
considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless.
Some of Doug's friends argue that *of course* a microLenat is bogus,
since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that
the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the
microReid.

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

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

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

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

It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at
Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by
Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus
words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see
{autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into
hackerdom from CMU and MIT. By the early 1980s it was also
current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen slang,
and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from
Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on
British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically,
`counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".

:Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable {bug};
one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set
of conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}; see also {mandelbug},
{schroedinbug}.

:boink: /boynk/ [USENET: ascribed there to the TV series
"Cheers" and "Moonlighting"] 1. To have sex with;
compare {bounce}, sense 3. (This is mainstream slang.) In
Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more common. 2. After

the original Peter Korn `Boinkon' {USENET} parties, used for
almost any net social gathering, e.g., Miniboink, a small boink
held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota
in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San
Francisco Bay Area. Compare {@-party}. 3. Var of `bonk';
see {bonk/oif}.

:bomb: 1. v. General synonym for {crash} (sense 1) except that
it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS failures.
"Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb."
2. n.,v. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a UNIX `panic' or
Amiga {guru} (sense 2), where icons of little black-powder bombs
or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating that the system has
died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a decimal (or
occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong,
similar to the Amiga {guru meditation} number. {{MS-DOS}}
machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation.

:bondage-and-discipline language: A language (such as Pascal, Ada, APL,
or Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to
enforce an author's theory of `right programming' even though said theory
is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-
purpose programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of
things "having the B&D nature". See {{Pascal}}; oppose {languages of
choice}.

:bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. In the {MUD} community, it has become
traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the offending person.
There is a convention that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!'
and a myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif
balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have

implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk
mode}, {posing}.

:book titles:: There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging
important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of
their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of
these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. See {Aluminum
Book}, {Blue Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon Book},
{Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Purple Book}, {Red
Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book}, {Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book},
and {bible}; see also {rainbow series}.

:boot: [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] v.,n. To load and initialize
the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer jargon (having
passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still
jargon.

The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been down
for long, or that the boot is a {bounce} intended to clear some state of
{wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of human thought processes, as
in the following exchange: "You've lost me." "OK, reboot. Here's the
theory…."

This term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from power-off
condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all devices already
powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash).

Another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a
system, under control of other software still running: "If you're
running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-
boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running."

Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility
towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have to
hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." One often
hard-boots by performing a {power cycle}.

Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short
program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from
the front panel switches. This program was always very short (great
efforts were expended on making it short in order to minimize the
labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in), but was just
smart enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually
from a card or paper tape reader), to which it handed control; this
program in turn was smart enough to read the application or operating
system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive
steps, the computer `pulled itself up by its bootstraps' to a useful
operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap is usually found in ROM or
EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk,
called the `boot block'. When this program gains control, it is
powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it.

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

:bottom-up implementation: n. Hackish opposite of the techspeak term
`top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most programming
cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to
lower, specifying sequences of action in increasing detail until you get to
actual code. Hackers often find (especially in exploratory designs that
cannot be closely specified in advance) that it works best to *build* things
in the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive
operations and then knitting them together.

:bounce: v. 1. [perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a
wall] An electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error
notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. See also {bounce message}. 2.
[Stanford] To play volleyball. At the now-demolished {D. C. Power Lab}
building used by the Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s, there was a volleyball
court on the front lawn. From 5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled
maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 the computer
would become unavailable, and over the intercom a voice would cry, "Now
hear this: bounce, bounce!" followed by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a
volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers. 3. To
engage in sexual intercourse; prob. from the expression `bouncing the
mattress', but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing
me, Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare {boink}. 4. To
casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported
primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral in
order to reset it.

:bounce message: [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by
a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet address}} recipient
or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}). Reasons might include a
nonexistent or misspelled username or a {down} relay site. Bounce
messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's
apprentice mode}. The terms `bounce mail' and `barfmail' are also common.

:boustrophedon: [from a Greek word for turning like an ox while
plowing] n. An ancient method of writing using alternate left-to-right and
right-to-left lines. This term is actually philologists' techspeak and
typesetter's jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by
some computer typesetting software (notably UNIX `troff(1)'). The
adverbial form `boustrophedonically' is also found (hackers purely love
constructions like this).

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

:boxed comments: n. Comments (explanatory notes attached to program
instructions) that occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in
assembler and C code they are often surrounded by a box in a style
something like this:

/*************************************************
*
* This is a boxed comment in C style
*
*************************************************/

Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2 or add
a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The
sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves;
the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}.

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

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

:bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ [from the name of a TV clown even
more losing than Ronald McDonald] adj. Resembling or having the quality
of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous.
Compare {wonky}, {demented}. Note that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang,
but the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New
England) `bozoish'.

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

:brain dump: n. The act of telling someone everything one knows about a
particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a
new party maintain a piece of code. Conceptually analogous to an operating
system {core dump} in that it saves a lot of useful {state} before an exit.
"You'll have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your
new job at HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense 4). At Sun, this is also
known as `TOI' (transfer of information).

:brain fart: n. The actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to the mental
glitch which is the braino itself. E.g. typing `dir' on a UNIX box after a
session with DOS.

:brain-damaged: 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD),
a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
Honeywell {{Multics}}] adj. Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}.
There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain
damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-
damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to

work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six monocase
characters per file name? Now *that's* brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac
world] May refer to free demonstration software that has been deliberately
crippled in some way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is
intended to sell. Syn. {crippleware}.

:brain-dead: adj. Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to imply
terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. "This
comm program doesn't know how to send a break —- how brain-dead!"

:braino: /bray'no/ n. Syn. for {thinko}. See also {brain fart}.

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

:brand brand brand: n. Humorous catch-phrase from {BartleMUD}s, in
which players were described carrying a list of objects, the most
common of which would usually be a brand. Often used as a joke in
{talk mode} as in "Fred the wizard is here, carrying brand ruby
brand brand brand kettle broadsword flamethrower". A brand is a
torch, of course; one burns up a lot of those exploring dungeons.
Prob. influenced by the famous Monty Python "Spam" skit.

:bread crumbs: n. Debugging statements inserted into a program that
emit output or log indicators of the program's {state} to a file
so you can see where it dies, or pin down the cause of surprising
behavior. The term is probably a reference to the Hansel and Gretel
story from the Brothers Grimm; in several variants, a character
leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so as not to get lost in the
woods.

:break: 1. vt. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to
the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. v. (of a program) To stop
temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a
`breakpoint'. 3. [techspeak] vi. To send an RS-232 break (two character
widths of line high) over a serial comm line. 4. [UNIX] vi. To strike
whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current
process. Normally, break (sense 3) or delete does this. 5. `break break' may
be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling).
This usage comes from radio communications, which in turn probably came
from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's
Band craze a few years ago.

:break-even point: n. in the process of implementing a new computer
language, the point at which the language is sufficiently effective that one
can implement the language in itself. That is, for a new language called,
hypothetically, FOOGOL, one has reached break-even when one can write a
demonstration compiler for FOOGOL in FOOGOL, discard the original
implementation language, and thereafter use older versions of FOOGOL to
develop newer ones. This is an important milestone; see {MFTL}.

:breath-of-life packet: [XEROX PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that
contained bootstrap (see {boot}) code, periodically sent out from a working
computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that
had happened to crash. Machines depending on such packets have sufficient
hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the
reboot process. See also {dickless workstation}.

:breedle: n. See {feep}.

:bring X to its knees: v. To present a machine, operating system, piece of
software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or {pathological} that it

grinds to a halt. "To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users
running {vi} —- or four running {EMACS}." Compare {hog}.

:brittle: adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken by
changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak
to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and
disastrously to expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually
totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often
used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to
be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed software, which
displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Oppose {robust}.

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

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

:broken arrow: [IBM] n. The error code displayed on line 25 of a 3270
terminal (or a PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of protocol violations
and "unexpected" error conditions (including connection to a {down}
computer). On a PC, simulated with `->/_', with the two center characters
overstruck. In true {luser} fashion, the original documentation of these
codes (visible on every 3270 terminal, and necessary for debugging
network problems) was confined to an IBM customer engineering manual.

Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that `broken
arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear
weapons….

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

:Brooks's Law: prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project makes
it later" —- a result of the fact that the advantage from splitting work
among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the
complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then
merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The
quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author
of `The Mythical Man-Month' (Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-
2), an excellent early book on software engineering. The myth in question
has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and
Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten
his advice; too often, {management} does. See also {creationism},
{second-system effect}.

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

:brute force: adj. Describes a primitive programming style, one in which
the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using
his or her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems
of scale and applying na"ive methods suited to small problems directly to
large ones.

The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated
with the `traveling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical {NP-}hard
problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and wishes to drive to

N other cities. In what order should he or she visit them in order to
minimize the distance travelled? The brute-force method is to simply
generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while
guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly
very stupid in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like
going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in
that order). For very small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes
absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are already
1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for N = 1000 —-
well, see {bignum}). See also {NP-}.

A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is
finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing
program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first
number off the front.

Whether brute-force programming should be considered stupid or
not depends on the context; if the problem isn't too big, the extra CPU
time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the
programmer time it would take to develop a more `intelligent'
algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more
long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the
speed improvement.

Ken Thompson, co-inventor of UNIX, is reported to have uttered
the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended
this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original UNIX kernel's
preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over {brittle}
`smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success
of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the
choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is

often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate
esthetic judgment.

:brute force and ignorance: n. A popular design technique at many
software houses —- {brute force} coding unrelieved by any knowledge of
how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic
adherence to design methodologies tends to encourage it. Characteristic of
early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it.
Often abbreviated BFI: "Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's strictly from
BFI." Compare {bogosity}.

:BSD: /B-S-D/ n. [abbreviation for `Berkeley System Distribution'] a
family of {{UNIX}} versions for the DEC {VAX} and PDP-11 developed
by Bill Joy and others at {Berzerkeley} starting around 1980, incorporating
paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking enhancements, and many other
features. The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial versions
derived from them (SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead
in the UNIX world until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after
about 1986, and are still widely popular. See {{UNIX}}, {USG UNIX}.

:BUAF: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. Big Ugly ASCII
Font —- a special form of {ASCII art}. Various programs exist for
rendering text strings into block, bloob, and pseudo-script fonts in cells
between four and six character cells on a side; this is smaller than the letters
generated by older {banner} (sense 2) programs. These are sometimes used
to render one's name in a {sig block}, and are critically referred to as
`BUAF's. See {warlording}.

:BUAG: // [abbreviation, from the alt.fan.warlord] n. Big Ugly ASCII
Graphic. Pejorative term for ugly {ASCII ART}, especially as found in {sig
block}s. For some reason, mutations of the head of Bart Simpson are

particularly common in the least imaginative {sig block}s. See
{warlording}.

:bubble sort: n. Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which
pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and
interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble upward' in the
list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very
good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by
{na"ive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical}
example of a na"ive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad*
algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but
any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful
perversity.

:bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ n. 1. obs. The bits produced by the CONTROL
and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400 respectively),
resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight)
keyboards extended this with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL
and META keys, resulting in a 12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines
added such keys as SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see {space-cadet
keyboard}). 2. By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any
keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a
Macintosh.

It is rumored that `bucky bits' were named for Buckminster Fuller
during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Actually, `Bucky'
was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when *he* was at Stanford; he first
suggested the idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7-
bit ASCII character. This was used in a number of editors written at
Stanford or in its environs (TV-EDIT and NLS being the best-

known). The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in
general use. See {double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}.

:buffer overflow: n. What happens when you try to stuff more data into a
buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in
the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see
{overrun} and {firehose syndrome}), or because the buffer is simply too
small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be
processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a
time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long line
overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good defensive
programming would check for overflow on each character and stop
accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is used of and by
humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I agree to meet you? My
buffer must have overflowed." Or "If I answer that phone my buffer is
going to overflow." See also {spam}, {overrun screw}.

:bug: n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of
hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}.
Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards."
"The system crashed because of a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he
has a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality
problems).

Historical note: Some have said this term came from telephone
company usage, in which "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed
for noisy lines, but this appears to be an incorrect folk etymology.
Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for
inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a technician
solved a persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II machine by
pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of one of its

relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense
as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she
was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook
associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth)
sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. The entire
story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is
recorded in the `Annals of the History of Computing', Vol. 3, No. 3
(July 1981), pp. 285—286.

The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1945), reads "1545
Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
found". This wording seems to establish that the term was already in
use at the time in its current specific sense —- and Hopper herself
reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to problems in radar
electronics during WWII. Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an
industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time,
and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to
Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one
meaning of `bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is
traced to `bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological
monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced
into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing games.

In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects.
Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened:

"There is a bug in this ant farm!"

"What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it."

"That's the bug."

[There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was
moved to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so
asserted. A correspondent who thought to check discovered that the
bug was not there. While investigating this in late 1990, your editor
discovered that the NSWC still had the bug, but had unsuccessfully
tried to get the Smithsonian to accept it —- and that the present
curator of their History of American Technology Museum didn't
know this and agreed that it would make a worthwhile exhibit. It was
moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991. Thus, the process of
investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an entirely
unexpected way, by making the myth true! —- ESR]

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

:bug-compatible: adj. Said of a design or revision that has been badly
compromised by a requirement to be compatible with {fossil}s or
{misfeature}s in other programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. "MS-
DOS 2.0 used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's
choice of / as an option character in 1.0."

:bug-for-bug compatible: n. Same as {bug-compatible}, with the
additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each
(known) bug was replicated.

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

:bulletproof: adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered
extremely {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from
any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare and valued quality. Syn.
{armor-plated}.

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

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

`for', `while', and `do-while' loops.

:burble: [from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] v. Like {flame}, but
connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can
be competent). A term of deep contempt. "There's some guy on the phone
burbling about how he got a DISK FULL error and it's all our comm
software's fault."

:buried treasure: n. A surprising piece of code found in some program.
While usually not wrong, it tends to vary from {crufty} to {bletcherous},
and has lain undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however
horrible it is. Used sarcastically, because what is found is anything *but*
treasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "I
just found that the scheduler sorts its queue using {bubble sort}! Buried
treasure!"

:burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems with
{marginal} components before they get out the door; the theory is that
burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the
{bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality}). 2. A period of indeterminate
length in which a person using a computer is so intensely involved in his
project that he forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning:
Excessive burn-in can lead to burn-out. See {hack mode}, {larval stage}.

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

:busy-wait: vi. Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy
waiting for someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it
shows up, and thus cannot do anything else at the moment. "Can't talk now,
I'm busy-waiting till Bill gets off the phone."

Technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by {spin}ning
through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each
pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing
execution on another part of the task. This is a wasteful technique,
best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program
may {hog} the processor.

:buzz: vi. 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and
perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought
to be executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing appears to be
{catatonic}, but you never get out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may
eventually end of its own accord. "The program buzzes for about 10
seconds trying to sort all the names into order." See {spin}; see also
{grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for
continuity by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will
pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. 3. To process an array or list in sequence,
doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz
array looking for a terminator type."

:BWQ: /B-W-Q/ [IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The
percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly
proportional to {bogosity}. See {TLA}.

:by hand: adv. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial, and/or
tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the computer, but
which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. "My mailer doesn't
have a command to include the text of the message I'm replying to, so I
have to do it by hand." This does not necessarily mean the speaker has to
retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say, dropping into a
{subshell} from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox file, reading
that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of the message in question,

deleting the rest of the file, inserting `>' characters on each line, writing the
file, leaving the editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later
remembering to delete the file. Compare {eyeball search}.

:byte:: /bi:t/ [techspeak] n. A unit of memory or data equal to the amount
used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually 8
bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older architectures used `byte'
for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were
actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even
9-bit bytes have become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word
sizes.

Historical note: The term originated in 1956 during the early design
phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it was described as 1
to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used 6-bit chunks of
information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and
this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the
System/360. The term `byte' was coined by mutating the word `bite'
so it would not be accidentally misspelled as {bit}. See also
{nybble}.

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

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

wrong, but thank you for playing" is also common; capitalization and
emphasis of the buzzer sound varies.

= C = =====

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

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

:C Programmer's Disease: n. The tendency of the undisciplined C
programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table
sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than
taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application
user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted
programmer reasons that he can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as
much as 70, to allow for future expansion), and recompile. This gives the
programmer the comfortable feeling of having done his bit to satisfy the
user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple
opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences of {fandango on

core}. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend
why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.

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

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

:can't happen: The traditional program comment for code executed under
a condition that should never be true, for example a file size computed as
negative. Often, such a condition being true indicates data corruption or a
faulty algorithm; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error
message and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be
done. This is also often the text emitted if the `impossible' error actually
happens! Although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent in
production code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitually
are often surprised at how often they are triggered during development and
how many headaches checking for them turns out to head off.

:candygrammar: n. A programming-language grammar that is mostly
{syntactic sugar}; the term is also a play on `candygram'. {COBOL},
Apple's Hypertalk language, and a lot of the so-called `4GL' database
languages are like this. The usual intent of such designs is that they be as
English-like as possible, on the theory that they will then be easier for
unskilled people to program. This intention comes to grief on the reality
that syntax isn't what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and
organization required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the

invariable result is that `candygrammar' languages are just as difficult to
program in as terser ones, and far more painful for the experienced hacker.

[The overtones from the old Chevy Chase skit on Saturday Night
Live should not be overlooked. (This was a "Jaws" parody. Someone
lurking outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus ways to get
the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the
background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When
the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant.
There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that,
in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember Monty
Python sketches, all it takes is the word "Candygram!", suitably
timed, to get people rolling on the floor.) —- GLS]

:canonical: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. The usual or
standard state or manner of something. This word has a somewhat more
technical meaning in mathematics. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9
are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second
one is in `canonical form' because it is written in the usual way, with the
highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide
whether something is in canonical form. The jargon meaning, a relaxation
of the technical meaning, acquired its present loading in computer-science
culture largely through its prominence in Alonzo Church's work in
computation theory and mathematical logic (see {Knights of the Lambda
Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}.

This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do
not use the adjective `canonical' in any of the senses defined above
with any regularity; they do however use the nouns `canon' and
`canonicity' (not *canonicalness or *canonicality). The `canon' of a
given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author

(this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary
scholars). `*The* canon' is the body of works in a given field (e.g.,
works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for
students to study and for scholars to investigate.

The word `canon' derives ultimately from the Greek
`kanon'
(akin to the English `cane') referring to a reed. Reeds were used
for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word `canon'
meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of
scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a
rule for the religion. The above non-techspeak academic usages
stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work.
Alongside this usage was the promulgation of `canons' (`rules')
for the government of the Catholic Church. The techspeak usages
("according to religious law") derive from this use of the Latin
`canon'.

Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic
contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg,
new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of
jargon. Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of
using it as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began
to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word `canonical'
in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally
got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele:
"Bob just used `canonical' in the canonical way."

Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly
defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a

hacker may claim with a straight face that `according to religious law'
is *not* the canonical meaning of `canonical'.

:card: n. 1. An electronic printed-circuit board (see also {tall card},
{short card}. 2. obs. Syn. {{punched card}}.

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

:careware: /keir'weir/ n. {Shareware} for which either the author suggests
that some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy directed to
charity is included on top of the distribution charge. Syn. {charityware};
compare {crippleware}, sense 2.

:cargo cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming
dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no
real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as
a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually
neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever
fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}, {voodoo programming}).

The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew
up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults
center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style
landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like
airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish
usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of
certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book `Surely You're
Joking, Mr. Feynman' (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-
393-01921-7).

:cascade: n. 1. A huge volume of spurious error-message output produced
by a compiler with poor error recovery. This can happen when one initial
error throws the parser out of synch so that much of the remaining program
text is interpreted as garbaged or ill-formed. 2. A chain of USENET
followups each adding some trivial variation of riposte to the text of the
previous one, all of which is reproduced in the new message; an {include
war} in which the object is to create a sort of communal graffito.

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

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

:casters-up mode: [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for `broken' or `down'.
Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or software) which is
`down' may be already being restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas
one which is `casters up' is usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day
off (as long as you're not responsible for fixing it).

:casting the runes: n. What a {guru} does when you ask him or her to run
a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else;
esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from
what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining

the entrails}; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in "{A Selection of AI
Koans}" ({appendix A}).

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

Among UNIX fans, `cat(1)' is considered an excellent example of
user-interface design, because it outputs the file contents without such
verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because it does
not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with any sort
of data.

Among UNIX-haters, `cat(1)' is considered the {canonical}
example of *bad* user-interface design. This because it is more often
used to {blast} a file to standard output than to concatenate two files.
The name `cat' for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say,
LISP's {cdr}.

Of such oppositions are {holy wars} made….

:catatonic: adj. Describes a condition of suspended animation in which
something is so {wedged} or {hung} that it makes no response. If you are
typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the
letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're asking it to
do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia (possibly because it has
crashed). "There I was in the middle of a winning game of {nethack} and it
went catatonic on me! Aaargh!" Compare {buzz}.

:cd tilde: /see-dee til-d*/ vi. To go home. From the UNIX C-shell and
Korn-shell command `cd ~', which takes one `$HOME'. By extension, may
be used with other arguments; thus, over an electronic chat link, `cd
~coffee' would mean "I'm going to the coffee machine."

:cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from LISP] vt. To skip past the first item from a
list of things (generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures,
which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its argument). In
the form `cdr down', to trace down a list of elements: "Shall we cdr down
the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also {loop through}.

Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 7090 that hosted
the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called the
`address' and `decrement' parts. The term `cdr' was originally
`Contents of Decrement part of Register'. Similarly, `car' stood for
`Contents of Address part of Register'.

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

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

Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2)
derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which
cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded

back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if
the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other
keypunches made had to be `chad'.

:chad box: n. {Iron Age} card punches contained boxes inside them,
about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large wastebasket), that
held the {chad} (sense 2). You had to open the covers of the card punch
periodically and empty the chad box. The {bit bucket} was notionally the
equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was typically across the
room in another great gray-and-blue box.

:chain: 1. [orig. from BASIC's `CHAIN' statement] vi. To hand off
execution to a child or successor without going through the {OS} command
interpreter that invoked it. The state of the parent program is lost and there
is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on memory-
limited micros and is still widely supported for backward compatibility, the
jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most UNIX programmers
will think of this as an {exec}. Oppose the more modern {subshell}. 2. A
series of linked data areas within an operating system or application. `Chain
rattling' is the process of repeatedly running through the linked data areas
searching for one which is of interest to the executing program. The
implication is that there is a very large number of links on the chain.

:channel: [IRC] n. The basic unit of discussion on {IRC}. Once one joins
a channel, everything one types is read by others on that channel. Channels
can either be named with numbers or with strings that begin with a `#' sign,
and can have topic descriptions (which are generally irrelevant to the actual
subject of discussion). Some notable channels are `#initgame', `#hottub',
and `#report'. At times of international crisis, `#report' has hundreds of
members, some of whom take turns listening to various news services and

summarizing the news, or in some cases, giving first-hand accounts of the
action (e.g., Scud missile attacks in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War in 1991).

:channel hopping: [IRC, GEnie] n. To rapidly switch channels on {IRC},
or GEnie chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to
another at a party. This may derive from the TV watcher's idiom `channel
surfing'.

:channel op: /chan'l op/ [IRC] n. Someone who is endowed with
privileges on a particular {IRC} channel; commonly abbreviated `chanop'
or `CHOP'. These privileges include the right to {kick} users, to change
various status bits, and to make others into CHOPs.

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

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

:charityware: /char'it-ee-weir`/ n. Syn. {careware}.

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

:check: n. A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to
refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. E.g., a

`parity check' is the result of a hardware-detected parity error. Recorded
here because it's often humorously extended to non-technical problems. For
example, the term `child check' has been used to refer to the problems
caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens when s/he
presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course, this
particular problem could have been prevented with {molly-guard}s).

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

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

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

:chicken head: [Commodore] n. The Commodore Business Machines
logo,
which strongly resembles a poultry part. Rendered in ASCII as
`C='. With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see {amoeba}),
Commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es
(see also {PETSCII}). Thus, this usage may owe something to
Philip K. Dick's novel `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'

(the basis for the movie `Blade Runner'), in which a
`chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average intelligence.

:chiclet keyboard: n. A keyboard with small rectangular or lozenge-
shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum.
(Chiclets is the brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does in fact
resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards.) Used esp. to describe the original
IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were
cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using
them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets
are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.

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

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

:choke: v. 1. To reject input, often ungracefully. "NULs make System V's
`lpr(1)' choke." "I tried building an {EMACS} binary to use {X}, but
`cpp(1)' choked on all those `#define's." See {barf}, {gag}, {vi}. 2. [MIT]
More generally, to fail at any endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the
popular definition is "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

:chomp: vi. To {lose}; specifically, to chew on something of which more
was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See
{bagbiter}. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold
the four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. Now open
and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much like what Pac-
Man does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to
predate that). The gesture alone means `chomp chomp' (see "{Verb
Doubling}" in the "{Jargon Construction}" section of the Prependices). The

hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you
can use both hands at once. Doing this to a person is equivalent to saying
"You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but
humorous admission of some failure. You might do this if someone told you
that a program you had written had failed in some surprising way and you
felt dumb for not having anticipated it.

:chomper: n. Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See
{loser}, {bagbiter}, {chomp}.

:CHOP: /chop/ [IRC] n. See {channel op}.

:Christmas tree: n. A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring
rows of blinking red and green LEDs suggestive of Christmas lights.

:Christmas tree packet: n. A packet with every single option set for
whatever protocol is in use. See {kamikaze packet}, {Chernobyl packet}.
(The term doubtless derives from a fanciful image of each little option bit
being represented by a different-colored light bulb, all turned on.)

:chrome: [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. Showy features
added to attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a
system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they certainly are
*pretty* chrome!" Distinguished from {bells and whistles} by the fact that
the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for
featurefulness. Often used as a term of contempt.

:chug: vi. To run slowly; to {grind} or {grovel}. "The disk is chugging
like crazy."

:Church of the SubGenius: n. A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism}
launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the

`Reverend' Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular
among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as
"Bob" the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists,
and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much SubGenius theory is concerned with
the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of `slack'.

:Cinderella Book: [CMU] n. `Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages, and Computation', by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman,
(Addison-Wesley, 1979). So called because the cover depicts a girl
(putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and
holding a rope coming out of it. The back cover depicts the girl with the
device in shambles after she has pulled on the rope. See also {{book
titles}}.

:CI$: // n. Hackerism for `CIS', CompuServe Information Service.
The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges.
Often used in {sig block}s just before a CompuServe address.
Syn. {Compu$erve}.

:Classic C: /klas'ik C/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. The C programming
language as defined in the first edition of {K&R}, with some small
additions. It is also known as `K&R C'. The name came into use while C
was being standardized by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also `C Classic'.
This is sometimes applied elsewhere: thus, `X Classic', where X = Star Trek
(referring to the original TV series) or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus
machines as opposed to the PS/2 series). This construction is especially
used of product series in which the newer versions are considered serious
losers relative to the older ones.

:clean: 1. adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies `elegance in
the small', that is, a design or implementation that may not hold any
surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively

easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is `grungy' or {crufty}.
2. v. To remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter:
"I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100
Meg free on that partition."

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

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

:clocks: n. Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally
corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The relative
execution times of instructions on a machine are usually discussed in clocks
rather than absolute fractions of a second; one good reason for this is that
clock speeds for various models of the machine may increase as technology
improves, and it is usually the relative times one is interested in when
discussing the instruction set. Compare {cycle}.

:clone: n. 1. An exact duplicate: "Our product is a clone of their product."
Implies a legal reimplementation from documentation or by reverse-
engineering. Also connotes lower price. 2. A shoddy, spurious copy: "Their
product is a clone of our product." 3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating
copyright, patent, or trade secret protections: "Your product is a clone of my
product." This use implies legal action is pending. 4. A `PC clone'; a PC-
BUS/ISA or EISA-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is
sometimes spelled `klone' or `PClone'). These invariably have much more

bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble. 5. In the
construction `UNIX clone': An OS designed to deliver a UNIX-lookalike
environment without UNIX license fees, or with additional `mission-
critical' features such as support for real-time programming. 6. v. To make
an exact copy of something. "Let me clone that" might mean "I want to
borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that
file before you {mung} it".

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

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

:COBOL: /koh'bol/ [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n.
(Synonymous with {evil}.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by
{card walloper}s to do boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes.
Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers are {suit}s or {code
grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned
the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions of
disgust or horror. See also {fear and loathing}, {software rot}.

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

:code grinder: n. 1. A {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion
strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages
in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, the code
grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting

of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the
sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It
seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from hackerdom
as one can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See {Real
World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the
person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive
technique, rule-boundedness, {brute force}, and utter lack of imagination.
Compare {card walloper}; contrast {hacker}, {real programmer}.

:code police: [by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] n. A
mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's
office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used
either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is
dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is
condemned mainly by anal-retentive {weenie}s. "Dike out that goto or the
code police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more common.

:codewalker: n. A program component that traverses other programs for a
living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-
reference generators and some database front ends. Other utility programs
that try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in
"This new `vgrind' feature would require a codewalker to implement."

:coefficient of X: n. Hackish speech makes rather heavy use of pseudo-
mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms
`coefficient', `factor', `index', and `quotient'. They are often loosely applied
to things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle
distinctions among them that convey information about the way the speaker
mentally models whatever he or she is describing.

`Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for which
the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example is

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

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

:cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character, particularly one
you can't type because it it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to
complain about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL
people complained right back about the `{altmode}-altmode-cokebottle'
commands at MIT. After the demise of the {space-cadet keyboard},
`cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked
humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke
command. It may be due for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif
window manager, `mwm(1)', has a reserved keystroke for switching to the

default set of keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not)
`control-meta-bang' (see {bang}). Since the exclamation point looks a lot
like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif hackers have begun referring to this
keystroke as `cokebottle'. See also {quadruple bucky}.

:cold boot: n. See {boot}.

:COME FROM: n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go
to'; `COME FROM' <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a
sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would quietly
and {automagically} be transferred to the statement following the `COME
FROM'. `COME FROM' was first proposed in R.L. Clark's "A Linguistic
Contribution to GOTO-less programming", which appeared in a 1973
{Datamation} issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of
`Communications of the ACM'). This parodied the then-raging `structured
programming' {holy wars} (see {considered harmful}). Mythically, some
variants are the `assigned COME FROM' and the `computed COME
FROM' (parodying some nasty control constructs in FORTRAN and some
extended BASICs). Of course, multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be
implemented by having more than one `COME FROM' statement coming
from the same label.

In some ways the FORTRAN `DO' looks like a `COME FROM'
statement. After the terminating statement number/`CONTINUE'
is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO.
Some generous FORTRANs would allow arbitrary statements (other than
`CONTINUE') for the statement, leading to examples like:

DO 10 I=1,LIMIT
C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the
C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti…

WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)
10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)

in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10. (This is
particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have
anything to do with the flow of control at all!)

While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form
of `COME FROM' statement isn't completely general. After all,
control will eventually pass to the following statement. The
implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN,
ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature existed on the IBM 7040
ten years earlier). The statement `AT 100' would perform a `COME
FROM 100'. It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire
consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in
production code. More horrible things had already been perpetrated in
production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the
`ALTER' verb in {COBOL}.

`COME FROM' was supported under its own name for the first
time 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (see {INTERCAL},
{retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the
shock.

:comm mode: /kom mohd/ [ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat;
the term may spelled with one or two m's] Syn. for {talk mode}.

:command key: [Mac users] n. Syn. {feature key}.

:comment out: vt. To surround a section of code with comment delimiters
or to prefix every line in the section with a comment marker; this prevents it
from being compiled or interpreted. Often done when the code is redundant

or obsolete, but you want to leave it in the source to make the intent of the
active code clearer; also when the code in that section is broken and you
want to bypass it in order to debug some other part of the code. Compare
{condition out}, usually the preferred technique in languages (such as {C})
that make it possible.

:Commonwealth Hackish:: n. Hacker jargon as spoken outside the U.S.,
esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth
speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and `soc', etc.,
as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in
{newsgroup} names tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is
/sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix {meta} may be
pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is often /bee't*/, zeta is
often /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred {metasyntactic variable}s include
{blurgle}, `eek', `ook', `frodo', and `bilbo'; `wibble', `wobble', and in
emergencies `wubble'; `banana', `wombat', `frog', {fish}, and so on and on
(see {foo}, sense 4).

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

See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey},
{fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal},
{leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger},
{noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {RTBM},
{seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list

features}, {weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions
under {Bad Thing}, {barf}, {bogus}, {bum}, {chase pointers},
{cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk},
{hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos}, {nybble}, {proglet}, {root},
{SEX}, {tweak}, and {xyzzy}.

:compact: adj. Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all
be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing
created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors
than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply
triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is
not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact
through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the
overall design scheme (thus, some fans of {Classic C} maintain that ANSI
C is no longer compact).

:compiler jock: n. See {jock} (sense 2).

:compress: [UNIX] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to
{crunch}ing of a file using a particular C implementation of compression
by James A. Woods et al. and widely circulated via {USENET}; use of
{crunch} itself in this sense is rare among UNIX hackers. Specifically,
compress is built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in
"A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", Terry A. Welch,
`IEEE Computer', vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8-19.

:Compu$erve: n. See {CI$}. The synonyms CompuSpend and
Compu$pend are also reported.

:computer confetti: n. Syn. {chad}. Though this term is common, this use
of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are stiff and have
sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS reports that he once attended a

wedding at MIT during which he and a few other guests enthusiastically
threw chad instead of rice. The groom later grumbled that he and his bride
had spent most of the evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair.

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

:computron: /kom'pyoo-tron`/ n. 1. A notional unit of computing power
combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in
instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times megabytes-of-
mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU EMACS, it doesn't have
enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat
computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel
horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. 2. A
mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or
information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of
electric charge (see also {bogon}). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of
computrons has been developed based on the physical fact that the
molecules in a solid object move more rapidly as it is heated. It is argued
that an object melts because the molecules have lost their information about
where they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). This
explains why computers get so hot and require air conditioning; they use up
computrons. Conversely, it should be possible to cool down an object by
placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed that this may also

explain why machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room:
the computrons there have been all used up by the other hardware. (This
theory probably owes something to the "Warlock" stories by Larry Niven,
the best known being "What Good is a Glass Dagger?", in which magic is
fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called `mana'.)

:condition out: vt. To prevent a section of code from being compiled by
surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose condition is
always false. The {canonical} examples are `#if 0' (or `#ifdef notdef',
though some find this {bletcherous}) and `#endif' in C. Compare {comment
out}.

:condom: n. 1. The protective plastic bag that accompanies 3.5-inch
microfloppy diskettes. Rarely, also used of (paper) disk envelopes. Unlike
the write protect tab, the condom (when left on) not only impedes the
practice of {SEX} but has also been shown to have a high failure rate as
drive mechanisms attempt to access the disk —- and can even fatally
frustrate insertion. 2. The protective cladding on a {light pipe}.

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

:connector conspiracy: [probably came into prominence with the
appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of whose
connectors matched anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by
extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new
products that don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy
either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The KL-10 Massbus
connector was actually *patented* by DEC, which reputedly refused to
license the design and thus effectively locked third parties out of
competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This is a source

of never-ending frustration for the diehards who maintain older PDP-10 or
VAX systems. Their CPUs work fine, but they are stuck with dying,
obsolescent disk and tape drives with low capacity and high power
requirements.

(A closely related phenomenon, with a slightly different intent, is
the habit manufacturers have of inventing new screw heads so that
only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can
remove covers and make repairs or install options. The Apple
Macintosh takes this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench
but a specialized case-cracking tool to open the box.)

In these latter days of open-systems computing this term has fallen
somewhat into disuse, to be replaced by the observation that
"Standards are great! There are so *many* of them to choose from!"
Compare {backward combatability}.

:cons: /konz/ or /kons/ [from LISP] 1. vt. To add a new element to a
specified list, esp. at the top. "OK, cons picking a replacement for the
console TTY onto the agenda." 2. `cons up': vt. To synthesize from smaller
pieces: "to cons up an example".

In LISP itself, `cons' is the most fundamental operation for building
structures. It takes any two objects and returns a `dot-pair' or two-
branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. Because the
result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build binary trees of any
shape and complexity. Hackers think of it as a sort of universal
constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from.

:considered harmful: adj. Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968
`Communications of the ACM', "Goto Statement Considered Harmful",
fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the

ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by
policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a
coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious
papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y". The
structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realization that
both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent
minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found at various places in this lexicon
is related).

:console:: n. 1. The operator's station of a {mainframe}. In times past,
this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with
fingers on its keys. Under UNIX and other modern timesharing OSes, such
privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the console is just the
{tty} the system was booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however,
and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from
the console (on UNIX, /dev/console). 2. On microcomputer UNIX boxes,
the main screen and keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals
talking to a serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics or
run {X}. See also {CTY}.

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

:content-free: [by analogy with techspeak `context-free'] adj. Used of a
message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this
adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually connotes
derision for communication styles that exalt form over substance or are
centered on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand. Perhaps
most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and other
professional manipulators. "Content-free? Uh…that's anything printed on
glossy paper." See also {four-color glossies}. "He gave a talk on the

implications of electronic networks for postmodernism and the fin-de-siecle
aesthetic. It was content-free."

:control-C: vi. 1. "Stop whatever you are doing." From the interrupt
character used on many operating systems to abort a running program.
Considered silly. 2. interj. Among BSD UNIX hackers, the canonical
humorous response to "Give me a break!"

:control-O: vi. "Stop talking." From the character used on some operating
systems to abort output but allow the program to keep on running.
Generally means that you are not interested in hearing anything more from
that person, at least on that topic; a standard response to someone who is
flaming. Considered silly. Compare {control-S}.

:control-Q: vi. "Resume." From the ASCII DC1 or {XON} character (the
pronunciation /X-on/ is therefore also used), used to undo a previous
{control-S}.

:control-S: vi. "Stop talking for a second." From the ASCII DC3 or
XOFF character (the pronunciation /X-of/ is therefore also used). Control-S
differs from {control-O} in that the person is asked to stop talking (perhaps
because you are on the phone) but will be allowed to continue when you're
ready to listen to him —- as opposed to control-O, which has more of the
meaning of "Shut up." Considered silly.

:Conway's Law: prov. The rule that the organization of the software and
the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as
"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass
compiler".

This was originally promulgated by Melvin Conway, an early
proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called

SAVE. The name `SAVE' didn't stand for anything; it was just that
you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE
written on them.

:cookbook: [from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small
code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic}
things in programs. One current example is the `{PostScript}
Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe Systems, Inc
(Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3) which has recipes for things
like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo
programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to {monkey up}
small programs in unknown languages. This is analogous to the role
of phrasebooks in human languages.

:cooked mode: [UNIX] n. The normal character-input mode, with
interrupts enabled and with erase, kill and other special-character
interpretations done directly by the tty driver. Oppose {raw
mode}, {rare mode}. This is techspeak under UNIX but jargon
elsewhere; other operating systems often have similar mode
distinctions, and the raw/rare/cooked way of describing them has
spread widely along with the C language and other UNIX exports.
Most generally, `cooked mode' may refer to any mode of a
system that does extensive preprocessing before presenting data to
a program.

:cookie: n. A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement between
cooperating programs. "I give him a packet, he gives me back a cookie."
The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a perfect mundane
example of a cookie; the only thing it's useful for is to relate a later

transaction to this one (so you get the same clothes back). Compare {magic
cookie}; see also {fortune cookie}.

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

:cookie file: n. A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format that
facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several different ones in
public distribution, and site admins often assemble their own from various
sources including this lexicon.

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

:copious free time: [Apple; orig. fr. the intro to Tom Lehrer's song "It
Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier"] n. 1. [used ironically to indicate
the speaker's lack of the quantity in question] A mythical schedule slot for
accomplishing tasks held to be unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to
indicate that the speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes
that the opportunity will not arise. "I'll implement the automatic layout stuff
in my copious free time." 2. [Archly] Time reserved for bogus or otherwise
idiotic tasks, such as implementation of {chrome}, or the stroking of
{suit}s. "I'll get back to him on that feature in my copious free time."

:copper: n. Conventional electron-carrying network cable with a
core conductor of copper —- or aluminum! Opposed to {light
pipe} or, say, a short-range microwave link.

:copy protection: n. A class of (occasionally clever) methods for
preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and
legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.

:copybroke: /ko'pee-brohk/ adj. 1. [play on `copyright'] Used
to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been
`broken'; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme
disabled. Syn. {copywronged}. 2. Copy-protected software
which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused
the anti-piracy check.

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

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

:core: n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still
used in the UNIX community and by old-time hackers or those who would
sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite current; `in core', for
example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core
dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in
favor. Commonwealth hackish prefers {store}.

:core cancer: n. A process which exhibits a slow but inexorable resource
{leak} —- like a cancer, it kills by crowding out productive `tissue'.

:core dump: n. [common {Iron Age} jargon, preserved by UNIX] 1.
[techspeak] A copy of the contents of {core}, produced when a process is
aborted by certain kinds of internal error. 2. By extension, used for humans
passing out, vomiting, or registering extreme shock. "He dumped core. All
over the floor. What a mess." "He heard about X and dumped core." 3.
Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great length; esp.
in apology: "Sorry, I dumped core on you". 4. A recapitulation of
knowledge (compare {bits}, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows about
a topic (syn. {brain dump}), esp. in a lecture or answer to an exam question.
"Short, concise answers are better than core dumps" (from the instructions
to an exam at Columbia). See {core}.

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

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

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

:cosmic rays: n. Notionally, the cause of {bit rot}. However, this is a
semi-independent usage that may be invoked as a humorous way to
{handwave} away any minor {randomness} that doesn't seem worth the
bother of investigating. "Hey, Eric —- I just got a burst of garbage on my
{tube}, where did that come from?" "Cosmic rays, I guess." Compare
{sunspots}, {phase of the moon}. The British seem to prefer the usage
`cosmic showers'; `alpha particles' is also heard, because stray alpha

particles passing through a memory chip can cause single-bit errors (this
becomes increasingly more likely as memory sizes and densities increase).

Factual note: Alpha particles cause bit rot, cosmic rays do not
(except occasionally in spaceborne computers). Intel could not
explain random bit drops in their early chips, and one hypothesis was
cosmic rays. So they created the World's Largest Lead Safe, using 25
tons of the stuff, and used two identical boards for testing. One was
placed in the safe, one outside. The hypothesis was that if cosmic rays
were causing the bit drops, they should see a statistically significant
difference between the error rates on the two boards. They did not
observe such a difference. Further investigation demonstrated
conclusively that the bit drops were due to alpha particle emissions
from thorium (and to a much lesser degree uranium) in the
encapsulation material. Since it is impossible to eliminate these
radioactives (they are uniformly distributed through the earth's crust,
with the statistically insignificant exception of uranium lodes) it
became obvious that you have to design memories to withstand these
hits.

:cough and die: v. Syn. {barf}. Connotes that the program is throwing its
hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser
saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it
coughed and died." Compare {die}, {die horribly}.

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

:CP/M:: /C-P-M/ n. [Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
microcomputer {OS} written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and Z80-
based machines, very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by
MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981. Legend has it that

Kildall's company blew its chance to write the OS for the IBM PC because
Kildall decided to spend a day IBM's reps wanted to meet with him
enjoying the perfect flying weather in his private plane. Many of CP/M's
features and conventions strongly resemble those of early DEC operating
systems such as {{TOPS-10}}, OS/8, RSTS, and RSX-11. See {{MS-
DOS}}, {operating system}.

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

:crack root: v. To defeat the security system of a UNIX machine and gain
{root} privileges thereby; see {cracking}.

:cracker: n. One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by
hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense 8).
An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981—82 on
USENET was largely a failure.

Both these neologisms reflected a strong revulsion against the theft
and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. While it is expected that
any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows
many of the basic techniques, anyone past {larval stage} is expected
to have outgrown the desire to do so.

Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom
than the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism
might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very
secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-
culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe
*themselves* as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate
and lower form of life.

Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't
imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than
breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. Some other
reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on
{cracking} and {phreaking}. See also {samurai}, {dark-side hacker},
and {hacker ethic, the}.

:cracking: n. The act of breaking into a computer system; what a
{cracker} does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually involve
some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the
dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit
common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most
crackers are only mediocre hackers.

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

:crash: 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the
{system} (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally
described what happened when the air gap of a Winchester disk collapses).
"Three {luser}s lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash that
involves the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and

scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the
term `system crash' usually, though not always, implies that the operating
system or other software was at fault. 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system
just crashed?" "Something crashed the OS!" See {down}. Also used
transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a
program, or both). "Those idiots playing {SPACEWAR} crashed the
system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long
{hacking run}; see {gronk out}.

:crash and burn: vi.,n. A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion
of the car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and many subsequent imitators
(compare {die horribly}). Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer
and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and burn
generators. The construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for a
computer used exclusively for alpha or {beta} testing, or reproducing bugs
(i.e., not for development). The implication is that it wouldn't be such a
disaster if that machine crashed, since only the testers would be
inconvenienced.

:crawling horror: n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept
obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like
{dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes that the thing described is not
just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity. "Mostly we code
new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II
application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror…." Compare
{WOMBAT}.

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

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

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

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

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

:creationism: n. The (false) belief that large, innovative software
designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly
magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of
normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown
repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary,
exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population —-
and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.

Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
beloved of {management}, they are generally ignored.

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

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

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

:creeping featuritis: /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n. Variant of {creeping
featurism}, with its own spoonerization: `feeping creaturitis'. Some people
like to reserve this form for the disease as it actually manifests in software

or hardware, as opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers'
minds. (After all, -ism means `condition' or `pursuit of', whereas -itis
usually means `inflammation of'.)

:cretin: /kret'n/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital {loser}; an obnoxious person;
someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed that many
American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation /kre'tn/ over
standard American /kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious
phonetic influence of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

:cretinous: /kret'n-*s/ or /kreet'n-*s/ adj. Wrong; stupid; non-functional;
very poorly designed. Also used pejoratively of people. See {dread high-bit
disease} for an example. Approximate synonyms: {bletcherous}, `bagbiting'
(see {bagbiter}), {losing}, {brain-damaged}.

:crippleware: n. 1. Software that has some important functionality
deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working
version. 2. [Cambridge] {Guiltware} that exhorts you to donate to some
charity (compare {careware}). 3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can
be upgraded to a more expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a
jumper).

An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX
chip, which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor disabled.
To upgrade, you buy another 486 chip with everything *but* the co-
processor disabled. When you put them together you have two
crippled chips doing the work of one. Don't you love Intel?

:critical mass: n. In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material
required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a
condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus

{epsilon} bugs. When software achieves critical mass, it can only be
discarded and rewritten.

:crlf: /ker'l*f/, sometimes /kru'l*f/ or /C-R-L-F/ n. (often capitalized as
`CRLF') A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). More loosely,
whatever it takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the beginning
of the next line. See {newline}, {terpri}. Under {{UNIX}} influence this
usage has become less common (UNIX uses a bare line feed as its `CRLF').

:crock: [from the obvious mainstream scatologism] n. 1. An awkward
feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Using
small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting
them to the user (as in, for example, UNIX `make(1)', which returns code
139 for a process that dies due to {segfault}). 2. A technique that works
acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for
example depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns
so that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven, almost
completely unmodifiable structure. See {kluge}, {brittle}. Also in the
adjectives `crockish' and `crocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and
`crockitude'.

:cross-post: [USENET] vi. To post a single article simultaneously to
several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article repeatedly, once
to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it multiple times (this is
very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting without a Followup-To line
directing responses to a single followup group is frowned upon, as it tends
to cause {followup} articles to go to inappropriate newsgroups when people
respond to only one part of the original posting.

:crudware: /kruhd'weir/ n. Pejorative term for the hundreds of megabytes
of low-quality {freeware} circulated by user's groups and BBS systems in

the micro-hobbyist world. "Yet *another* set of disk catalog utilities for
{{MS-DOS}}? What crudware!"

:cruft: /kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}] 1. n. An unpleasant
substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC
Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces
more. 2. n. The results of shoddy construction. 3. vt. [from `hand cruft', pun
on `hand craft'] To write assembler code for something normally (and
better) done by a compiler (see {hand-hacking}). 4. n. Excess; superfluous
junk. Esp. used of redundant or superseded code.

This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of its
etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at Harvard
University which is part of the old physics building; it's said to have
been the physics department's radar lab during WWII. To this day
(early 1992) the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk.
MIT or Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the term as a
knock on the competition.

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

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

:crufty: /kruhf'tee/ [origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy'] adj.
1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The {canonical} example is "This is
standard old crufty DEC software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin
of `crufty' holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to DEC

software so old that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking more
like `f' characters. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with
encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup.
3. Generally unpleasant. 4. (sometimes spelled `cruftie') n. A small crufty
object (see {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the scheme of things.
"A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or, collectively,
{random} cruft)."

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

:crunch: 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated
way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless painful to
perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being embedded in a loop
from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "FORTRAN programs do mostly {number-
crunching}." 2. vt. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that
produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such
as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document
would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such compression
usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as run-length
encoding, the term is doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in
the construction `file crunch(ing)' to distinguish it from {number-
crunching}.) See {compress}. 3. n. The character `#'. Used at XEROX and
CMU, among other places. See {{ASCII}}. 4. vt. To squeeze program
source into a minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute.
The term came into being specifically for a famous program on the BBC
micro that crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (it
was a wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of characters mattered).
{Obfuscated C Contest} entries are often crunched; see the first example
under that entry.

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

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

:CTSS: /C-T-S-S/ n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963)
experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing operating systems,
ancestral to {{Multics}}, {{UNIX}}, and {{ITS}}. The name {{ITS}}
(Incompatible Time-sharing System) was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a
joke and to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O
services should be presented to user programs.

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

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

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

:cursor dipped in X: n. There are a couple of metaphors in English
of the form `pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X

are `acid', `bile', and `vitriol'). These map over neatly to this
hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind,
when one is composing on-line). "Talk about a {nastygram}! He
must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"

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

:cut a tape: vi. To write a software or document distribution on magnetic
tape for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium!
Early versions of this lexicon claimed that one never analogously speaks of
`cutting a disk', but this has since been reported as live usage. Related slang
usages are mainstream business's `cut a check', the recording industry's `cut
a record', and the military's `cut an order'.

All of these usages reflect physical processes in obsolete recording
and duplication technologies. The first stage in manufacturing an old-
style vinyl record involved cutting grooves in a stamping die with a
precision lathe. More mundanely, the dominant technology for mass
duplication of paper documents in pre-photocopying days involved
"cutting a stencil", punching away portions of the wax overlay on a
silk screen. More directly, paper tape with holes punched in it was an
inportant early storage medium.

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

:cyberpunk: /si:'ber-puhnk/ [orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or
editor Gardner Dozois] n.,adj. A subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by
William Gibson's epoch-making novel `Neuromancer' (though its roots go
back through Vernor Vinge's `True Names' (see "{True Names … and Other
Dangers}" in appendix C) to John Brunner's 1975 novel `The Shockwave
Rider'). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day
hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and
hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly
na"ive and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated,
in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series.
See {cyberspace}, {ice}, {jack in}, {go flatline}.

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

:cycle: 1. n. The basic unit of computation. What every hacker wants
more of (noted hacker Bill Gosper describes himself as a "cycle junkie").
One can describe an instruction as taking so many `clock cycles'. Often the

computer can access its memory once on every clock cycle, and so one
speaks also of `memory cycles'. These are technical meanings of {cycle}.
The jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so many
cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer the cycles get
divided up among the users. The more cycles the computer spends working
on your program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will
run. That's why every hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend less time
waiting for the computer to respond. 2. By extension, a notional unit of
*human* thought power, emphasizing that lots of things compete for the
typical hacker's think time. "I refused to get involved with the Rubik's Cube
back when it was big. Knew I'd burn too many cycles on it if I let myself."
3. vt. Syn. {bounce}, {120 reset}; from the phrase `cycle power'. "Cycle the
machine again, that serial port's still hung."

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

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

:cycle of reincarnation: [coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970] n. Term
used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing
system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for
speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does
its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two
asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into
the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again. Several iterations of
this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one
or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also known as
`the Wheel of Life', `the Wheel of Samsara', and other variations of the
basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea.

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

= D = =====

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

:daemon: /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ [from the mythological meaning, later
rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] n. A program
that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s)
to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware
that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action
only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For
example, under {{ITS}} writing a file on the {LPT} spooler's directory
would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file. The
advantage is that programs wanting (in this example) files printed need not

compete for access to the {LPT}. They simply enter their implicit requests
and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually
spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be
regenerated at intervals. Daemon and {demon} are often used
interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. The term `daemon'
was introduced to computing by {CTSS} people (who pronounced it
/dee'mon/) and used it to refer to what ITS called a {dragon}. Although the
meaning and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary reflects
current (1991) usage.

:dangling pointer: n. A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere (in C
and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything
valid). Usually this is because it formerly pointed to something that has
moved or disappeared. Used as jargon in a generalization of its techspeak
meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has since
moved to the other coast is a dangling pointer.

:dark-side hacker: n. A criminal or malicious hacker; a {cracker}. From
George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The
implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is
intended. Oppose {samurai}.

:Datamation: /day`t*-may'sh*n/ n. A magazine that many hackers assume
all {suit}s read. Used to question an unbelieved quote, as in "Did you read
that in `Datamation?'" It used to publish something hackishly funny every
once in a while, like the original paper on {COME FROM} in 1973, but it
has since become much more exclusively {suit}-oriented and boring.

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

:dd: /dee-dee/ [UNIX: from IBM {JCL}] vt. Equivalent to {cat} or
{BLT}. This was originally the name of a UNIX copy command with

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

:DDT: /D-D-T/ n. 1. Generic term for a program that assists in debugging
other programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable
symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the term DDT
is now archaic, having been widely displaced by `debugger' or names of
individual programs like `dbx', `adb', `gdb', or `sdb'. 2. [ITS] Under MIT's
fabled {{ITS}} operating system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN)
was also used as the {shell} or top level command language used to execute
other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense 1) supported on
early DEC hardware. The DEC PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969)
contained a footnote on the first page of the documentation for DDT which
illuminates the origin of the term:

Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1
computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging
Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has
propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are
now available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape
are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic
Debugging Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT
abbreviation. Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known

pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should
be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently mutually
exclusive, class of bugs.

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

The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
more: Peter Samson, author of the {TMRC} lexicon, reports that he
named `DDT' after a similar tool on the TX-0 computer, the direct
ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln Lab in 1957. The
debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the first transistorized
computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT (FLexowriter Interrogation
Tape).

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

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

:dead code: n. Routines that can never be accessed because all calls to
them have been removed, or code that cannot be reached because it is
guarded by a control structure that provably must always transfer control
somewhere else. The presence of dead code may reveal either logical errors
due to alterations in the program or significant changes in the assumptions
and environment of the program (see also {software rot}); a good compiler
should report dead code so a maintainer can think about what it means. Syn.
{grunge}.

:DEADBEEF: /ded-beef/ n. The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly
allocated memory (decimal -21524111) under a number of IBM
environments, including the RS/6000. As in "Your program is
DEADBEEF" (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start
from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD.

:deadlock: n. 1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more processes
are unable to proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do
something. A common example is a program communicating to a server,
which may find itself waiting for output from the server before sending
anything more to it, while the server is similarly waiting for more input
from the controlling program before outputting anything. (It is reported that
this particular flavor of deadlock is sometimes called a `starvation
deadlock', though the term `starvation' is more properly used for situations
where a program can never run simply because it never gets high enough
priority. Another common flavor is `constipation', where each process is
trying to send stuff to the other but all buffers are full because nobody is
reading anything.) See {deadly embrace}. 2. Also used of deadlock-like
interactions between humans, as when two people meet in a narrow
corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving aside to let the other pass,
but they end up swaying from side to side without making any progress
because they always both move the same way at the same time.

:deadly embrace: n. Same as {deadlock}, though usually used only when
exactly 2 processes are involved. This is the more popular term in Europe,
while {deadlock} predominates in the United States.

:death code: n. A routine whose job is to set everything in the computer
—- registers, memory, flags, everything —- to zero, including that portion
of memory where it is running; its last act is to stomp on its own "store
zero" instruction. Death code isn't very useful, but writing it is an
interesting hacking challenge on architectures where the instruction set
makes it possible, such as the PDP-8 (it has also been done on the DG
Nova). Death code is much less common, and more anti-social, on modern
multi-user machines. It was very impressive on earlier hardware that
provided front panel switches and displays to show register and memory
contents, esp. when these were used to prod the corpse to see why it died.

Perhaps the ultimate death code is on the TI 990 series, where all
registers are actually in RAM, and the instruction "store immediate 0"
has the opcode "0". The PC will immediately wrap around core as
many times as it can until a user hits HALT. Any empty memory
location is death code. Worse, the manufacturer recommended use of
this instruction in startup code (which would be in ROM and
therefore survive).

:Death Star: [from the movie "Star Wars"] 1. The AT&T corporate logo,
which appears on computers sold by AT&T and bears an uncanny
resemblance to the `Death Star' in the movie. This usage is particularly
common among partisans of {BSD} UNIX, who tend to regard the AT&T
versions as inferior and AT&T as a bad guy. Copies still circulate of a poster
printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape with a space fighter labeled 4.2
BSD streaking away from a broken AT&T logo wreathed in flames. 2.
AT&T's internal magazine, `Focus', uses `death star' for an incorrectly done

AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top left is dark instead of light
—- a frequent result of dark-on-light logo images.

:DEC Wars: n. A 1983 {USENET} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve
Tarr spoofing the "Star Wars" movies in hackish terms. Some years later,
ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise
more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite called "UNIX
WARS"; the two are often confused.

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

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

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

:deep magic: [poss. from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books] n. An
awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one
not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare
{black art}); one that could only have been composed by a true
{wizard}. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of
{OS} design used to be {deep magic}; many techniques in
cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are.
Compare {heavy wizardry}. Esp. found in comments of the form
"Deep magic begins here…". Compare {voodoo programming}.

:deep space: n. 1. Describes the notional location of any program
that has gone {off the trolley}. Esp. used of programs that
just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some

output is expected. "Uh oh. I should have gotten a prompt ten
seconds ago. The program's in deep space somewhere." Compare
{buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical
location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some
esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds
coherently to normal communication. Compare {page out}.

:defenestration: [from the traditional Czechoslovak method of
assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] n. 1. Proper karmic
retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was *awful*!"
"Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of exiting a window system in order
to get better response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the
dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a
window. 3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it
will improve matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well, why don't
you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. [proposed]
The requirement to support a command-line interface. "It has to run on a
VT100." "Curses! I've been defenestrated!"

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

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

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

:delta: n. 1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or
incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I just
doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program size?"
"About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his program, but increased its
size by only 30 percent.) 2. [UNIX] A {diff}, especially a {diff} stored

under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control
System) or RCS (Revision Control System). 3. n. A small quantity, but not
as small as {epsilon}. The jargon usage of {delta} and {epsilon} stems from
the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical
quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the
differential calculus). The term {delta} is often used, once {epsilon} has
been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than {epsilon}
but still very small. "The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost
isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common
constructions include `within delta of —-', `within epsilon of —-': that is,
close to and even closer to.

:demented: adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a program.
The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the
design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that generates large numbers
of meaningless error messages, implying that it is on the brink of imminent
collapse. Compare {wonky}, {bozotic}.

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

:demo: /de'moh/ [short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a
product or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest

than any number of {test} runs, especially when important people are
watching. 2. n. The act of demoing. 3. n. Esp. as `demo version', can refer to
either a special version of a program (frequently with some features
crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for
demonstration purposes.

:demo mode: [Sun] n. 1. The state of being {heads down} in order to
finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which
video games sit there by themselves running through a portion of the game,
also known as `attract mode'. Some serious {app}s have a demo mode they
use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for
example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen —- which lets you
impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with {Microsloth
Windows}).

:demon: n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly,
but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See {daemon}.
The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program,
while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system.
Demons are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a
knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as
demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons
would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and
would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective
inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate
more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic.
Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its primary
task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to {daemon} —-
especially in the {{UNIX}} world, where the latter spelling and
pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.

:depeditate: /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] vt.
Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided
typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a
rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters are said to have
been depeditated.

:deprecated: adj. Said of a program or feature that is considered
obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a
specified replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for
many years. This term appears with distressing frequency in standards
documents when the committees which write them decide that a sufficient
number of users have written code which depends on specific features
which are out of favor.

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

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

:Devil Book: n. `The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX
Operating System', by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael
J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989) —-
the standard reference book on the internals of {BSD} UNIX. So called
because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on

{daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the
characteristic features of UNIX, the `fork(2)' system call).

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

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

:dictionary flame: [USENET] n. An attempt to sidetrack a debate away
from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a
desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of
people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality.

:diddle: 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly serious
manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't double-space all the
time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away."
See {tweak} and {twiddle}. 2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also
{tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}.

:die: v. Syn. {crash}. Unlike {crash}, which is used
primarily of hardware, this verb is used of both hardware and
software. See also {go flatline}, {casters-up mode}.

:die horribly: v. The software equivalent of {crash and burn},
and the preferred emphatic form of {die}. "The converter
choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".

:diff: /dif/ n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences between
(and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the
plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2.
Specifically, such a listing produced by the `diff(1)' command, esp. when
used as specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can actually
perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a common method of
distributing patches and source updates in the UNIX/C world. See also
{vdiff}, {mod}.

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

:dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a
computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in
doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to
attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.)
The word `dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean
`diagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also
refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike something
out' means to use such cutters to remove something. Indeed, the TMRC
Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term
has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections
of code.

:ding: n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among hackers, but
commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged': What happens when someone
in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something
trivial. "I was dinged for having a messy desk."

:dink: /dink/ n. Said of a machine that has the {bitty box}
nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with —-

sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. First
heard from an MIT hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K, in
reference to any 6502 system, then from fans of 32-bit
architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on
that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky',
which isn't sufficiently pejorative.

:dinosaur: n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special
power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast
with newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from
the 1988 UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the mainframe in the massive
IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping
its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare
{big iron}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative
user; a {zipperhead}.

:dinosaur pen: n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete
with raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air
conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See {boa}.

:dinosaurs mating: n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron} merger
or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another
stage in the long, slow dying of the {mainframe} industry. In its glory days
of the 1960s, it was `IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control
Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE
sold out early, and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,
Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by
Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 —- this was
when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is written (early
1991) AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first six years

in the hardware industry by absorbing NCR. More such earth-shaking
unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.

:dirtball: [XEROX PARC] n. A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in
the major or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox is not a dirtball
company".

[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional
arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and
scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such
that this superior attitude is not much resented. —- ESR]

:dirty power: n. Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate
innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly
higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause problems of
varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively known as {power
hit}s).

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

:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of {Eris}, a.k.a.
Discordia; widely popular among hackers. Discordianism was popularized
by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's `{Illuminatus!}' trilogy as a sort
of self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners —- it should on no account be
taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. Consider, for
example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from `Principia
Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads."

Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy
theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-
surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society
called the Illuminati. See {Religion} under {appendix B}, {Church of the
SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.

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

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

:Dissociated Press: [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a
reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] n. An
algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even
more efficiently than by passing it through a {marketroid}. You start by
printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step
you search for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N
words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or letter.
{EMACS} has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-
based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of this Jargon File:

wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an array (C
has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if
the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the
medium in question.

Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to
the same source:

window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to
use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on
neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a
featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed
spectace logic or problem!

A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to
a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an
interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window sysIWYG'
and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of
Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques
called `travesty generators' have been employed with considerable
satirical effect to the utterances of USENET flamers; see {pseudo}.

:distribution: n. 1. A software source tree packaged for distribution; but
see {kit}. 2. A vague term encompassing mailing lists and USENET
newsgroups (but not {BBS} {fora}); any topic-oriented message channel
with multiple recipients. 3. An information-space domain (usually loosely
correlated with geography) to which propagation of a USENET message is
restricted; a much-underutilized feature.

:do protocol: [from network protocol programming] vi. To perform an
interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined
procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant

means to ask for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, collect
money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill. See
{protocol}.

:doc: /dok/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for
`documentation'. Often used in the plural `docs' and in the construction `doc
file' (documentation available on-line).

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

:documentation:: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded,
steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software
or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}). Hackers seldom read paper
documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer theirs to be terse
and on-line. A common comment on this is "You can't {grep} dead trees".
See {drool-proof paper}, {verbiage}.

:dodgy: adj. Syn. with {flaky}. Preferred outside the U.S.

:dogcow: /dog'kow/ n. See {Moof}.

:dogwash: /dog'wosh/ [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very
optional software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like "Urgency:
Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an
escape from more serious work. 2. v. To engage in such a project. Many
games and much {freeware} get written this way.

:domainist: /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet address}} (as
opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the right of the `@' specifies a
nested series of `domains'; for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies
the machine called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the top-

level domain called com. See also {big-endian}, sense 2. 2. Said of a site,
mailer, or routing program which knows how to handle domainist
addresses. 3. Said of a person (esp. a site admin) who prefers domain
addressing, supports a domainist mailer, or prosyletizes for domainist
addressing and disdains {bang path}s. This is now (1991) semi-obsolete, as
most sites have converted.

:Don't do that, then!: [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient
with a trivial complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I type
control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds." "Don't do
that, then!" (or "So don't do that!"). Compare {RTFM}.

:dongle: /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or {copy protection} device for
commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized EPROM
and some drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which must be connected to an
I/O port of the computer while the program is run. Programs that use a
dongle query the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter, and
terminate if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed validation
code. Thus, users can make as many copies of the program as they want but
must pay for each dongle. The idea was clever, but it was initially a failure,
as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. Most dongles on the market
today (1991) will pass data through the port and monitor for {magic} codes
(and combinations of status lines) with minimal if any interference with
devices further down the line —- this innovation was necessary to allow
daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of software. The devices are still
not widely used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection
schemes in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key or
transferrable ID required for a program to function. See {dongle-disk}.

[Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow Technologies
(a manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived

from "Don Gall", allegedly the inventor of the device. The company's
receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth invented
for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I expect it to haunt my life as a
lexicographer for at least the next ten years. —-ESR]

:dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/ n. See {dongle}; a `dongle-disk' is a floppy
disk which is required in order to perform some task. Some contain special
coding that allows an application to identify it uniquely, others *are*
special code that does something that normally-resident programs don't or
can't. (For example, AT&T's "Unix PC" would only come up in {root
mode} with a special boot disk.) Also called a `key disk'.

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

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

:dot file: [UNIX] n. A file which is not visible by default to normal
directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named with a leading dot are, by
convention, not normally presented in directory listings). Many programs
define one or more dot files in which startup or configuration information
may be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by
creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. (Therefore,
dot files tend to {creep} —- with every nontrivial application program
defining at least one, a user's home directory can be filled with scores of dot
files, of course without the user's really being aware of it.) See also {rc
file}.

:double bucky: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The
command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."

This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard,
and was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at
MIT. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford {bucky bits}
(control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough
of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a Stanford
keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to add more
shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that
many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move
their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. It was
half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented
as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very much like
playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a parody of a very
fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber Duckie", which was
published in `The Sesame Street Songbook' (Simon and Schuster
1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May 27,
1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard:

Double Bucky

Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I

Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!

—- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)

[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk} —-
ESR] See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}.

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

:doubled sig: [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included twice in
a {USENET} article or, less commonly, in an electronic mail message. An
article or message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly
configured software. More often, however, it reveals the author's lack of
experience in electronic communication. See {BIFF}, {pseudo}.

:down: 1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a
humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down" always means "The
elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on.
With respect to computers, this usage has passed into the mainstream; the
extension to other kinds of machine is still hackish. 2. `go down' vi. To stop

functioning; usually said of the {system}. The message from the {console}
that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is "The system will go
down in 5 minutes". 3. `take down', `bring down' vt. To deactivate
purposely, usually for repair work or {PM}. "I'm taking the system down to
work on that bug in the tape drive." Occasionally one hears the word `down'
by itself used as a verb in this vt. sense. See {crash}; oppose {up}.

:download: vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system
(esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system,
esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose {upload}.

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

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

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

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

people!" See {DP}.

:dragon: n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it is not
invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various
secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which
keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc.
Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they
were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such
as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by the `name
dragon'. Usage: rare outside MIT —- under UNIX and most other OSes this
would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}. The best-known
UNIX example of a dragon is `cron(1)'. At SAIL, they called this sort of
thing a `phantom'.

:Dragon Book: n. The classic text `Compilers: Principles, Techniques and
Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-
Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of the cover design
featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of compiler design' and a knight
bearing the lance `LALR parser generator' among his other trappings. This
one is more specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier
edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design' (Alfred V.
Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman; Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN 0-201-00022-9),
was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977). (Also `New Dragon Book', `Old
Dragon Book'.) The horsed knight and the Green Dragon were warily eying
each other at a distance; now the knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a
terminal showing a video-game representation of the Red Dragon's head
while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book
titles}}.

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

:dread high-bit disease: n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a.
PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high
(0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to
other systems much more difficult, not to mention talking to true 8-bit
devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention
in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on
the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via
customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled manfully to
cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most
{cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}. A few other
machines have exhibited similar brain damage.

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

:driver: n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program; the code
that gets commands and dispatches them for execution. 2. [techspeak] In
`device driver', code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such
as a magnetic disk or tape unit. 3. In the TeX world and the computerized
typesetting world in general, `driver' also means a program that translates
some device-independent or other common format to something a real
device can actually understand.

:droid: n. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business
employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust
in the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to
believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!);

blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look
beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in
fixing that which is broken; an "It's not my job, man" attitude.

Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and
bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government
employees. The implication is that the rules and official procedures
constitute software that the droid is executing. This becomes a
problem when the software has not been properly debugged. The term
`droid mentality' is also used to describe the mindset behind this
behavior. Compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see {-oid}.

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

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

:drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious
characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line
noise or a system malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these
are interspersed with one's own typed input. Compare
{drop-outs}.

:drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch}); momentary 0
voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing characters in typed input due to
software malfunction or system saturation (this can happen under UNIX
when a bad connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious
character interrupts). 3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing those
occasions when the mind just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See
{glitch}, {fried}.

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

:drum: adj,n. Ancient techspeak term referring to slow,
cylindrical magnetic media which were once state-of-the-art
mass-storage devices. Under BSD UNIX the disk partition used for
swapping is still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to
considerable humor and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus
`explanations' getting foisted on {newbie}s. See also "{The
Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}.

:drunk mouse syndrome: (also `mouse on drugs') n. A malady
exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The
typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in
random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual
mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and
plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice
is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees.

At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier
cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the
mouse had picked up enough {cruft} to be unreliable, the mouse was

doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this
operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft,
so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse
was declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC
ultrasonic bath.

:Duff's device: n. The most dramatic use yet seen of {fall through} in C,
invented by Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm. Trying to {bum} all the
instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied data serially onto an
output port, he decided to {unroll} it. He then realized that the unrolled
version could be implemented by *interlacing* the structures of a switch
and a loop:

register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */

switch (count % 8)
{
case 0: do { *to = *from++;
case 7: *to = *from++;
case 6: *to = *from++;
case 5: *to = *from++;
case 4: *to = *from++;
case 3: *to = *from++;
case 2: *to = *from++;
case 1: *to = *from++;
} while (—n > 0);
}

Having verified that the device is valid portable C, Duff announced
it. C's default {fall through} in case statements has long been its most
controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This code forms

some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for
or against."

:dumb terminal: n. A terminal which is one step above a {glass tty},
having a minimally-addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or other
features which are claimed by a {smart terminal}. Once upon a time, when
glass ttys were common and addressable cursors were something special,
what is now called a dumb terminal could pass for a smart terminal.

:dumbass attack: /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a novice's
mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as
{root} under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file
system. Compare {adger}.

:dumbed down: adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of
*over*simplified. Often, a {marketroid} will insist that the interfaces and
documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned
untold gallons of midnight oil making it smart. This creates friction. See
{user-friendly}.

:dump: n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a
problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest
available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one
consisting of hex or octal {runes} describing the byte-by-byte state of
memory, mass storage, or some file. In {elder days}, debugging was
generally done by `groveling over' a dump (see {grovel}); increasing use of
high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made this uncommon,
and the term `dump' now has a faintly archaic flavor. 2. A backup. This
usage is typical only at large timesharing installations.

:dumpster diving: /dump'-ster di:'-ving/ n. 1. The practice of sifting refuse
from an office or technical installation to extract confidential data,

especially security-compromising information (`dumpster' is an
Americanism for what is elsewhere called a `skip'). Back in AT&T's
monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office equipment,
phone phreaks (see {phreaking}) used to organize regular dumpster runs
against phone company plants and offices. Discarded and damaged copies
of AT&T internal manuals taught them much. The technique is still rumored
to be a favorite of crackers operating against careless targets. 2. The
practice of raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where producers and/or
consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with the expectation
(usually justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable equipment to be
nursed back to health in some hacker's den. Experienced dumpster-divers
not infrequently accumulate basements full of moldering (but still
potentially useful) {cruft}.

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

:dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly
configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages
on one or more {echo}es, with different identification information that
renders {dup killer}s ineffective. If such a duplicate message eventually
reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original
identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that
system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.

:dusty deck: n. Old software (especially applications) which one is
obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term
implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch
days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
{number-crunching} software, much of which was written in FORTRAN

and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to
replace. See {fossil}.

:DWIM: /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess,
sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was
provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted
to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common
errors. See {hairy}. 3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled
at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping
over legalisms (see {legalese}).

Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and
would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were
stylistically different. This led a number of victims of DWIM to claim
the acronym stood for `Damn Warren's Infernal Machine!'.

In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker
there typed `delete *$' to free up some disk space. (The editor there
named backup files by appending `$' to the original file name, so he
was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing
sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so
DWIM helpfully reported `*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete
*'.' It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker
managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half
dozen or so files were lost.

The hacker later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's
office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and
then type `delete *$' twice.

DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex
program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction the
ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program
correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about `DWIMC' (Do
What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is
DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see {Right Thing}.

:dynner: /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage:
rare and extremely silly. See also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}.

= E = =====

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

:Easter egg: [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S.
and many psparts of Europe] n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a
program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or
browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a
program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented
set of commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program
credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused
them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many
personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM,
including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of
music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team.

:Easter egging: [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or less
at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this

the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not love them for
it. Compare {shotgun debugging}.

:eat flaming death: imp. A construction popularized among hackers by
the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously
turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming
death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also
reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're
On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs";
this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown
expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"

:EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [abbreviation,
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged character
set used on IBM {dinosaur}s. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible
versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and
the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for
modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies
according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted
EBCDIC from {{punched card}} code in the early 1960s and promulgated
it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}), spurning the
already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-
systems company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and
how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, burn-
before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very *name* of EBCDIC and
consider it a manifestation of purest {evil}. See also {fear and loathing}.

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

:eighty-column mind: [IBM] n. The sort said to be possessed by persons
for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody

has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including
(according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-
edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is
inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a
famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which
are as follows:

He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.

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

:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road mundanely
called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that
originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of
which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually
done relative to El Camino Real, which defines {logical} north and south
even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs
right past Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.

The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/) means
`royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to 7
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits
(other languages have similar `real' types).

When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked
what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he
started calling it `El Camino Double Precision' —- but when the
hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed
it `El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)

:elder days: n. The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era
of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the ARPANET. This term has
been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic `The
Lord of the Rings'. Compare {Iron Age}; see also {elvish}.

:elegant: [from mathematical usage] adj. Combining simplicity, power,
and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever',
`winning', or even {cuspy}.

:elephantine: adj. Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous
{hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and
ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. An elephantine
program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about
being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and,
like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have
been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory
mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous.
Compare `has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative
{monstrosity}. See also {second-system effect} and {baroque}.

:elevator controller: n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems
application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one period (1983
—84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization
committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-
limited computation environment. "You can't require `printf(3)' to be part of
the default runtime library —- what if you're targeting an elevator

controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on
both sides of several {holy wars}.

:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ [AI community] n. The tendency of
humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience. For example,
there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that makes it well-suited to
indicate addition; it's just that people associate it with addition. Using `+' or
`plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the
ELIZA effect.

This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph
Weizenbaum, which simulated a Rogerian psychoanalyst by
rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing
them to the patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and
substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing,
however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very
emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to
people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer
never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a
programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings
when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system. Compare {ad-
hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.

:elvish: n. 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling
the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the `Book of Kells'. Invented and
described by J. R. R. Tolkien in `The Lord of The Rings' as an orthography
for his fictional `elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and
phonetically elegant) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be interested
by artificial languages in general). It is traditional for graphics printers,
plotters, window systems, and the like to support a Feanorian typeface as
one of their demo items. See also {elder days}. 2. By extension, any odd or

unreadable typeface produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface
mundanely called `B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of
hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire LISP system
inside it. It was originally written by Richard Stallman in {TECO} under
{{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced,
self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor". It has
since been reimplemented any number of times, by various hackers, and
versions exist which run under most major operating systems. Perhaps the
most widely used version, also written by Stallman and now called "{GNU}
EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs principally under UNIX. It includes
facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail; many
hackers spend up to 80% of their {tube time} inside it. Other variants
include {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery
EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS.

Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify
as an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the
editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too
heavyweight and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as
`Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on
keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions
include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping', `Eventually
`malloc()'s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer
Slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). See also {vi}.

:email: /ee'mayl/ 1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed through
computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast
{snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network address}. 2. vt. To
send electronic mail.

Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED; it
means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or arranged in a net work".
A use from 1480 is given. The word is derived from French
`emmailleure', network.

:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. An ASCII glyph used to indicate an
emotional state in email or news. Although originally intended mostly as
jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually
required under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only
communication forums such as USENET; the lack of verbal and visual cues
can otherwise cause what were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic,
or otherwise non-100%-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not
always even by {newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in
common use. These include:

:-)
`smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
occasionally sarcasm)

:-(
`frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)

;-)
`half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious});
also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.

:-/
`wry face'

(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)

The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered.
Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and
BIX; see also {bixie}. On {USENET}, `smiley' is often used as a
generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically for
the happy-face emoticon.

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

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

:empire: n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game
written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are five or six multi-
player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and one single-player
version implemented for both UNIX and VMS; the latter is even available
as MS-DOS freeware. All are notoriously addictive.

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

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

:English: 1. n.,obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any
language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced from it
by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program
written in his favorite programming language is at least as readable as
English. Usage: used mostly by old-time hackers, though recognizable in
context. 2. The official name of the database language used by the Pick
Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with
delusions of grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and
you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s without
quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: n. {Marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse of
language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into
increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a
{feature} —- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself to be a
feature.

:ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for
0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After
opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in heavy hack
mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?' (the SYNs representing notional
synchronization bytes), and expect a return of {ACK} or {NAK} depending

on whether or not the person felt interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger},
and the usage of `FOO?' listed under {talk mode}.

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

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

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

:epoch: [UNIX: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. The time and
date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp

values. Under most UNIX versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT, January 1,
1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 GMT of November 17, 1858 (base date of
the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides). System time is measured in
seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the
clock wraps around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a rare
event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of
ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of UNIX is
good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software
continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't increase by then.
See also {wall time}.

:epsilon: [see {delta}] 1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The cost is
epsilon." 2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than {marginal}. "We can get
this feature for epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon of': close enough to be
indistinguishable for all practical purposes. This is even closer than being
`within delta of'. "That's not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what
I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is
required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of working."

:epsilon squared: n. A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as small in
comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely
negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the
thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the cost of the ten-
dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare {lost in the
underflow}, {lost in the noise}.

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

:Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named
Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre

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

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

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

:error 33: [XEROX PARC] n. 1. Predicating one research effort upon
the success of another. 2. Allowing your own research effort to be
placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a research
effort or not).

:essentials: n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure
hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a 20-megahertz
80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk supporting full

UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP via a 'blazer to
a friendly Internet site, and thou."

:evil: adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program,
person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the
bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the
{cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not imply
incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design criteria
fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This is more an esthetic and
engineering judgment than a moral one in the mainstream sense. "We
thought about adding a {Blue Glue} interface but decided it was too evil to
deal with." "{TECO} is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to
typos." Often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/.

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

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

:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the
other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and say
"Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange,
was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the
contents of a register and a memory location. Many newer hackers tend to
be thinking instead of the {PostScript} exchange operator (which is usually
written in lowercase).

:excl: /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See {bang},
{shriek}, {{ASCII}}.

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

:exec: /eg-zek'/ vt.,n. 1. [UNIX: from `execute'] Synonym for {chain},
derives from the `exec(2)' call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command
interpreter for an {OS} (see {shell}); term esp. used around mainframes,
and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating
systems. 3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command
file (among VM/CMS users).

The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is
*not* used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program, never a
person.

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

:eyeball search: n. To look for something in a mass of code or data with
one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern
matching software like {grep} or any other automated search tool. Also
called a {vgrep}; compare {vdiff}, {desk check}.

= F = =====

:fab: /fab/ [from `fabricate'] v. 1. To produce chips from a design that
may have been created by someone at another company. Fabbing chips
based on the designs of others is the activity of a {silicon foundry}. To a
hacker, `fab' is practically never short for `fabulous'. 2. `fab line': the
production system (lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip
manufacturer. Different `fab lines' are run with different process parameters,
die sizes, or technologies, or simply to provide more manufacturing
volume.

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

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

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

:fall through: v. (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through') 1. To exit a loop by
exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break
or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears
to be *really* old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that
would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of
code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a switch
statement reaches a `case' label other than by jumping there from the switch
header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a `break'.
A trivial example:

switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green();

break;
case PINK:
do_pink();
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red();
break;
default:
do_blue();
break;
}

The variant spelling `/* FALL THRU */' is also common.

The effect of this code is to `do_green()' when color is `GREEN',
`do_red()' when color is `RED', `do_blue()' on any other color other
than `PINK', and (and this is the important part) `do_pink()' *and
then* `do_red()' when color is `PINK'. Fall-through is {considered
harmful} by some, though there are contexts (such as the coding of
state machines) in which it is natural; it is generally considered good
practice to include a comment highlighting the fall-through where one
would normally expect a break.

:fandango on core: [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n. In C, a
wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a {core dump}, or corrupts the
`malloc(3)' {arena} in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is
sometimes said to have `done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal
machines without an MMU, this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive
lossage. Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may
be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {smash the
stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {core}.

:FAQ list: /F-A-Q list/ or /fak list/ [USENET] n. A compendium of
accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups in an
attempt to forestall Frequently Asked Questions. This lexicon itself serves
as a good example of a collection of one kind of lore, although it is far too
big for a regular posting. Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?"
and "What's that funny name for the `#' character?" are both Frequently
Asked Questions. Several extant FAQ lists do (or should) make reference to
the Jargon File (the on-line version of this lexicon).

:FAQL: /fa'kl/ n. Syn. {FAQ list}.

:farming: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. What the heads of a disk
drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the magnetic media.
Associated with a {crash}. Typically used as follows: "Oh no, the machine
has just crashed; I hope the hard drive hasn't gone {farming} again."

:fascist: adj. 1. Said of a computer system with excessive or annoying
security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The implication is that
said policies are preventing hackers from getting interesting work done. The
variant `fascistic' seems to have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy
with `touristic' (see {tourist}). 2. In the design of languages and other
software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most restrictive and structured
way of capturing a particular function; the implication is that this may be
desirable in order to simplify the implementation or provide tighter error
checking. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}, but that term is
global rather than local.

:fat electrons: n. Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation
of computer glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line current out
of the big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top of the
dynamo. When the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them off line to
clean up, and use special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. Now,

this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary or `thin'
electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are heavier and so settle to the
bottom of the generator. These flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when
they have to turn a sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via) they're apt
to get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating. Obviously,
fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon} absorption —- ESR] Compare
{bogon}, {magic smoke}.

:faulty: adj. Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as {bletcherous},
{losing}, q.v., but the connotation is much milder.

:fd leak: /F-D leek/ n. A kind of programming bug analogous to a {core
leak}, in which a program fails to close file descriptors (`fd's) after file
operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See {leak}.

:fear and loathing: [from Hunter Thompson] n. A state inspired by the
prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are
totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous —- Intel 8086s, or {COBOL}, or
{{EBCDIC}}, or any {IBM} machine except the Rios (a.k.a. the RS/6000).
"Ack! They want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and
loathing time!"

:feature: n. 1. A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it
was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended property or behavior (as
of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a
{misfeature}). 3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is
purposely inconsistent because it works better that way —- such an
inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of feature
is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry for a classic example. 4. A
property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also
impressive or cute. For example, one feature of Common LISP's `format'
function is the ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral

formats (see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behavior that
was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. A
bug that has been documented. To call something a feature sometimes
means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and
that the program responded in a way that was unexpected but not strictly
incorrect. A standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a {feature} simply
by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because
it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a
bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. See also {feetch feetch},
{creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}.

The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange
between two hackers on an airliner:

A: "This seat doesn't recline."

B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency exit
door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be
kept clear."

A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
spacing between rows here."

B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it
would have been a wart —- they would've had to make nonstandard-
length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced seats."

A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout
they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So
unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing."

B: "Indeed."

`Undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous
euphemism for a {bug}.

:feature creature: [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie] n.
1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the
expense of coherence, concision, or {taste}. 2. Alternately, a semi-mythical
being that induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such
crocks. See also {feeping creaturism}, {creeping featurism}.

:feature key: n. The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its
keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel', `clover', `propeller',
`beanie' (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie),
{splat}, or the `command key'. The Mac's equivalent of an {alt} key. The
proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of
iconic interfaces.

Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol
that appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St.
Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative
motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark
sites of historical interest. Many of these are old churches; hence, the
Swedish idiom for the symbol is `kyrka', cognate to English `church'
and Scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in modern Swedish.
This is in fact where Apple got the symbol; they give the translation
"interesting feature"!

:feature shock: [from Alvin Toffler's book title `Future Shock'] n. A user's
(or programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has too
many features and poor introductory material.

:featurectomy: /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ n. The act of removing a feature from
a program. Featurectomies come in two flavors, the `righteous' and the
`reluctant'. Righteous featurectomies are performed because the remover
believes the program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is
already an equivalent and better way to achieve the same end. (This is not
quite the same thing as removing a {misfeature}.) Reluctant featurectomies
are performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or
execution speed.

:feep: /feep/ 1. n. The soft electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal
(except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to
prefer {beep}). 2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s
(the original TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring.
Alternate forms: {beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably
onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip "Shoe", uses the word
`eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is
perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term `breedle' was
sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly
soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx
cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek
communicator's beep lasting for 5 seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has
been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also
{ding}.

:feeper: /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a
loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the {feep} sound.

:feeping creature: [from {feeping creaturism}] n. An unnecessary feature;
a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a
whole horde of new features.

:feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ n. A deliberate spoonerism
for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply that the system or program in
question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn't really
well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It
is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark
making their customary noises.

:feetch feetch: /feech feech/ interj. If someone tells you about some new
improvement to a program, you might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The
meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it
means something like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or
with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more
unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of resignation, it means,
"Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done".

:fence: n. 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished ({out-of-band})
characters (or other data items), used to delimit a piece of data intended to
be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel').
The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is a fence.
Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way. See
{zigamorph}. 2. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any technique,
usually exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that blocks certain
optimizations. Used when explicit mechanisms are not available or are
overkill. Typically a hack: "I call a dummy procedure there to force a flush
of the optimizer's register-coloring info" can be expressed by the shorter
"That's a fence procedure".

:fencepost error: n. 1. A problem with the discrete equivalent of a
boundary condition. Often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From
the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10
feet apart, how many posts do you need?" Either 9 or 11 is a better answer

than the obvious 10. For example, suppose you have a long list or array of
items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there?
The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m
+ 1. A program that used the `obvious' formula would have a fencepost
error in it. See also {zeroth} and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all
off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves
a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N - 1 chairs, but
it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather
than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider
whether one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. Occasionally, an
error induced by unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for
instance) screw up your hash table.

:fepped out: /fept owt/ adj. The Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine has a
Front-End Processor called a `FEP' (compare sense 2 of {box}). When the
main processor gets {wedged}, the FEP takes control of the keyboard and
screen. Such a machine is said to have `fepped out'.

:FidoNet: n. A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which
exchange mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984 and originally
consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet now includes such
diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas, and UNIX systems. Though
it is much younger than {USENET}, FidoNet is already (in early 1991) a
significant fraction of USENET's size at some 8000 systems.

:field circus: [a derogatory pun on `field service'] n. The field service
organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially DEC. There is an
entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus engineers:

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

[See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.]

There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the {plan file} for
DEC on MIT-AI):

Maynard! Maynard!
Don't mess with us!
We're mean and we're tough!
If you get us confused
We'll screw up your stuff.

(DEC's service HQ is located in Maynard, Massachusetts.)

:field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ n.
Representative of a field service organization (see {field
circus}). This has many of the implications of {droid}.

:Fight-o-net: [FidoNet] n. Deliberate distortion of {FidoNet},
often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular
{echo}, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see {'Snooze}).

:File Attach: [FidoNet] 1. n. A file sent along with a mail message
from one BBS to another. 2. vt. Sending someone a file by using
the File Attach option in a BBS mailer.

:File Request: [FidoNet] 1. n. The {FidoNet} equivalent of {FTP}, in
which one BBS system automatically dials another and {snarf}s one or
more files. Often abbreviated `FReq'; files are often announced as being
"available for FReq" in the same way that files are announced as being

"available for/by anonymous FTP" on the Internet. 2. vt. The act of getting
a copy of a file by using the File Request option of the BBS mailer.

:file signature: n. A {magic number} sense 3.

:filk: /filk/ [from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a
new word] n.,v. A `filk' is a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or
completely new lyrics, intended for humorous effect when read and/or to be
sung late at night at SF conventions. There is a flourishing subgenre of
these called `computer filks', written by hackers and often containing rather
sophisticated technical humor. See {double bucky} for an example.
Compare {hing} and {newsfroup}.

:film at 11: [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in conversation
to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these events
are earth-shattering. "{{ITS}} crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in
scheduler; film at 11." 2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that
additional information will be available at some future time, *without* the
implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event.
For example, "The mail file server died this morning; we found garbage all
over the root directory. Film at 11." would indicate that a major failure had
occurred but the people working on it have no additional information about
it. Use of the phrase in this way suggests gently people would appreciate it
if users would quit bothering them and wait for the 11:00 news for
additional information.

:filter: [orig. {{UNIX}}, now also in {{MS-DOS}}] n. A program that
processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some well-
defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except possibly on error
conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a `pipeline' (see
{plumbing}).

:Finagle's Law: n. The generalized or `folk' version of {Murphy's Law},
fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered
"Anything that can go wrong, will". One variant favored among hackers is
"The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also
{Hanlon's Razor}). The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author
Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid
miners; this `Belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke
involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet
Murphy.

:fine: [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. The word
`fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to
the higher level implied by {cuspy}.

:finger: [WAITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a
particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote system.
Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line, and
terminal location (where applicable). May also display a {plan file} left by
the user. 2. vt. To apply finger to a username. 3. vt. By extension, to check a
human's current state by any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and
see if she's idle." 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters) depicting
`the finger'. Originally a humorous component of one's plan file to deter the
curious fingerer (sense 2), it has entered the arsenal of some {flamer}s.

:finger-pointing syndrome: n. All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new
or experimental configurations. The hardware vendor points a finger at the
software. The software vendor points a finger at the hardware. All the poor
users get is the finger.

:finn: [IRC] v. To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time
one has spent on {IRC}. The term derives from the fact that IRC was
originally written in Finland in 1987.

:firebottle: n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device,
similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass, metal, and
vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low reliability, high-
temperature operation, and high power dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly
called a `tube' in the U.S. or a `valve' in England; another hackish term is
{glassfet}.

:firefighting: n. 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden
operational problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new
newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent the whole
afternoon fighting fires." 2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late
nights at a project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also {gang bang},
{Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term `firefighting' connotes
that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding features.

:firehose syndrome: n. In mainstream folklore it is observed that
trying to drink from a firehose can be a good way to rip your lips
off. On computer networks, the absence or failure of flow control
mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending system
sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate receiving
system; more than it can handle. Compare {overrun}, {buffer
overflow}.

:firewall code: n. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone
switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since
users always want to be able to do everything but never want to
suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a
question not only of defensive coding but also of interface
presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those
corners of a system where they can burn themselves.

:firewall machine: n. A dedicated gateway machine with special security
precautions on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in
lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines
hidden behind it from {cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive
micro-based UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems
and public network ports on it but just one carefully watched connection
back to the rest of the cluster. The special precautions may include threat
monitoring, callback, and even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular
incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}.

:fireworks mode: n. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when
it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.

:firmy: /fer'mee/ Syn. {stiffy} (a 3.5-inch floppy disk).

:fish: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. 1. Another {metasyntactic
variable}. See {foo}. Derived originally from the Monty Python skit in the
middle of "The Meaning of Life" entitled "Find the Fish". 2. A pun for
`microfiche'. A microfiche file cabinet may be referred to as a `fish tank'.

:FISH queue: [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] n.
`First In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that processing of a
particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead. Also `FISH
mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter may be applied to any network that is
running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness.

:FITNR: // [Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In the Next Release. A
written-only notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful thinking.

:fix: n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many
times to be ignored.

:flag: n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a bit,
particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes or is used to
control which of two things is to be done. "This flag controls whether to
clear the screen before printing the message." "The program status word
contains several flag bits." Used of humans analogously to {bit}. See also
{hidden flag}, {mode bit}.

:flag day: n. A software change that is neither forward- nor backward-
compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "Can we
install that without causing a flag day for all users?" This term has nothing
to do with the use of the word {flag} to mean a variable that has two values.
It came into use when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}}
timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this
was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also
{backward combatability}.

:flaky: adj. (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent {lossage}. This use is of
course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a person as
eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working, sort of
—- enough that you are tempted to try to use it —- but fails frequently
enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low.
Commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.

:flamage: /flay'm*j/ n. Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal
postings to {USENET} or other electronic {fora}. Often in the phrase `the
usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is
a single flaming message. See {flame}.

:flame: 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2.
vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting
subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2,

directed with hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An instance of
flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might
tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that flamage!" to
try to get them to cool down (so to speak).

USENETter Marc Ramsey, who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976,
adds: "I am 99% certain that the use of `flame' originated at WPI.
Those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed
to use a TTY for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole
lusers'. Other particularly annoying people became `flaming asshole
ravers', which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'.
I remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't
think `flame on/off' was ever much used at WPI." See also
{asbestos}.

The term may have been independently invented at several
different places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean
something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions'
(late-night bull sessions) at Carleton College during 1968—1971.

It's possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than
that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in
his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced
computing device of the day. In Chaucer's `Troilus and Cressida',
Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular
mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's
called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been
intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was
probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of
wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would be right
at home on USENET.

:flame bait: n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that
invites flames in reply.

:flame on: vi.,interj. 1. To begin to {flame}. The punning
reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely
recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.

:flame war: n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute,
especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as
{USENET}.

:flamer: n. One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious
{USENET} personalities.

:flap: vt. 1. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap…). Old-time
hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and
{microtape}s were 1, 2,… and attempting to flap device 0 would instead
start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. 2. By extension, to
unload any magnetic tape. See also {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no
longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could well be
re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly
misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like
an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many tape-eating failure modes.)

:flarp: /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. Yet another {metasyntactic
variable} (see {foo}). Among those who use it, it is associated with a
legend that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not
work. The legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs which
*do* contain the magic word.

:flat: adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure. "That {bitty box}
has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form is

{flatten}. 2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0)
that is one big linear address space (typically with each possible value of a
processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a
`segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in which addresses are
composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented designs are generally
considered {cretinous}).

Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually
used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a {Good Thing}.

:flat-ASCII: adj. Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII
characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is, has no
embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter or markup language,
and no {meta}-characters). Syn. {plain-ASCII}. Compare {flat-file}.

:flat-file: adj. A {flatten}ed representation of some database or tree or
network structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly
be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ASCII} form.

:flatten: vt. To remove structural information, esp. to filter something
with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to
imply mapping to {flat-ASCII}. "This code flattens an expression with
parentheses into an equivalent {canonical} form."

:flavor: n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors."
"These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." See
{vanilla}. 2. The attribute that causes something to be {flavorful}. Usually
used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "This convention yields
additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-
down." See {vanilla}. This usage was certainly reinforced by the
terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the
constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, charm,

top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) —- however, hackish use of
`flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The term for `class' (in the object-oriented
sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has
been superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term
`flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.

:flavorful: adj. Full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. See {random} and
{losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for {taste} and {elegant}.

:flippy: /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use
by addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped
over for the second side to be accessible. No longer common.

:flood: [IRC] v. To dump large amounts of text onto an {IRC} channel.
This is especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other users are
trying to carry on a serious conversation.

:flowchart:: [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow
specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes.
Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate
them with {COBOL} programmers, {card walloper}s, and other lower
forms of life. This is because (from a hacker's point of view) they are no
easier to read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with
the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it or require
extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). See also {pdl},
sense 3.

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

:flush: v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an
operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C] To force
buffered I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call. This is *not* an abort or

deletion as in sense 1, but a demand for early completion! 3. To leave at the
end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "I'm going to flush
now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore
a person.

`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but was
not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose from
a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the
internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they can be
printed. The UNIX/C usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the
`fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to
have been in use among BLISS programmers at DEC and on
Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965). UNIX/C hackers
find the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.

:flypage: /fli: payj/n. (alt. `fly page') A {banner}, sense 1.

:Flyspeck 3: n. Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be
unreadable (by analogy with such names as `Helvetica 10' for 10-point
Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.

:flytrap: n. See {firewall machine}.

:FM: n. *Not* `Frequency Modulation' but rather an
abbreviation for `Fucking Manual', the back-formation from
{RTFM}. Used to refer to the manual itself in the {RTFM}.
"Have you seen the Networking FM lately?"

:FOAF: // [USENET] n. Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of
an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not originated by hackers (it

is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better
recognized on USENET and elsewhere than in mainstream English.

:FOD: /fod/ v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-
name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with
no regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the wizard command
`FOD <player>' results in the immediate and total death of <player>,
usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This migrated to other
circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is burning all the
cycles." Compare {gun}.

In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what
happens when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in
flight. Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of what this
does to the engine.

:fold case: v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more by
people who don't mind that their tools smash case. It also connotes that case
is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in question
aren't destroyed.

:followup: n. On USENET, a {posting} generated in response to another
posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email rather than being
broadcast). Followups include the ID of the {parent message} in their
headers; smart news-readers can use this information to present USENET
news in `conversation' sequence rather than order-of-arrival. See {thread}.

:fontology: [XEROX PARC] n. The body of knowledge dealing with the
construction and use of new fonts (e.g. for window systems and typesetting
software). It has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny.

[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the
Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to
compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different
set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and `folders' —- ESR]

:foo: /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample
name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3.
First on the standard list of {metasyntactic variable}s used in syntax
examples. See also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge}, {grault},
{garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}.

The etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. When used in
connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army
slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later
bowdlerized to {foobar}. (See also {FUBAR}).

However, the use of the word `foo' itself has more complicated
antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.
The old "Smokey Stover" comic strips by Bill Holman often included
the word `FOO', in particular on license plates of cars; allegedly,
`FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. In the
1938 cartoon "Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds
up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!"; oddly, this seems to refer to
some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It has been
suggested that this might be related to the Chinese word `fu'
(sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness" when
spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps
of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").

It is even possible that hacker usage actually springs from `FOO,
Lampoons and Parody', the title of a comic book first issued in

September 1958; the byline read `C. Crumb' but the style of the art
suggests this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for noted
weird-comix artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured in large
letters on the front cover. What the word meant to Mr. Crumb is
anybody's guess.

An old-time member reports that in the 1959 `Dictionary of the
TMRC Language', compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that went
something like this:

FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE
PADME
HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.

For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}. Almost
the entire staff of what became the MIT AI LAB was involved with
TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.

Very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives
through all these channels from Yiddish `feh' and/or English
`fooey'.

:foobar: n. Another common {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo}.
Hackers do *not* generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in
either the slang or jargon sense.

:fool: n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is
not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person
with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed,
in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too

effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin},
{loser}, {fool file, the}.

:fool file, the: [USENET] n. A notional repository of all the most
dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. There is a
subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "From the
fool file:" followed by some quote the poster wishes to represent
as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for this to be really effective,
the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More
than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being
quoted in this way.

:Foonly: n. 1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the
Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
along with a new operating system. The intention was to leapfrog from the
old DEC timesharing system SAIL was running to a new generation,
bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET standard. ARPA
funding for both the Super Foonly and the new operating system was cut in
1974. Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed greatly to the
design of the PDP-10 model KL10. 2. The name of the company formed by
Dave Poole, one of the principal Super Foonly designers, and one of
hackerdom's more colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot
which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any of the
machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1 (a.k.a. Super
Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in
the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one
was ever made. The effort drained Foonly of its financial resources, and
they turned towards building smaller, slower, and much less expensive
machines. Unfortunately, these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a
TENEX variant called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the
machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes

requiring individual attention from more than usually competent site
personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's legendary
temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. By the
time of the Jupiter project cancellation in 1983 Foonly's proposal to build
another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and the company never quite
recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this
story.

:footprint: n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2.
[IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural,
`footprints'). See also {toeprint}.

:for free: adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or
hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing
cleverness to implement: "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free."
"And owing to the way revisions are stored in this system, you get revision
trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a
certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but
secondary feature.

:for the rest of us: [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of
us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames
other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe
{spiffy} but very overpriced products. 2. Describes a program with a
limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality,
inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not
`confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can
go before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of helping
accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't
provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might
not be able to handle them. Becomes `the rest of *them*' when used in

third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed
for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but
has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environment},
{Macintrash}, {point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}.

:for values of: [MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any
of the canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for variables. "The max
function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42." "There are 69 ways
to leave your lover, for 69 = 50." This is especially likely when the speaker
has uttered a random number and realizes that it was not recognized as
such, but even `non-random' numbers are occasionally used in this fashion.
A related joke is that pi equals 3 —- for small values of pi and large values
of 3.

Historical note: this usage probably derives from the programming
language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an Algol-like
language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-
hacker) users at MIT in the mid-60s. It had a control structure FOR
VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO … that would repeat the indicated
instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that only
works for arithmetic sequences of values). MAD is long extinct, but
similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in UNIX's shell languages).

:fora: pl.n. Plural of {forum}.

:foreground: [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of
one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this
sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I
guess I'd better foreground writing up the design document."

Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in
foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the

user; oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily
associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears first to have been used in
this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per
terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes
simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.

:fork bomb: [UNIX] n. A particular species of {wabbit} that can be
written in one line of C (`main() {for(;;)fork();}') or shell (`$0 & $0 &') on
any UNIX system, or occasionally created by an egregious coding bug. A
fork bomb process `explodes' by recursively spawning copies of itself
(using the UNIX system call `fork(2)'). Eventually it eats all the process
table entries and effectively wedges the system. Fortunately, fork bombs are
relatively easy to spot and kill, so creating one deliberately seldom
accomplishes more than to bring the just wrath of the gods down upon the
perpetrator. See also {logic bomb}.

:forked: [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj.
Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a
snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}.

:Fortrash: /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language,
referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax,
limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled
semantics.

:fortune cookie: [WAITS, via UNIX] n. A random quote, item of
trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or
(less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often
been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.

:forum: n. [USENET, GEnie, CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion
group accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a {mailing list}, or a

{newsgroup} (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin
board; users submit {posting}s for all to read and discussion ensues.
Contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}.

:fossil: n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only
in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break
compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base for string
escapes in {C}, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and
modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More
restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example: the force-
all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} UNIX tty driver, designed for
use with monocase terminals. In a perversion of the usual backward-
compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and
renamed in some later {USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC
bits. 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver
specification for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in
the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software in
preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do not support interrupt-
driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard
FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal} serial port programming
otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification allows additional
functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide
serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video fossil'.

:four-color glossies: 1. Literature created by {marketroid}s that allegedly
contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible
without being totally {content-free}. "Forget the four-color glossies, give
me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality
even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white.
Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2.
[rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough

information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or
desired output.

:fragile: adj. Syn {brittle}.

:fred: n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a {metasyntactic
variable} (see {foo}). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-
typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random
Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', this name has no positive or negative
loading (but see {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}). See also {barney}. 2. An acronym for
`Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be substituted
for `flipping'.

:frednet: /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some {random} and uncommon
protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing bridging in our
router to solve the frednet problem."

:freeware: n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed
by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, {USENET},
or other electronic media. At one time, `freeware' was a trademark of
Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm
program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious
disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See {shareware}.

:freeze: v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document against
changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries the strong
implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at some future date.
"OK, fix that bug and we'll freeze for release."

There are more specific constructions on this. A `feature freeze', for
example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new features;
a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at all. At Sun Microsystems

and elsewhere, one may also hear references to `code slush' —- that
is, an almost-but-not-quite frozen state.

:fried: adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. Especially
used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see {glitch}), {drop-
outs}, a short, or some other electrical event. (Sometimes this literally
happens to electronic circuits! In particular, resistors can burn out and
transformers can melt down, emitting noxious smoke —- see {friode},
{SED} and {LER}. However, this term is also used metaphorically.)
Compare {frotzed}. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who
continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or excuse.
"Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put
it in." Esp. common in conjunction with `brain': "My brain is fried today,
I'm very short on sleep."

:friode: /fri:'ohd/ [TMRC] n. A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode.
Compare {fried}; see also {SED}, {LER}.

:fritterware: n. An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The
canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink});
the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite
marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway.

:frob: /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a
protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any
random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand;
something you can frob. See {frobnitz}. 2. vt. Abbreviated form of
{frobnicate}. 3. [from the {MUD} world] A command on some MUDs that
changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also,
to request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy' grounds that
one is a wizard elsewhere. The command is actually `frobnicate' but is
universally abbreviated to the shorter form.