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2018-10-15 20:18:41 +01:00
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@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ Free Documentation License".
</p>
<H2>Generated</H2>
<p>
This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 07:18PM UTC
</p>
<H2>Glossary</H2>
@@ -33,21 +33,21 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
Combining form denoting expert practice of a skill. That's going to take some serious code-fu. First sighted in connection with the GIMP's remote-scripting facility, script-fu, in 1998.
</p>
<H4>-oid</H4>
<p>1. Used as in mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream English. For example, He's a nerdoid means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't make the grade; a modemoid might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any bitty box. The word keyboid could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard , but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the speaker's city of origin. </p>
<p>1. Used as in mainstream slang English to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream English. For example, He's a nerdoid means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't make the grade; a modemoid might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any bitty box. The word keyboid could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard, but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the speaker's city of origin. </p>
<p>2. More specifically, an indicator for resembling an android which in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers. It too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably in the term trendoid for victims of terminal hipness). This is probably traceable to the popularization of the term droid in Star Wars and its sequels. (See also windoid. ) Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably been making -oid jargon for almost that long.</p>
<H4>-ware</H4>
<p>
suff. [from software ] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. For examples, see annoyware , careware , crippleware , crudware , freeware , fritterware , guiltware , liveware , meatware , payware , psychedelicware , shareware , shelfware , vaporware , wetware , spyware , adware.
suff. [from software ] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. For examples, see annoyware, careware, crippleware, crudware, freeware, fritterware, guiltware, liveware, meatware, payware, psychedelicware, shareware, shelfware, vaporware, wetware, spyware, adware.
</p>
<H3>/</H3>
<H4>/dev/null</H4>
<p>
/devnuhl/ , n. [from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional black hole in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null. See bit bucket.
/devnuhl/, n. [from the Unix null device, used as a data sink] A notional black hole in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null. See bit bucket.
</p>
<H4>/me</H4>
<p>
// [IRC; common] Under most IRC, /me is the pose command; if you are logged on as Foonly and type /me laughs , others watching the channel will see * Joe Foonly laughs. This usage has been carried over to mail and news, where the reader is expected to perform the same expansion in his or her head.
// [IRC; common] Under most IRC, /me is the pose command; if you are logged on as Foonly and type /me laughs, others watching the channel will see * Joe Foonly laughs. This usage has been carried over to mail and news, where the reader is expected to perform the same expansion in his or her head.
</p>
<H3>0</H3>
<H4>0-day</H4>
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>404 compliant</H4>
<p>
adj. The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse by the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the standard 301 compliant Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers. See also: spam , spamvertize.
adj. The status of a website which has been completely removed, usually by the administrators of the hosting site as a result of net abuse by the website operators. The term is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the standard 301 compliant Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers. See also: spam, spamvertize.
</p>
<H3>@</H3>
<H4>@-party</H4>
@@ -89,10 +89,10 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
<p>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. </p>
<p>4. An affirmative. Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a Linux box? ACK! 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 , i.e., I'm not here ).</p>
<p>4. An affirmative. Think we ought to ditch that damn NT server for a Linux box? ACK! 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, i.e., I'm not here ).</p>
<H4>ADVENT</H4>
<p>
/advent/ , n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of INTERCAL. ) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames in uppercase. See also vadding , Zork , and Infocom. Figure1.Screen shot of the original ADVENT game Orange River Chamber You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west sidesof the chamber. A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing. drop rod Dropped. take bird You catch the bird in the wicker cage. take rod Taken. w At Top of Small Pit At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage ends here except for a small crack leading on. Rough stone steps lead down the pit. down In Hall of Mists You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west. There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almost as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top of a dome behind you. Rough stone steps lead up the dome. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since 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. ADVENT sources are available for FTP at ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z. You can also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.
/advent/ , n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of INTERCAL. ) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames in uppercase. See also vadding, Zork, and Infocom. Figure1.Screen shot of the original ADVENT game Orange River Chamber You are in a splendid chamber thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange stone. An awkward canyon and a good passage exit from east and west sidesof the chamber. A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing. drop rod Dropped. take bird You catch the bird in the wicker cage. take rod Taken. w At Top of Small Pit At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage ends here except for a small crack leading on. Rough stone steps lead down the pit. down In Hall of Mists You are at one end of a vast hall stretching forward out of sight to the west. There are openings to either side. Nearby, a wide stone staircase leads downward. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almost as if alive. A cold wind blows up the staircase. There is a passage at the top of a dome behind you. Rough stone steps lead up the dome. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since 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. ADVENT sources are available for FTP at ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z. You can also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of resources at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.
</p>
<H4>AFAIK</H4>
<p>
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>AI</H4>
<p>
/AI/ , n. Abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence , so common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.
/AI/ , n. Abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence, so common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among hackers.
</p>
<H4>AI-complete</H4>
<p>
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>ANSI standard</H4>
<p>
/ansee stand@rd/ The ANSI standard usage of ANSI standard refers to any practice which is typical or broadly done. It's most appropriately applied to things that everyone does that are not quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI standard word tripling in names of usenet alt groups. This usage derives from the American National Standards Institute. ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see K R , Classic C ), and promulgates many other important software standards.
/ansee stand@rd/ The ANSI standard usage of ANSI standard refers to any practice which is typical or broadly done. It's most appropriately applied to things that everyone does that are not quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a laser printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI standard word tripling in names of usenet alt groups. This usage derives from the American National Standards Institute. ANSI, along with the International Organization for Standards (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see K R , Classic C), and promulgates many other important software standards.
</p>
<H4>ANSI standard pizza</H4>
<p>
@@ -128,15 +128,15 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>ARMM</H4>
<p>
n. [acronym, Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation ] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages. ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer and longer. Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as instant Usenet history (also establishing the term despew ), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the subject is archived here. Compare Great Worm ; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also software laser , network meltdown.
n. [acronym, Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation ] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages. ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer and longer. Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as instant Usenet history (also establishing the term despew ), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the subject is archived here. Compare Great Worm ; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also software laser, network meltdown.
</p>
<H4>ASCII</H4>
<p>
/askee/ , n. [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) 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 . or 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. A history of ASCII and its ancestors is at http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html. 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. The abbreviations l/r and o/c stand for left/right and open/close respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information. ! Common: bang ; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; exclamation mark. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control. Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; snakebite; quotation marks ; dieresis ; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. # Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch ; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; square , pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. $ Common: dollar; dollar sign. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; bling; 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 ; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh (1) ); pretzel. [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: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; opening/closing parenthesis ; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r 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].
/askee/ , n. [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) 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 . or 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. A history of ASCII and its ancestors is at http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html. 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. The abbreviations l/r and o/c stand for left/right and open/close respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information. ! Common: bang ; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; exclamation mark. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control. Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; snakebite; quotation marks ; dieresis ; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. # Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch ; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; square, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. $ Common: dollar; dollar sign. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; bling; 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 ; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh (1) ); pretzel. [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: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; opening/closing parenthesis ; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r 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].
</p>
<H4>ASCII art</H4>
<p>
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. The next step beyond static tableaux in ASCII art is ASCII animation. There are not many large examples of this; perhaps the best known is the ASCII animation of the original Star Wars movie at http://www.asciimation.co.nz/. There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art , devoted to this genre; however, see also warlording.
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. The next step beyond static tableaux in ASCII art is ASCII animation. There are not many large examples of this; perhaps the best known is the ASCII animation of the original Star Wars movie at http://www.asciimation.co.nz/. There is a newsgroup, alt.ascii-art , devoted to this genre; however, see also warlording.
</p>
<H4>ASCIIbetical order</H4>
<p>
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Acme</H4>
<p>
n. [from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in the early 1900s.) Describing some X as an Acme X either means This is insanely great , or, more likely, This looks insanely great on paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it. Compare pistol. This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner Brothers' series of Road-runner cartoons. In these cartoons, the famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with, trap, and eat the Road-runner. His attempts usually involved one or more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in large wooden crates labeled prominently with the Acme name which, probably not by coincidence, was the trade name of a peg bar system for superimposing animation cels used by cartoonists since forever. Acme devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable and violent ways.
n. [from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears Roebuck catalogs in the early 1900s.) Describing some X as an Acme X either means This is insanely great, or, more likely, This looks insanely great on paper, but in practice it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it. Compare pistol. This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner Brothers' series of Road-runner cartoons. In these cartoons, the famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with, trap, and eat the Road-runner. His attempts usually involved one or more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in large wooden crates labeled prominently with the Acme name which, probably not by coincidence, was the trade name of a peg bar system for superimposing animation cels used by cartoonists since forever. Acme devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable and violent ways.
</p>
<H4>Alderson loop</H4>
<p>
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Aluminum Book</H4>
<p>
n. [MIT] 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.
n. [MIT] 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.
</p>
<H4>Amiga</H4>
<p>
@@ -172,15 +172,15 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Amiga Persecution Complex</H4>
<p>
n. The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of bigot , those who believe that the marginality of their preferred machine is the result of some kind of industry-wide conspiracy (for without a conspiracy of some kind, the eminent superiority of their beloved shining jewel of a platform would obviously win over all, market pressures be damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging in flame wars and calling for boycotts and mailbombings. Amiga Persecution Complex is by no means limited to Amiga users; NeXT, NeWS , OS/2 , Macintosh, LISP , and GNU users are also common victims. Linux users used to display symptoms very frequently before Linux started winning; some still do. See also newbie, troll, holy wars.
n. The disorder suffered by a particularly egregious variety of bigot, those who believe that the marginality of their preferred machine is the result of some kind of industry-wide conspiracy (for without a conspiracy of some kind, the eminent superiority of their beloved shining jewel of a platform would obviously win over all, market pressures be damned!) Those afflicted are prone to engaging in flame wars and calling for boycotts and mailbombings. Amiga Persecution Complex is by no means limited to Amiga users; NeXT, NeWS, OS/2, Macintosh, LISP, and GNU users are also common victims. Linux users used to display symptoms very frequently before Linux started winning; some still do. See also newbie, troll, holy wars.
</p>
<H4>Angband</H4>
<p>
n. , /angband/ Like nethack , moria , and rogue , one of the large freely distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's Pits of Angband (compare elder days , elvish ). Has been described as Moria on steroids ; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work. There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is probably the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that does not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display Type ? for help 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random error messages including An error has occurred because an error of type 42 has occurred and Windows 95 uninstalled successfully will be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus (who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends), Bull Gates , and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney has a nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and a zangband one at http://www.zangband.org/. See also Random Number God.
n. , /angband/ Like nethack , moria , and rogue , one of the large freely distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's Pits of Angband (compare elder days , elvish ). Has been described as Moria on steroids ; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work. There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is probably the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that does not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display Type ? for help 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random error messages including An error has occurred because an error of type 42 has occurred and Windows 95 uninstalled successfully will be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus (who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends), Bull Gates, and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney has a nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and a zangband one at http://www.zangband.org/. See also Random Number God.
</p>
<H4>Anthropomorphization</H4>
<p>
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and desires. Thus it is common 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 . Or: You can't run those two cards on the same bus; they fight over interrupt 9. 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. At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they would use language that seems to ascribe consciousness to them. The mind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination. The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a naive 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. To the contrary: hackers who anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior. Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological machines consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from computers. Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a thing alive, is information and richness of pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of consciousness according to their information-processing capacity. Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to other complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that The program wants to go into an infinite loop than it is to say that I want to go eat some chocolate and even defensible to say that The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the earth . This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the physical stance (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the design stance (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the intentional stance (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desires and intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of abstract truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs from the design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled using the intentional stance. It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software and hardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmer and his artifacts the human qualities belong to the programmer and the code merely expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this view, a hacker saying a piece of code got confused is really saying that he (or she) was confused about exactly what he wanted the computer to do, the code naturally incorporated this confusion, and the code expressed the programmer's confusion when executed by crashing or otherwise misbehaving. Note that by displacing from I got confused to It got confused , the programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but rather getting some analytical distance in order to be able to consider the bug dispassionately. It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems is actually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simple rules we do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergent behavioral complexities that we don't completely understand. All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should be considered complementary rather than competing.
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and desires. Thus it is common 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 . Or: You can't run those two cards on the same bus; they fight over interrupt 9. 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. At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they would use language that seems to ascribe consciousness to them. The mind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination. The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a naive 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. To the contrary: hackers who anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior. Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological machines consciousness is an interesting and valuable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from computers. Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes a thing alive, is information and richness of pattern. This is animism from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of consciousness according to their information-processing capacity. Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, it is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to other complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that The program wants to go into an infinite loop than it is to say that I want to go eat some chocolate and even defensible to say that The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of the earth . This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. Daniel Dennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the physical stance (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the design stance (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the intentional stance (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desires and intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not of abstract truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programs from the design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled using the intentional stance. It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software and hardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmer and his artifacts the human qualities belong to the programmer and the code merely expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this view, a hacker saying a piece of code got confused is really saying that he (or she) was confused about exactly what he wanted the computer to do, the code naturally incorporated this confusion, and the code expressed the programmer's confusion when executed by crashing or otherwise misbehaving. Note that by displacing from I got confused to It got confused, the programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but rather getting some analytical distance in order to be able to consider the bug dispassionately. It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems is actually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simple rules we do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergent behavioral complexities that we don't completely understand. All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should be considered complementary rather than competing.
</p>
<H4>App Store</H4>
<p>
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Archimedes</H4>
<p>
The world's first RISC microcomputer, available only in the British Commonwealth and europe. Built in 1987 in Great Britain by Acorn Computers, it was legendary for its use of the ARM-2 microprocessor as a CPU. Many a novice hacker in the Commonwealth first learnt his or her skills on the , since it was specifically designed for use in schools and educational institutions. Owners of machines are often still treated with awe and reverence. Familiarly, archi.
The world's first RISC microcomputer, available only in the British Commonwealth and Europe. Built in 1987 in Great Britain by Acorn Computers, it was legendary for its use of the ARM-2 microprocessor as a CPU. Many a novice hacker in the Commonwealth in the late 1980s or early 1990s first learnt his or her skills on the Archimedes, since it was specifically designed for use in schools and educational institutions. Owners of Archimedes machines are often still treated with awe and reverence. Familiarly, archi.
</p>
<H4>Aunt Tillie</H4>
<p>
@@ -197,11 +197,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
<H3>B</H3>
<H4>B1FF</H4>
<p>
/bif/ , BIFF , n. The most famous pseudo , and the prototypical newbie. Articles from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, cute misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ KL 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 naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. B1FF'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 B1FF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: B1FF@BIT.NET. [1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was originally created by Joe Talmadge jat@cup.hp.com , also the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized Flamer's Bible. The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K.
/bif/ , BIFF , n. The most famous pseudo, and the prototypical newbie. Articles from B1FF feature all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, cute misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ KL 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 naivete. B1FF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. B1FF'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 B1FF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by B1FF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: B1FF@BIT.NET. [1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that B1FF was originally created by Joe Talmadge jat@cup.hp.com, also the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized Flamer's Bible. The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the amusement of the net at large. See also Jeff K.
</p>
<H4>B5</H4>
<p>
// [common] Abbreviation for Babylon 5 , a science-fiction TV series as revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.
// [common] Abbreviation for Babylon 5, a science-fiction TV series as revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.
</p>
<H4>BAD</H4>
<p>
@@ -217,15 +217,15 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>BCPL</H4>
<p>
// , n. [abbreviation, Basic Combined Programming Language ) A programming language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It is remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be run in 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at a very early stage, and was the language in which the original hello world program was written. It has been ported to so many different systems that its creator confesses to having lost count. It has only one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an integer, a character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost anything else, depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C, which inherited some of its features.
// , n. [abbreviation, Basic Combined Programming Language) A programming language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It is remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be run in 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at a very early stage, and was the language in which the original hello world program was written. It has been ported to so many different systems that its creator confesses to having lost count. It has only one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an integer, a character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost anything else, depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C, which inherited some of its features.
</p>
<H4>BDFL</H4>
<p>
Benevolent Dictator For Life. Guido , considered in his role as the project leader of Python. People who are feeling temporarily cheesed off by one of his decisions sometimes leave off the B. The mental image that goes with this, of a cigar-chomping caudillo in gold braid and sunglasses, is extremely funny to anyone who has ever met Guido in person.
Benevolent Dictator For Life. Guido, considered in his role as the project leader of Python. People who are feeling temporarily cheesed off by one of his decisions sometimes leave off the B. The mental image that goes with this, of a cigar-chomping caudillo in gold braid and sunglasses, is extremely funny to anyone who has ever met Guido in person.
</p>
<H4>BFI</H4>
<p>
/BFI/ , n. See brute force and ignorance. Also encountered in the variants BFMI , brute force and massive ignorance and BFBI brute force and bloody ignorance. In some parts of the U.S. this abbreviation was probably reinforced by a company called Browning-Ferris Industries in the waste-management business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue could be seen on the sides of garbage trucks.
/BFI/ , n. See brute force and ignorance. Also encountered in the variants BFMI, brute force and massive ignorance and BFBI brute force and bloody ignorance. In some parts of the U.S. this abbreviation was probably reinforced by a company called Browning-Ferris Industries in the waste-management business; a large BFI logo in white-on-blue could be seen on the sides of garbage trucks.
</p>
<H4>BI</H4>
<p>
@@ -240,9 +240,9 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
/BLT/ , /bl@t/ , /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.
</p>
<H4>BNF</H4>
<p>1. [techspeak] Acronym for Backus Normal Form (later retronymed to Backus-Naur Form because BNF was not in fact a normal 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. </p>
<p>1. [techspeak] Acronym for Backus Normal Form (later retronymed to Backus-Naur Form because BNF was not in fact a normal 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. </p>
<p>2. Any of a number of variants and extensions of BNF proper, 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. </p>
<p>2. Any of a number of variants and extensions of BNF proper, 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. </p>
<p>3. In science-fiction fandom , a 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.</p>
<H4>BOF</H4>
@@ -259,7 +259,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>BSD</H4>
<p>
/BSD/ , n. [abbreviation for Berkeley Software Distribution ] a family of Unix versions for the DEC VAX and PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at Berzerkeley starting around 1977, 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; descendants including Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and MacOS X are still widely popular. Note that BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often referred to by their version numbers alone, without the BSD prefix. See also Unix.
/BSD/ , n. [abbreviation for Berkeley Software Distribution] a family of Unix versions for the DEC VAX and PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at Berzerkeley starting around 1977, 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; descendants including Free/Open/NetBSD, BSD/OS and MacOS X are still widely popular. Note that BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often referred to by their version numbers alone, without the BSD prefix. See also Unix.
</p>
<H4>BSOD</H4>
<p>
@@ -267,11 +267,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>BUAF</H4>
<p>
// , n. [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord ] 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.
// , n. [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] 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.
</p>
<H4>BUAG</H4>
<p>
// , n. [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord ] 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.
// , n. [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big Ugly ASCII Graphic. Pejorative term for ugly ASCII art, especially as found in sig blocks. For some reason, mutations of the head of Bart Simpson are particularly common in the least imaginative sig blocks. See warlording.
</p>
<H4>BWQ</H4>
<p>
@@ -279,11 +279,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Bad Thing</H4>
<p>
n. [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930 Sellar Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That , but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in Replacing all of the DSL links 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. It is very common among American hackers, but not in mainstream usage in the U.S. Compare Bad and Wrong.
n. [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930 Sellar Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That, but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in Replacing all of the DSL links 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. It is very common among American hackers, but not in mainstream usage in the U.S. Compare Bad and Wrong.
</p>
<H4>Bad and Wrong</H4>
<p>
adj. [Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used by contrast with, three less common terms Bad and Right (a kludge, something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown GUI or other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right. These terms entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been imported from elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the emphatic form Evil and Bad and Wrong (abbreviated EBW) is reported from there. There are standard abbreviations: they start with B R, a typo for Bad and Wrong. Consequently, B W is actually Bad and Right , G R = Good and Wrong , and G W = Good and Right. Compare evil and rude , Good Thing , Bad Thing.
adj. [Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used by contrast with, three less common terms Bad and Right (a kludge, something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown GUI or other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right. These terms entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been imported from elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the emphatic form Evil and Bad and Wrong (abbreviated EBW) is reported from there. There are standard abbreviations: they start with B R, a typo for Bad and Wrong. Consequently, B W is actually Bad and Right, G R = Good and Wrong , and G W = Good and Right. Compare evil and rude, Good Thing, Bad Thing.
</p>
<H4>Batman factor</H4>
<p>1. An integer number representing the number of items hanging from a batbelt. In most settings, a Batman factor of more than 3 is not acceptable without odd stares and whispering. This encourages the hacker in question to choose items for the batbelt carefully to avoid awkward social situations, usually amongst non-hackers. </p>
@@ -295,19 +295,19 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Berkeley Quality Software</H4>
<p>
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. Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berklee/ , not /barklee/ as in British Received Pronunciation.
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. Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berklee/, not /barklee/ as in British Received Pronunciation.
</p>
<H4>Berzerkeley</H4>
<p>
/b@rzerklee/ , n. [from berserk , via the name of a now-deceased record label; poss. originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous distortion of Berkeley used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the BSD Unix hackers. See software bloat , 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.
/b@rzerklee/ , n. [from berserk , via the name of a now-deceased record label; poss. originated by famed columnist Herb Caen] Humorous distortion of Berkeley used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the BSD Unix hackers. See software bloat, 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.
</p>
<H4>BiCapitalization</H4>
<p>
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 , InterCaps.
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, InterCaps.
</p>
<H4>Big Red Switch</H4>
<p>
n. [IBM] 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 !@%$% bitty box is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch. Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's passion for TLA s, this is often abbreviated as BRS (this has also become established on FidoNet and in the PC clone world). It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also molly-guard ). Compare power cycle , three-finger salute ; see also scram switch.
n. [IBM] The power switch on a computer, esp. the Emergency Pull switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. This !@%$% 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 mainframes 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; see also scram switch.
</p>
<H4>Big Room</H4>
<p>
@@ -315,7 +315,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Black Screen of Death</H4>
<p>
[prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous Far Side cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold boot to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also Blue Screen of Death , which has become rather more common.
[prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous Far Side cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold boot to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also Blue Screen of Death, which has become rather more common.
</p>
<H4>Bloggs Family</H4>
<p>
@@ -327,7 +327,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Blue Screen of Death</H4>
<p>
n. [common] This term is closely related to the older Black Screen of Death but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows, misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death, sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD. ) The following entry from the Salon Haiku Contest , seems to have predated popular use of the term: WindowsNTcrashed. IamtheBlueScreenofDeath Noonehearsyourscreams.
n. [common] This term is closely related to the older Black Screen of Death but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows, misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death, sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD. ) The following entry from the Salon Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the term: WindowsNTcrashed. IamtheBlueScreenofDeath Noonehearsyourscreams.
</p>
<H4>BogoMIPS</H4>
<p>
@@ -335,11 +335,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Bohr bug</H4>
<p>
/bohr buhg/ , n. [from quantum physics] A repeatable bug ; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of heisenbug ; see also mandelbug , schroedinbug.
/bohr buhg/ , n. [from quantum physics] A repeatable bug; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of heisenbug; see also mandelbug, schroedinbug.
</p>
<H4>Borg</H4>
<p>
n. In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Borg is a species of cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life into itself; their slogan is You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. In hacker parlance, the Borg is usually Microsoft , which is thought to be trying just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the entire Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of Bill Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often referred to as being Borged. Interestingly, the Halloween Documents reveal that this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. See also Evil Empire , Internet Exploiter. Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been equated to the Borg. In IETF circles, where direct pressure from Microsoft is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This usage commemorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent away from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a large number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of Routing Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with Recovering Borg.
n. In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Borg is a species of cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life into itself; their slogan is You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. In hacker parlance, the Borg is usually Microsoft, which is thought to be trying just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the entire Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of Bill Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often referred to as being Borged. Interestingly, the Halloween Documents reveal that this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. See also Evil Empire, Internet Exploiter. Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been equated to the Borg. In IETF circles, where direct pressure from Microsoft is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This usage commemorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent away from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a large number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of Routing Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with Recovering Borg.
</p>
<H4>Breidbart Index</H4>
<p>
@@ -351,11 +351,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Brooks's Law</H4>
<p>
prov. Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting development 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 (though it's not the whole story; see bazaar ); too often, management still does. See also creationism , second-system effect , optimism.
prov. Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting development 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 (though it's not the whole story; see bazaar ); too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
</p>
<H4>Bzzzt! Wrong.</H4>
<p>
/bzt rong/ , excl. [common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] 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.
/bzt rong/ , excl. [common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] 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.
</p>
<H3>C</H3>
<H4>C Programmer's Disease</H4>
@@ -364,11 +364,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>C++</H4>
<p>
/C'pluhspluhs/ , n. Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to C. Now one of the languages of choice , although many hackers still grumble that it is the successor to either Algol 68 or Ada (depending on generation), and a prime example of second-system effect. Almost anything that can be done in any language can be done in C++, but it requires a language lawyer to know what is and what is not legal the design is almost too large to hold in even hackers' heads. Much of the cruft results from C++'s attempt to be backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said in his retrospective book The Design and Evolution of C++ (p. 207), Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out. Nowadays we say this of C++.
/C'pluhspluhs/ , n. Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to C. Now one of the languages of choice, although many hackers still grumble that it is the successor to either Algol 68 or Ada (depending on generation), and a prime example of second-system effect. Almost anything that can be done in any language can be done in C++, but it requires a language lawyer to know what is and what is not legal the design is almost too large to hold in even hackers' heads. Much of the cruft results from C++'s attempt to be backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said in his retrospective book The Design and Evolution of C++ (p. 207), Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out. Nowadays we say this of C++.
</p>
<H4>CDA</H4>
<p>
/CDA/ The Communications Decency Act , passed as section 502 of a major telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 ( Black Thursday ). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person. It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who knowingly makes accessible to minors any message that describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs. While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw discussion of abortion on the Internet. To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 ( White Thursday ). See also Exon.
/CDA/ The Communications Decency Act, passed as section 502 of a major telecommunications reform bill on February 8th, 1996 ( Black Thursday ). The CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person. It also threatened with imprisonment anyone who knowingly makes accessible to minors any message that describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs. While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw discussion of abortion on the Internet. To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th 1996 mass demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their home pages black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed down in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 ( White Thursday ). See also Exon.
</p>
<H4>CHOP</H4>
<p>
@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>CI$</H4>
<p>
// , n. Hackerism for CIS , CompuServe Information Service. The dollar sign refers to CompuServe's rather steep line charges. Often used in sig block s just before a CompuServe address. Syn. Compu$erve.
// , 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.
</p>
<H4>CLM</H4>
<p>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. </p>
@@ -388,39 +388,39 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>COBOL</H4>
<p>
/kohbol/ , n. [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with evil. ) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by code grinders to do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers are suits 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. One popular one is Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous observation that The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. (from Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective ) See also fear and loathing , software rot.
/kohbol/ , n. [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with evil. ) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by code grinders to do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers are suits 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. One popular one is Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous observation that The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. (from Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective ) See also fear and loathing, software rot.
</p>
<H4>COBOL fingers</H4>
<p>
/kohbol finggrz/ , n. Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all reason (see candygrammar ); thus it is alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless typing.
/kohbol finggrz/ , n. Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all reason (see candygrammar); thus it is alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless typing.
</p>
<H4>COME FROM</H4>
<p>
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. Lawrence 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.
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. Lawrence 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.
</p>
<H4>CP/M</H4>
<p>
/CPM/ , n. [Control Program/Monitor; later retcon ned to 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 (another variant has it that Gary's wife was much more interested in packing her suitcases for an upcoming vacation than in clinching a deal with IBM). 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.
/CPM/ , n. [Control Program/Monitor; later retcon ned to 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 (another variant has it that Gary's wife was much more interested in packing her suitcases for an upcoming vacation than in clinching a deal with IBM). 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.
</p>
<H4>CPU Wars</H4>
<p>
/CPU 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). The whole shebang is now available on the Web. 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 (at that time 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.
/CPU 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). The whole shebang is now available on the Web. 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 (at that time 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.
</p>
<H4>CRC handbook</H4>
<p>
Any of the editions of the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics ; there are other CRC handbooks, such as the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae , but the is the chemistry and physics reference. It is massive tome full of mathematical tables, physical constants of thousands of alloys and chemical compounds, dielectric strengths, vapor pressure, resistivity, and the like. Hackers have remarkably little actual use for these sorts of arcana, but are such information junkies that a large percentage of them acquire copies anyway and would feel vaguely bereft if they couldn't look up the magnetic susceptibility of potassium permanganate at a moment's notice. On hackers' bookshelves, the is rather likely to keep company with an unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and a good atlas.
Any of the editions of the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics ; there are other CRC handbooks, such as the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, but the is the chemistry and physics reference. It is massive tome full of mathematical tables, physical constants of thousands of alloys and chemical compounds, dielectric strengths, vapor pressure, resistivity, and the like. Hackers have remarkably little actual use for these sorts of arcana, but are such information junkies that a large percentage of them acquire copies anyway and would feel vaguely bereft if they couldn't look up the magnetic susceptibility of potassium permanganate at a moment's notice. On hackers' bookshelves, the is rather likely to keep company with an unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and a good atlas.
</p>
<H4>CTSS</H4>
<p>
/CTSS/ , n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the design of interactive timesharing 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.
/CTSS/ , n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the design of interactive timesharing 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.
</p>
<H4>Camel Book</H4>
<p>
n. Universally recognized nickname for the book Programming Perl , by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and Associates 1991. The definitive reference on Perl.
n. Universally recognized nickname for the book Programming Perl, by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly and Associates 1991. The definitive reference on Perl.
</p>
<H4>Cancelmoose[tm]</H4>
<p>
/kanselmoos/ [Usenet] The archetype and model of all good spam -fighters. Once upon a time, the 'Moose would send out spam-cancels and then post notice anonymously to news.admin.policy , news.admin.misc , and alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose stepped to the fore on its own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when spam-cancels were irregular and disorganized, and behaved altogether admirably fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and criticism, all without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm] quickly gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all three above-mentioned groups. Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even any good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address ( moose@cm.org ) and a web site ( http://www.cm.org/. ) By early 1995, others had stepped into the spam-cancel business, and appeared to be comporting themselves well, after the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose has now gotten out of the business, and is more interested in ending spam (and cancels) entirely.
/kanselmoos/ [Usenet] The archetype and model of all good spam -fighters. Once upon a time, the 'Moose would send out spam-cancels and then post notice anonymously to news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose stepped to the fore on its own initiative, at a time (mid-1994) when spam-cancels were irregular and disorganized, and behaved altogether admirably fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and criticism, all without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm] quickly gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all three above-mentioned groups. Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even any good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address ( moose@cm.org ) and a web site ( http://www.cm.org/. ) By early 1995, others had stepped into the spam-cancel business, and appeared to be comporting themselves well, after the 'Moose's manner. The 'Moose has now gotten out of the business, and is more interested in ending spam (and cancels) entirely.
</p>
<H4>Ceremonial Chemicals</H4>
<p>
@@ -432,7 +432,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>Chernobyl packet</H4>
<p>
/chernohb@l pak'@t/ , n. A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown , 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.
/chernohb@l pak'@t/ , n. A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, 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.
</p>
<H4>Chinese Army technique</H4>
<p>
@@ -751,7 +751,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
</p>
<H4>FUBAR</H4>
<p>
n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the suit s; see foobar , and foo for a fuller etymology.
n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the suit s; see foobar, and foo for a fuller etymology.
</p>
<H4>FUD</H4>
<p>
@@ -2261,6 +2261,10 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
<p>
n. A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most, unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to spam. Address harvesters can be foiled by a teergrube.
</p>
<H4>address space randomization</H4>
<p>
The practice or randomly changing the layout of memory so as to avoid exploits which simply poke some value to a fixed memory offset. Used by the Linux kernel for hardening security against exploitation.
</p>
<H4>adger</H4>
<p>
/ajr/ , vt. [UCLA mutant of nadger , poss. also from the middle name of an infamous tenured graduate student ] To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with even slight mental effort. E.g., He started removing files and promptly adgered the whole project. Compare dumbass attack.
@@ -2738,6 +2742,10 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
<p>
n. [common] 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).
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<H4>blacklist</H4>
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aka blocklist or denylist. A list of users or domains to be blocked. This can be to avoid spam or harassment. Also see whitelist.
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<H4>blameware</H4>
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In corporate environments this is typically closed source software procured for the purpose of having some external entity to blame when things inevitably go wrong. Software as a strategy for deflecting blame within the organizational structure. The efficiency or usefulness of the software doesn't matter so long as it can be used to absorb blame. "Get the blame out of the building".
@@ -9923,11 +9931,11 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
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<H4>webify</H4>
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n. To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW. Frequently used for papers ( Why don't you webify all your publications? ) or for demos ( They webified their 6.866 final project ). This term seems to have been (rather logically) independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
n. To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW. Frequently used for papers (Why don't you webify all your publications?) or for demos (They webified their 6.866 final project). This term seems to have been (rather logically) independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
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<H4>webmaster</H4>
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n. [WWW: from postmaster ] The person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.
n. [WWW: from postmaster] The person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.
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<H4>wedged</H4>
<p>1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it deadlock s with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also gronk , locked up , hosed , hung (wedged is more severe than hung ). </p>
@@ -10001,7 +10009,7 @@ This file last generated Monday, 15 October 2018 06:35PM UTC
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<H4>whitelist</H4>
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n. The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an explicit list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam filters.
n. The opposite of a blacklist. aka "allow list" That is, instead of being an explicit list of people or domains who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam filters.
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<H4>whizzy</H4>
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