*** New in 4.1.0. *** :compo: n. [{demoscene}] Finnish-originated slang for `competition'. Demo compos are held at a {demoparty}. The usual protocol is that several groups make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big screen, and then the party participants vote for the best one. Prizes (from sponsors and party entrance fees) are given. Standard compo formats include {intro} compos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, graphics compos, quick {demo} compos (build a demo within 4 hours for example), etc. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :compress: [Unix] vt. When used without a qualifier, generally refers to {crunch}ing of a file using a particular C implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost 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. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :connector conspiracy: n. [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the {PDP-10}), none of whose connectors matched anything else] 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 policy 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. A good 1990s example is the use of Torx screws for cable-TV set-top boxes. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a long Torx screwdriver 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}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :copyparty: n. [C64/amiga {demoscene} ]A computer party organized so demosceners can meet other in real life, and to facilitate software copying (mostly pirated software). The copyparty has become less common as the Internet makes communication easier. The demoscene has gradually evolved the {demoparty} to replace it. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :cow orker: n. [USENET] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in USENET, with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. Compare {hing}, {grilf}, {filk}, {newsfroup}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :crapplet: n. [portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes your browser. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :cycle crunch: n. A situation wherein the number of people trying to use a 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 scenario 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 since the mid-1980s, 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, and are far more likely to complain of `bandwidth crunch' on their shared networks rather than cycle crunch. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :daemon 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, ISBN 0-201-06196-1); or "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" by Marshall Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Longman, 1996, SBN 0-201-54979-4) Either of the standard reference books on the internals of {BSD} Unix. So called because the covers have 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). Also known as the {Devil Book}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :dancing frog: n. [Vancouver area] A problem that occurs on a computer that will not reappear while anyone else is watching. From the classic Warner Brothers cartoon of the dancing and singing Michigan J. Frog that just croaks when anyone else is around (now the WB network mascot). *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :defenestration: n. [from the traditional Czechoslovakian method of assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] 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. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon." 5. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in favor of a better OS (typically Linux). *** New in 4.1.0. *** :deliminator: /de-lim'-in-ay-t*r/ n. [portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split() function; however, it has been sighted in live use among Java and even Visual Basic programmers. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof interface; how does it work again?" 3. n. Esp. as `demo version', can refer either to an early, barely-functional version of a program which can be used for demonstration purposes as long as the operator uses _exactly_ the right commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes. 4. [{demoscene}] A sequence of {demoeffect}s (usually) combined with self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These days (1997) usually built to attend a {compo}. Often called `eurodemos' outside Europe, as most of the demoscene activity seems to have gathered in northern Europe and especially Scandinavia. See also {intro}, {dentro}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :demoeffect: n. [{demoscene}] What among hackers is called a {display hack}. Classical effects include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales" (x*x+y*y and other similar patterns, usually combined with color-cycling), realtime fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc. Historically, demo effects have cheated as much as possible to gain more speed and more complexity, using low-precision math and masses of assembler code and building animation realtime are three common tricks, but use of special hardware to fake effects is a {Good Thing} on the demoscene (though this is becoming less common as platforms like the Amiga fade away). *** New in 4.1.0. *** :demogroup: n. [{demoscene}] A group of {demo} (sense 4) composers. Job titles within a group include coders (the ones who write programs), graphicians (the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art), musicians (the music composers), {sysop}s, traders/swappers (the ones who do the trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger groups). It is not uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but it has been observed that good coders are rarely good composers and vice versa. [How odd. Musical talent seems common among Internet/Unix hackers --ESR] *** New in 4.1.0. *** :demoparty: n. [{demoscene}] Aboveground descendent of the {copyparty}, with emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards {compo}s. Smaller demoparties, for 100 persons or less, are held quite often, sometimes even once a month, and usually last for one to two days. On the other end of the scale, huge demo parties are held once a year (and four of these have grown very large and occur annually - Assembly in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway, and NAID somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for three to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party network with connection to the internet. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :demoscene: /dem'oh-seen/ [also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that when old-time {warez d00dz} cracked some piece of software they often added an advertisement of in the beginning, usually containing colorful {display hack}s with greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among people who decided building these display hacks is more interesting than hacking and began to build self-contained display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the culture such a hack is called a {demo}. The split seems to have happened at the end of the 1980s. As more of these {demogroup}s emerged, they started to have {compo}s at copying parties (see {copyparty}), which later evolved to standalone events (see {demoparty}). The demoscene has retained some traits from the {warez d00dz}, including their style of handles and group names and some of their jargon. Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceneers frown at this, but majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceneers end up working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at `http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/' and `http://www.scene.org/'. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :dentro: /den'troh/ [{demoscene}] Combination of {demo} (sense 4) and {intro}. Other name mixings include intmo, dentmo etc. and are used usually when the authors are not quite sure whether the program is a {demo} or an {intro}. Special purposes coinages like wedtro (some member of a group got married), invtro (invitation intro) etc. have also been sighted. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :derf: /derf/ v.,n. [PLATO] The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else has absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account, especially to post articles intended to make an ass of the victim you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term originated as a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most usually left himself vulnerable to it, who also happened to be the head of the department that handled PLATO at the University of Delaware. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :digit: n.,obs. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {field circus}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 in 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR. Control Data still exists but is no longer in the mainframe business. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 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}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :dispress: vt. [contraction of `Dissociated Press' due to eight-character MS-DOS filenames] To apply the {Dissociated Press} algorithm to a block of text. The resultant output is also referred to as a 'dispression'. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :dogfood: n. [Microsoft] Interim software used internally for testing. "To eat one's own dogfood" (from which the slang noun derives) means to use the software one is developing, as part of one's everyday development environment (the phrase is used outside Microsoft, and the practice is normal in the Linux community and elsewhere). The idea is that developers who are using their own software will quickly learn what's missing or broken. Dogfood is typically not even of {beta} quality. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :droid: n. [from `android', SF terminology for a humanoid robot of essentially biological (as opposed to mechanical/electronic) construction] A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand or worse if Procedures are not followed No Matter What; and (e) no interest in doing anything above or beyond the call of a very narrowly-interpreted duty, or in particular 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; problems arise 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}. In England there is equivalent mainstream slang; a `jobsworth' is an obstructive, rule-following bureaucrat, often of the uniformed or suited variety. Named for the habit of denying a reasonable request by sucking his teeth and saying "Oh no, guv, sorry I can't help you: that's more than my job's worth". *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :eat flaming death: imp. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposedly 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 Theatre's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat fascist death, flaming media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!" *** New in 4.1.0. *** :egosurf: vi. To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps connected to long-established SF-fan slang `egoscan', to search for one's name in a fanzine. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :elite: adj. Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a general positive adjective. This term is not actually hacker slang in the strict sense; it is used primarily by crackers and {warez d00dz}. This term used to refer to the folks allowed in to the "hidden" or "privileged" sections of BBSes in the early 1980s (which, typically, contained pirated software). Frequently, early boards would only let you post, or even see, a certain subset of the sections (or `boards') on a BBS. Those who got to the frequently legendary `triple super secret' boards were elite. A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose {lamer}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 intrigued 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 `Bo"cklin', an art-Noveau display font. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 sometiome between early 1981 and mid-1982. 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. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :eurodemo: /yoor'o-dem`-o/ a {demo}, sense 4 *** New in 4.1.0. *** :exploit: n. [originally cracker slang] A vulnerability in software that can be used for breaking security or otherwise attacking an Internet host over the network. The {Ping O' Death} is a famous exploit. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :fandango: *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :farming: n. [Adelaide University, Australia] 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." No longer common; modern drives automatically park their heads in a safe zone on power-down, so it takes a real mechanical problem to induce this. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :feature creep: n. The result of {creeping featurism}, as in "Emacs has a bad case of feature creep". *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 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. Apple picked up the symbol from an early Mac developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple documentation gives the translation "interesting feature"! There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this symbol. It technically stands for the word `seva"rdhet' (interesting feature); many of these are old churches. Some Swedes report as an idiom for it the word `kyrka', cognate to English `church' and Scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in modern Swedish. Others say this is nonsense. Another idiom reported for the sign is `runsten' /roon'stn/, derived from the fact that many of the interesting features are Viking rune-stones. *** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :field circus: n. [a derogatory pun on `field service'] The field service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but originally {DEC}. There is an entire genre of jokes about field circus engineers: Q: How can you recognize a 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 field circus engineer who is out of gas? A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat. Q: How can you tell it's _your_ field circus engineer? A: The spare is flat, too. [See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.] There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the old {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, still extant under the Compaq regime, is located in Maynard, Massachusetts.) *** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :filk: /filk/ n.,v. [from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new word] A popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely new lyrics and/or music, 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 {grilf}, {hing} and {newsfroup}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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 that the people working on it have no additional information about it as yet; use of the phrase in this way suggests gently that the problem is liable to be fixed more quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time doing the fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to which will appear on the normal "11:00 news", if people will just be patient. The variant "MPEGs at 11" has recently been cited (MPEG is a digital-video format.) *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :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." "Linux is a flavor of Unix" 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. *** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :foobar: n. Another common {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo} for etymology. Probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation ({DEC}) in 1960s and early 1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do _not_ generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in either the slang or jargon sense. See also {Fred Foobar}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :frag: n.,v. [from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake] 1. To kill another player's {avatar} in a multiuser game. "I hold the office Quake record with 40 frags." 2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the lightning strike fragged it. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :fscking: /fus'-king/ or /eff'-seek-ing/ adj. Fucking, in the expletive sense (it refers to the Unix filesystem-repair command fsck(1), of which it can be said that if you have to use it at all you are having a bad day). Originated on {scary devil monastery} and the bofh.net newsgroups, but became much more widespread following the passage of {CDA}. Also occasionally seen in the variant "What the fsck?" *** New in 4.1.0. *** :functino: n. [uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A pointer to a function in C and C++. By association with sub-atomic particles such as the neutrino, it accurately conveys an impression of smallness (one pointer is four bytes on most systems) and speed (hackers can and do use arrays of functinos to replace a switch() statement). *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :go root: vi. [Unix] To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' is a synonym for "fuck". *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :gonk: /gonk/ vi.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. In German the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mich" (You're pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :gorets: /gor'ets/ n. The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found esp. on the Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets, which seems to be a running contest to redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former Soviet Union informs me that `gorets' is Russian for `mountain dweller'. Another from France informs me that `goret' is archaic French for a young pig --ESR] Compare {frink}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :greenbar: n. A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating green and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers. This slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :grep: /grep/ vi. [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p, where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it, via {{Unix}} `grep(1)'] To rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?" See also {vgrep}. [It has also been alleged that the source is from the title of a paper "A General Regular Expression Parser" -ESR] *** New in 4.1.0. *** :gribble: n. Random binary data rendered as unreadable text. Noise characters in a data stream are displayed as gribble. Modems with mismatched bitrates usually generate gribble (more specifically, {baud barf}). Dumping a binary file to the screen is an excellent source of gribble, and (if the bell/speaker is active) headaches. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :grue: n. [from archaic English verb for `shudder', as with fear] The grue was originated in the game {Zork} and used in several other {Infocom} games as a hint that you should perhaps look for a lamp, torch or some type of light source. Wandering into a dark area would cause the game to prompt you, "It is very dark. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a grue." If you failed to locate a light source within the next couple of moves this would indeed be the case. The grue, according to scholars of the Great Underground Empire, is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is either adventurers or enchanters, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its extreme fear of light. No grues have ever been seen by the light of day, and only a few have been observed in their underground lairs. Of those who have seen grues, few have survived their fearsome jaws to tell the tale. Grues have sharp claws and fangs, and an uncontrollable tendency to slaver and gurgle. They are certainly the most evil-tempered of all creatures; to say they are touchy is a dangerous understatement. "Sour as a grue" is a common expression, even among themselves. All this folklore is widely known among hackers. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :gunpowder chicken: n. Same as {laser chicken}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :guru meditation: n. Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix (sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic message of the form "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a {guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}. This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed fairly early on. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is {cracker}. The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see {the network} and {Internet address}). For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html) FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see {hacker ethic}). It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). See also {wannabee}. This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :hairball: n. 1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the phrase "Fido coughed up a hairball today", meaning that the stuck messages have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where there had previously been drought. 2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code. "JWZ thought the Mozilla effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball." *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :hairy: adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See also {hirsute}. A well-known result in topology called the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem states that any continuous transformation of a 2-sphere into itself has at least one fixed point. Mathematically literate hackers tend to associate the term `hairy' with the informal version of this theorem; "You can't comb a hairy ball smooth." The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :handle: n. 1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym; a `nom de guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity. Network and BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of {warez d00dz}, {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry. Compare {nick}, {screen name}. 2. A {magic cookie}, often in the form of a numeric index into some array somewhere, through which you can manipulate an object like a file or window. The form `file handle' is especially common. 3. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with minimal impact on the (possibly multiple) parts of the larger program containing references to the allocated memory. Compare {snap} (to snap a handle would defeat its purpose); see also {aliasing bug}, {dangling pointer}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :hot spot: n. 1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called `hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or {hand-hacking}. The term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See {tune}, {bum}, {hand-hacking}. 2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button." 3. A screen region that is sensitive to mouse gestures, which trigger some action. World Wide Web pages now provide the {canonical} examples; WWW browsers present hypertext links as hot spots which, when clicked on, point the browser at another document (these are specifically called {hotlink}s). 4. In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same lock). 5. More generally, any place in a hardware design that turns into a performance bottleneck due to resource contention. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :hung: adj. [from `hung up'] Equivalent to {wedged}, but more common at Unix/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with {locked up}, {wedged}; compare {hosed}. See also {hang}. A hung state is distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, where the program or system is also unusable but because it is not running rather than because it is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both situations is often the same. It is also distinguished from the similar but more drastic state {wedged} - hung software can be woken up with easdy things like interrupt keys, but wedged will need a kill -9 or even reboot. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :ice: n. [coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or even literally kill the intruder). Hence, `icebreaker': a program designed for cracking security on a system. Neither term is in serious use yet as of early 1999, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit emulator". In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some hackers and computer scientists formed ICE (International Cryptographic Experiment) in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote uniform international access to strong cryptography. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :initgame: /in-it'gaym/ n. [IRC] An {IRC} version of the trivia game "Botticelli", in which one user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a 4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. For example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive, Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can be surprisingly addictive. See also {hing}. [1996 update: a recognizable version of the initgame has become a staple of some radio talk shows in the U.S. We had it first! - ESR] *** New in 4.1.0. *** :intro: n. [{demoscene}] Introductory screen of some production. 2. A short {demo}, usually showing just one or two screens. 3. Small, usually 64k, 40k or 4k {demo}. Sizes are generally dictated by {compo} rules. See also {dentro}, {demo}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :jello: n. [USENET: by analogy with {spam}] A message that is both excessively cross-posted and too frequently posted, as opposed to {spam} (which is merely too frequently posted) or {velveeta} (which is merely excessively cross-posted). This term is widely recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse or their combination as spam. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :knobs: pl.n. Configurable options, even in software and even those you can't adjust in real time. Anything you can {twiddle} is a knob. "Has this PNG viewer got an alpha knob?" Software may be described as having "knobs and switches" or occasionally "knobs and lights". *** New in 4.1.0. *** :lag: n. When used without qualification this is synomous with {netlag}. Curiously, people will often complain "I'm really lagged" when in fact it is their server or network connection that is lagging. *** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :lamer: n. [prob. originated in skateboarder slang] 1. Synonym for {luser}, not used much by hackers but common among {warez d00dz}, crackers, and {phreaker}s. A person who downloads much, but who never uploads. (Also known as `leecher'). Oppose {elite}. Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of {luser} does among hackers. 2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS. 3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users - for instance, by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software, frequently dropping carrier, etc. Crackers also use it to refer to cracker {wannabee}s. In phreak culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In {warez d00dz} culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few years to anything older than 3 days). `Lamer' is also much used in the IRC world in a similar sense to the above.
*** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :languages of choice: n. {C}, {C++}, {LISP}, and {Perl}. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both. C++, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented languages (though in 1999 it looks as though Java has displaced it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since around 1990 Perl has rapidly been gaining favor, especially as a tool for systems-administration utilities and rapid prototyping. Python, Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as {Real Programmer}s, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel}" in Appendix A). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {{Pascal}} and {{Ada}}, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything even remotely connected with {COBOL} or other traditional {card walloper} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :link rot: n. The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected to change or die. Compare {bit rot}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :lurker: n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in `the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's {flamage}-emitting regulars. When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called `delurking'. The creator of the popular science-fiction TV series "Babylon V" has ties to SF fandom and the hacker culture. In that series, the use of the term `lurker' for a homeless or displaced person is a conscious reference to the jargon term. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :macrotape: /mak'roh-tayp/ n. An industry-standard reel of tape. Originally, as opposed to a DEC microtape; nowadays, as opposed to modern QIC and DDS tapes. Syn. {round tape}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :magic: 1. adj. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three instructions." 2. adj. Characteristic of something that works although no one really understands why (this is especially called {black magic}). 3. n. [Stanford] A feature not generally publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. 4. n. The ultimate goal of all engineering & development, elegance in the extreme; from the first corollary to Clarke's Third Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced". For more about hackish `magic', see {A Story About `Magic'} in Appendix A. Compare {black magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :mainframe: n. Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s, the traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from computing's {Stone Age}. It has been common wisdom among hackers since the late 1980s that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for {number-crunching} supercomputers (see {cray})), having been swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal computing. The wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among traditional mainframe makers in the early 1990s bore this out. The biggest mainframer of all, IBM, was compelled to re-invent itself as a huge systems-consulting house. (See {dinosaurs mating} and {killer micro}). *** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. *** :metasyntactic variable: n. A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word {foo} is the {canonical} example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be deleted at any time. Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are variables whose values are often variables (as in usages usages like "the value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar"). However, it has been plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term "metasyntactic variable" is that it sounds good. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts {qux} before {quux}. bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). {foo}, {bar}, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include {gorp}. {foo}, {bar}, fum: This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC. {fred}, jim, sheila, {barney}: See the entry for {fred}. These tend to be Britishisms. {corge}, {grault}, {flarp}: Popular at Rutgers University and among {GOSMACS} hackers. zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. snork Brown University, early 1970s. {foo}, {bar}, zot Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. blarg, wibble New Zealand. toto, titi, tata, tutu France. pippo, pluto, paperino Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck. aap, noot, mies The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board. Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and {baz} nearly so). The compounds {foobar} and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf} and {mumble}, for example. See also {{Commonwealth Hackish}} for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :middle-endian: adj. Not {big-endian} or {little-endian}. Used of perverse byte orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See {NUXI problem}. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write little-endian dd/mm/yy, and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for Western dates). *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :mode bit: n. A {flag}, usually in hardware, that selects between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are different from {flag} bit in that mode bits are mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status Word of the IBM 360. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :monty: /mon'tee/ n. 1. [US Geological Survey] A program with a ludicrously complex user interface written to perform extremely trivial tasks. An example would be a menu-driven, button clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows program for listing directories. The original monty was an infamous weather-reporting program, Monty the Amazing Weather Man, written at the USGS. Monty had a widget-packed X-window interface with over 200 buttons; and all monty actually _did_ was {FTP} files off the network. 2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as `Monty' or as `the Full Monty'] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with a normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM. Generally used of a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean `fully populated with' memory, disk-space or some other desirable resource. This usage may be related to a TV commercial for Del Monte fruit juice, in which one of the characters insisted on "the full Del Monte"; but see the World Wide Words article "The Full Monty" (http://clever.net/quinion/words/articles/monty.htm) for discussion of the rather complex etymology that may lie behind this. Compare American {moby}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :munge: /muhnj/ vt. 1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information. 2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole program. 3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn't need to go into right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare {mumble}). 4. To add a {spamblock} to an email address. This term is often confused with {mung}, which probably was derived from it. However, it also appears the word `munge' was in common use in Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb, meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and as a noun, meaning the result of munging something up (the parallel with the {kluge}/{kludge} pair is amusing). *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :netdead: n. [IRC] The state of someone who signs off {IRC}, perhaps during a {netburp}, and doesn't sign back on until later. In the interim, he is "dead to the net". Compare {link-dead}. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :netlag: n. [IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the {IRC} network or on a {MUD} become severe enough that servers briefly lose and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (Note that this term has nothing to do with mainstream "jet lag", a condition which hackers tend not to be much bothered by.) Often shortened to just `lag'. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :newgroup wars: /n[y]oo'groop worz/ n. [Usenet] The salvos of dueling `newgroup' and `rmgroup' messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether a {newsgroup} should be created net-wide, or (even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times, especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork which originated as a birthday joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious {flamer}s, e.g., alt.weemba. *** New in 4.1.0. *** :nugry: /n[y]oo'gree/ [Usenet, 'newbie' + '-gry'] `. n. A {newbie} who posts a {FAQ} in the rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it is a variant of the notorious and unanswerable "What, besides `angry' and `hungry', is the third common English word that ends in -GRY?". In the newsgroup, the canonical answer is of course `nugry' itself. Plural is `nusgry' /n[y]oos'gree/. 2. adj. Having the qualities of a nugry. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :off the trolley: adj. Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes catatonic, but doesn't actually {crash} or abort. See {glitch}, {bug}, {deep space}, {wedged}. This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs against, the heavy wire that carries the current to run a streetcar. It's at the end of the long pole (the trolley pole) that reaches from the roof of the streetcar to the overhead line. When the trolley stops making contact with the wire (from passing through a switch, going over bumpy track, or whatever), the streetcar comes to a halt, (usually) without crashing. The streetcar is then said to be off the trolley, or off the wire. Later on, trolley came to mean the streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common in the 1890s, the term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are only seen on historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs to contact the wire. *** Changed in 4.1.0. *** :one-liner wars: n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language} and {line noise}). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly {hairy} primitive set. A similar amusement was practiced among {TECO} hackers and is now popular among {Perl} aficionados. Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this: (2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN where `o' is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a single character, and `i' represents the APL iota. Here's equivalent {Perl}: perl -le '$_ = 1; (1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while $_++' *** New in 4.1.0. *** :patch pumpkin: n. [Perl hackers] A notional token passed around among the members of a project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one has the exclusive authority to make changes on the project's master source tree. The implicit assumption is that `pumpkin holder' status is temporary and rotates periodically among senior project members.
This term comes from the Perl development community, but has been
sighted elsewhere. It derives from a stuffed-toy pumpkin that was
passed around at a development shop years ago as the access control
for a shared backup-tape drive.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:phase of the moon: n. Used humorously as a random parameter on
which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability
of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent
on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature
depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo
switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also {heisenbug}.
True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really
did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine
that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to
calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS
incorporated this routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote
out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long.
Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long
and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later
read back in the program would {barf}. The length of the first line
depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the
phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug
literally depended on the phase of the moon!
The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included
an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug,
but the typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been described as
the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN
(European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors
in experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the
formidable amount of data generated by such devices is heavily
processed by computers before being seen by humans, many people
suggested the software was somehow sensitive to the phase of the
moon. A few desperate engineers discovered the truth; the error
turned out to be the result of a tiny change in the geometry of the
27km circonference ring, physically caused by the deformation of the
Earth by the passage of the Moon! This story has entered physics
folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and as an
example of the relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to
the most modern science.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pig-tail: [radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors
on each end for converting between one connector type and another.
Common pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables
to connect PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network cable. This
word probably came from ham radio hackers.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:ping storm: n. A form of {DOS attack} consisting of a flood of
{ping} requests (normally used to check network conditions) designed
to disrupt the normal activity of a system. This act is sometimes
called `ping lashing' or `ping flood'. Compare {mail storm},
{broadcast storm}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pink wire: n. [from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment]
As {blue wire}, but used in military applications. 2. vi. To add a
pink wire to a board.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pipe: n. Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in
context, the expansion "bit pipe" is understood. A "fat pipe" is a
line with T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 modem might
be heard to complain "I need a bigger pipe".
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:plug-and-pray: adj.,vi. Parody of the techspeak term
`plug-and-play', describing a PC peripheral card which is claimed to
have no need for hardware configuration via DIP switches, and which
should be work as soon as it is inserted in the PC. Unfortunately,
even the PCI bus is not up to pulling this off reliably, and people
who have to do installation or troubleshoot PCs soon find themselves
longing for the DIP switches.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pointy-haired: adj. [after the character in the {Dilbert} comic
strip] Describes the extreme form of the property that separates
{suit}s and {marketroid}s from hackers. Compare {brain-dead};
{demented}. Always applied to people, never to ideas. The plural
form is often used as a noun. "The pointy-haireds ordered me to use
Windows NT, but I set up a Linux server with Samba instead."
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:prime time: n. [from TV programming] Normal high-usage hours on a
system or network. Back in the days of big timesharing machines
`prime time' was when lots of people were competing for limited
cycles, usually the day shift. Avoidance of prime time was
traditionally given as a major reason for {night mode} hacking. The
term fell into disuse during the early PC era, but has been revived
to refer to times of day or evening at which the Internet tends to
be heavily loaded, making Web access slow. The hackish tendency to
late-night {hacking run}s has changed not a bit.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:print: v. To output, even if to a screen. If a hacker says that a
program "printed a message", he means this; if he refers to printing
a file, he probably means it in the conventional sense of writing to
a hardcopy device (compounds like `print job' and `printout', on the
other hand, always refer to the latter). This very common term is
likely a holdover from the days when printing terminals were the
norm, perpetuated by programming language constructs like {C}'s
printf(3). See senses 1 and 2 of {tty}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pumpkin holder: n. See {patch pumpkin}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:pumpking: n. Syn. for {pumpkin holder}; see {patch pumpkin}.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:punt: v. [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American
football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt!"] 1. To give up, typically
without any intention of retrying. "Let's punt the movie tonight."
"I was going to hack all night to get this feature in, but I decided
to punt" may mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and
may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature. 2.
More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the {Right Thing}
is and resort to an inefficient hack. 3. A design decision to defer
solving a problem, typically because one cannot define what is
desirable sufficiently well to frame an algorithmic solution. "No
way to know what the right form to dump the graph in is -- we'll
punt that for now." 4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off
to some other section of the design. "It's too hard to get the
compiler to do that; let's punt to the runtime system." 5. To knock
someone off an Internet or chat connection; a `punter' thus, is a
person or program that does this.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:quantifiers:: In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric
prefixes used in the SI (Syste`me International) conventions for
scientific measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things
that come in powers of 10, such as money, they retain their usual
meanings of multiplication by powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used
with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they
usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 = 2^(10).
Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding
binary interpretations in common use:
prefix decimal binary
kilo- 1000^1 1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
mega- 1000^2 1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
giga- 1000^3 1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
tera- 1000^4 1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1000^5 1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1000^6 1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
zetta- 1000^7 1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
yotta- 1000^8 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
Here are the SI fractional prefixes:
_prefix decimal jargon usage_
milli- 1000^-1 (seldom used in jargon)
micro- 1000^-2 small or human-scale (see {micro-})
nano- 1000^-3 even smaller (see {nano-})
pico- 1000^-4 even smaller yet (see {pico-})
femto- 1000^-5 (not used in jargon---yet)
atto- 1000^-6 (not used in jargon---yet)
zepto- 1000^-7 (not used in jargon---yet)
yocto- 1000^-8 (not used in jargon---yet)
The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included
in these tables purely for completeness and giggle value; they were
adopted in 1990 by the `19th Conference Generale des Poids et
Mesures'. The binary peta- and exa- loadings, though well
established, are not in jargon use either -- yet. The prefix
milli-, denoting multiplication by 1/1000, has always been rare in
jargon (there is, however, a standard joke about the `millihelen' --
notionally, the amount of beauty required to launch one ship). See
the entries on {micro-}, {pico-}, and {nano-} for more information
on connotative jargon use of these terms. `Femto' and `atto'
(which, interestingly, derive not from Greek but from Danish) have
not yet acquired jargon loadings, though it is easy to predict what
those will be once computing technology enters the required realms
of magnitude (however, see {attoparsec}).
There are, of course, some standard unit prefixes for powers of
10. In the following table, the `prefix' column is the
international standard suffix for the appropriate power of ten; the
`binary' column lists jargon abbreviations and words for the
corresponding power of 2. The B-suffixed forms are commonly used
for byte quantities; the words `meg' and `gig' are nouns that may
(but do not always) pluralize with `s'.
prefix decimal binary pronunciation
kilo- k K, KB, /kay/
mega- M M, MB, meg /meg/
giga- G G, GB, gig /gig/,/jig/
Confusingly, hackers often use K or M as though they were suffix or
numeric multipliers rather than a prefix; thus "2K dollars", "2M of
disk space". This is also true (though less commonly) of G.
Note that the formal SI metric prefix for 1000 is `k'; some use
this strictly, reserving `K' for multiplication by 1024 (KB is thus
`kilobytes').
K, M, and G used alone refer to quantities of bytes; thus, 64G is
64 gigabytes and `a K' is a kilobyte (compare mainstream use of `a
G' as short for `a grand', that is, $1000). Whether one pronounces
`gig' with hard or soft `g' depends on what one thinks the proper
pronunciation of `giga-' is.
Confusing 1000 and 1024 (or other powers of 2 and 10 close in
magnitude) -- for example, describing a memory in units of 500K or
524K instead of 512K -- is a sure sign of the {marketroid}. One
example of this: it is common to refer to the capacity of 3.5"
{microfloppies} as `1.44 MB' In fact, this is a completely {bogus}
number. The correct size is 1440 KB, that is, 1440 * 1024 = 1474560
bytes. So the `mega' in `1.44 MB' is compounded of two `kilos', one
of which is 1024 and the other of which is 1000. The correct number
of megabytes would of course be 1440 / 1024 = 1.40625. Alas, this
fine point is probably lost on the world forever.
[1993 update: hacker Morgan Burke has proposed, to general
approval on Usenet, the following additional prefixes:
groucho
10^(-30)
harpo
10^(-27)
harpi
10^(27)
grouchi
10^(30)
We observe that this would leave the prefixes zeppo-, gummo-, and
chico- available for future expansion. Sadly, there is little
immediate prospect that Mr. Burke's eminently sensible proposal will
be ratified.]
[1999 upate: there is an IEC proposal
(ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/information-units)
for binary multipliers, but no evidence that any of its proposals
are in live use.]
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical
definition); weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly."
2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a
bunch of random business types." 3. (pejorative) Frivolous;
unproductive; undirected. "He's just a random loser." 4.
Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The
program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for
that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."
5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels
are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly."
6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file."
7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in
a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could
easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly
uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one
else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What
{randomness}! 8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of
high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in
the way. 9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone
not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I
went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus
questions". 10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random
Hall. See also {J. Random}, {some random X}. 11. [UK]
Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly
out-of-the-blue. As in: "Stop being so random!" This sense equates
to `hatstand', taken from the Viz comic character "Roger Irrelevant
- He's completely Hatstand."
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:random numbers:: n. When one wishes to specify a large but random
number of things, and the context is inappropriate for {N}, certain
numbers are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily
recognized as placeholders). These include the following:
17
Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see 23.
23
Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and
5).
42
The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and
Everything. (Note that this answer is completely fortuitous.
`:-)')
69
From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS
culture.
105
69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal. Also, 105
is 69 in base 42.
666
The Number of the Beast.
For further enlightenment, study the "Principia Discordia", "{The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}", "The Joy of Sex", and the
Christian Bible (Revelation 13:18). See also {Discordianism} or
consult your pineal gland. See also {for values of}.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:randomness: n. 1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous
inelegance. 2. A {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex
combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon
which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction).
"This hack can output characters 40-57 by putting the character in
the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six
bits -- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing."
"What randomness!" 3. Of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. The
connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly,
incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too
tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable
as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time.
"Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See
if he calls back."
Despite the negative connotations jargon uses of this term have, it
is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable
resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and
elsewhere. Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have
a hard time generating high-quality randomess, so hackers have
sometimes felt the need to built special-purpose contraptions for
this purpose alone. One well-known website offers random bits
generated by radioactive decay (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/).
Another derives random bits from images of Lava Lite lamps
(http://lavarand.sgi.com/). (Hackers invariably find the latter
hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll never get it.)
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:rasterbation: n. [portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The
gratuituous use of comuputer generated images and effects in movies
and graphic art which would have been better without them.
Especially employed as a term of abuse by Photoshop/GIMP users and
graphic artists.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:reality-distortion field: n. An expression used to describe the
persuasive ability of managers like Steve Jobs (the term originated
at Apple in the 1980s to describe his peculiar charisma). Those
close to these managers become passionately committed to possibly
insane projects, without regard to the practicality of their
implementation or competitive forces in the marketpace.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:rehi: [IRC] "Hello again." Very commonly used to greet people upon
returning to an IRC channel after {channel hopping}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:relay rape: n. The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail
server to deliver {spam}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:ripoff: n. Synonym for {chad}, sense 1.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:robocanceller: /roh-boh-kan'sel-*r/ A program that monitors USENET
feeds, attempting to detect and elimnate {spam} by sending
appropriate cancel messages . Robocancellers may use the {Breidbart
Index} as a trigger. Programming them is not a game for amateurs;
see {ARMM}. See also {Dave the Resurrector}.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:robot: n. See {bot}.
*** Changed in 4.1.0, 4.1.0. ***
:rogue: 1. [Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using
character graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported
to other Unix systems. The original BSD `curses(3)' screen-handling
package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support `rogue(6)' and
has since become one of Unix's most important and heavily used
application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an entire
subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the inspiration
provided by `rogue(6)'; the popular Windows game Diablo, though
graphics-intensive, has very similar play logic. See also
{nethack}. 2. [USENET] adj. An {ISP} which permits net abuse
(usually in the form of {spam}ming) by its customers, or which
itself engages in such activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject
to {IDP}s or {UDP}s. Sometimes deliberately mispelled as "rouge".
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:scary devil monastery: n. Anagram frequently used to refer to the
newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated with characters
that rather justify the reference.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:scram switch: n. [from the nuclear power industry] An
emergency-power-off switch (see {Big Red Switch}), esp. one
positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. In general,
this is _not_ something you {frob} lightly; these often initiate
expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed in a
{dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in case some
luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts across himself while
{Easter egging}. (See also {molly-guard}, {TMRC}.)
A correspondent reports a legend that "Scram" is an acronym for
"Start Cutting Right Away, Man" (another less plausible variant of
this legend refers to "Safety Controil Rod Axe Man"; these are
almost certainly both {backronym}s). The story goes that in the
earliest nuclear power experiments the engineers recognized the
possibility that the reactor wouldn't behave exactly as predicted by
their mathematical models. Accordingly, they made sure that they
had mechanisms in place that would rapidly drop the control rods
back into the reactor. One mechanism took the form of `scram
technicians'. These individuals stood next to the cables that
raised and lowered the control rods (though certainly not next to
the reactor itself) . Equipped with cable-cutters, these
technicians stood ready for the (literal) `scram' command. If
necessary, they would cut the cables, and gravity would
expeditiously return the control rods to the reactor, thereby
averting yet another kind of {core dump}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:screen: n. [Atari ST {demoscene}] One {demoeffect} or one
screenful of them. Probably comes from old Sierra-style adventures
or shoot-em-ups where one travels from one place to another one
screenful at a time.
*** New in 4.1.0. Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:screen name: n. A {handle} sense 1. This term has been common
among users of IRC, MUDs, and commercial on-line services since the
mid-1990s. Hackers recognize the term but don't generally use it.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:script kiddies: pl.n. The lowest form of {cracker}; script kiddies
do mischief with scripts and programs written by others, often
without understanding the {exploit}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:semi-automated: adj. [US Geological Survey] A procedure that has
yet to be completely automated; it still requires a smidge of
clueful human interaction. Semi-automated programs usually come
with written-out operator instructions that are worth their weight
in gold - without them, very nasty things can happen. At USGS
semi-automated programs are often referred to as "semi-automated
weapons".
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:sharing violation: [From a file error common to several {OS}s] A
response to receiving information, typically of an excessively
personal nature, that you were probably happier not knowing. "You know
those little noises that Pat makes in bed..?" "Whoa! Sharing
violation!" In contrast to the original file error, which indicated
that you were _not_ being given data that you _did_ want.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:shovelware: /shuh'v*l-weir`/ n. 1. Extra software dumped onto a
CD-ROM or tape to fill up the remaining space on the medium after
the software distribution it's intended to carry, but not integrated
with the distribution. 2. A slipshod compilation of software dumped
onto a CD-ROM without much care for organization or even usability.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:slashdot effect: n. Also spelled "/. effect"; what is said to have
happened when a website being virtually unreachable because too many
people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting
article on the popular Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/) news service.
The term is quite widely used by /. readers, including variants
like "That site has been slashdotted again!"
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:sneakernet: /snee'ker-net/ n. Term used (generally with ironic
intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically
carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to
another. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs." Also called
`Tennis-Net', `Armpit-Net', `Floppy-Net' or `Shoenet'; in the 1990s,
`Nike network' after a well-known sneaker brand.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:sock puppet: n. [USENET: from the act of placing a sock over your
hand and talking to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet
parlance, a {pseudo} through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to
their own original message to give the appearance that a number of
people support the views held in the original message.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:spam: vt.,vi.,n. [from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"] 1. To crash
a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large
input data. See also {buffer overflow}, {overrun screw}, {smash the
stack}. 2. To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or
inappropriate messages. You can spam a newsgroup with as little as
one well- (or ill-) planned message (e.g. asking "What do you think
of abortion?" on soc.women). This is often done with {cross-post}ing
(e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and
alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups).
This overlaps with {troll} behavior; the latter more specific term
has become more common. 3. To send many identical or
nearly-identical messages separately to a large number of Usenet
newsgroups. This is more specifically called `ECP', Excessive
Cross-Posting. This is one sure way to infuriate nearly everyone on
the Net. See also {velveeta} and {jello}. 4. To bombard a newsgroup
with multiple copies of a message. This is more specifically called
`EMP', Excessive Multi-Posting. 5. To mass-mail unrequested
identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those
containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses
have been culled from network traffic or databases without the
consent of the recipients. Synonyms include {UCE}, {UBE}.
The later definitions have become much more prevalent as the
Internet has opened up to non-techies, and to most people senses 3 4
and 5 are now primary. All three behasviors are considered abuse of
the net, and are almost universally grounds for termination of the
originator's email account or network connection. In these senses
the term `spam' has gone mainstream, though without its original
sense or folkloric freight - there is apparently a widespread myth
among {luser}s that "spamming" is what happens when you dump cans of
Spam into a revolving fan.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spamblock: /spam'blok/ n. [poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text
inserted in an email address to render it invalid and thus useless
to spammers. For example, the address `jrandom@hacker.org' might be
transformed to `jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org'. Adding spamblock to an
address is often referred to as `munging' it (see {munge})-. This
evasion tactic depends on the fact that most spammers collect names
with some sort of {address harvester} on volumes too high to de-mung
by hand, but individual humans reading an email message can readily
spot and remove a spamblock in the from address.
Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already
be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life.
In both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart
address harvester from mining out the addresses in the message
header and trace lines. Therefore the only people who can be
protected are third parties mentioned by email address in the
message - not a common enough case to interest spammers.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spamhaus: spam'hows n. Pejorative term for an internet service
provider that permits or even encourages {spam} mailings from its
systems. The plural is `spamhausen'. There is a web page devoted
to tracking spamhausen (http://combat.uxn.com/spamhaus.html).
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber
Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The
anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on USENET as Spam Freedom
Day, but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky
corners of the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine
under the junk-fax laws and statues specifically targeting spam,
spamhausen have declined in relative importance; today, hit-and-run
attacks by spammers using {relay rape} and {throwaway account}s on
reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the flow.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spamvertize: v. To advertise using {spam}. Pejorative.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spangle: n. [UK] The singular of {bells and whistles}. See also
{spungle}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spawn: n.,vi. 1. [techspeak] In UNIX parlance, to create a child
process from within a process. Technically this is a `fork'; the
term `spawn' is a bit more general and is used for threads
(lightweight processes) as well as traditional heavyweight
processes. 2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (`spawn-point')
and when a player comes to life (or `re-spawns') after being killed.
Opposite of {frag}.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spider food: n. Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web
page to attract search engines (spiders). The intended result of
including spider food in one's web page is to insure that the page
appears high on the list of matching entries to a search engine
query. There are right and wrong ways to do this; the right way is
a discreet `meta keywords' tag, the wrong way is to embed many
repeats of a keyword in comments (and many search engines now detect
and ignore the latter).
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spoof: vi. To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication
stream in a way that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers,
refers especially to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or
other packet-header data in order to masquerade as a trusted
machine. This term has become very widespread and is borderline
techspeak.
*** New in 4.1.0. ***
:spungle: n. [Durham, UK; portmanteau, {spangle} + bungle] A
{spangle} of no actual usefulness. Example: Roger the Bent Paperclip
in Microsoft Word '98. A spungle's only virtue is that it looks
pretty, unless you find creeping featurism ugly.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:suit: n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often worn
by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation
device that partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It is
thought that this explains much about the behavior of suit-wearers.
Compare {droid}. 2. A person who habitually wears suits, as
distinct from a techie or hacker. See {pointy-haired}, {burble},
{management}, {Stupids}, {SNAFU principle}, and {brain-damaged}.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:surf: v. [from the `surf' idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels]
To traverse the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp.
if one is doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also common
to speak of `surfing in' to a particular resource.
Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using it
since it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive,
couch-potato connotations that go with TV channel surfing were never
pleasant, and hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about "surfing
the net" tends to make hackers feel a bit as though their home is
being overrun by ignorami.
*** Changed in 4.1.0. ***
:talk mode: n. A feature supported by Unix, ITS, and some other
OSes that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time
on-line conversation. It combines the immediacy of talking with all
the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails. It is
difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen
for some of these (see the section on writing style in the
Prependices for details).
Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing,
which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to (and
probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs
since the 1920s.
AFAIK
as far as I know
BCNU
be seeing you
BTW
by the way
BYE?
are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a
talk-mode conversation; the other person types `BYE' to confirm,
or else continues the conversation)
CUL
see you later
ENQ?
are you busy? (expects `ACK' or `NAK' in return)
FOO?
are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also
"Sorry if I butted in ..." (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee))
FWIW
for what it's worth
FYI
for your information
FYA
for your amusement
GA
go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously;
this cedes the right to type to the other)
GRMBL
grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement)
HELLOP
hello? (an instance of the `-P' convention)
IIRC
if I recall correctly
JAM
just a minute (equivalent to `SEC....')
MIN
same as `JAM'
NIL
no (see {NIL})
NP
no problem
O
over to you
OO
over and out
/
another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x over y")
\
lambda (used in discussing LISPy things)
OBTW
oh, by the way
OTOH
on the other hand
R U THERE?
are you there?
SEC
wait a second (sometimes written `SEC...')
SYN
Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST in return; this is
modeled on the TCP/IP handshake sequence)
T
yes (see the main entry for {T})
TNX
thanks
TNX 1.0E6
thanks a million (humorous)
TNXE6
another form of "thanks a million"
WRT
with regard to, or with respect to.
WTF
the universal interrogative particle; WTF knows what it means?
WTH
what the hell?