============ THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.6.3, 15 FEB 1991 ============ Introduction ************ This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and techical debate within their communities. The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than thirty-five years old. As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture together --- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect paralleled perhaps in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states of *consciousness*. There is a whole range of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's trick-the-eye paintings (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. Take the distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and the differing connotations attached to each, as a simple example. The distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature of the generative processes in program design and asserts something important about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche. Hackers, as a rule, love word-play and are very conscious in their use of language. Thus, a compilation of their slang is a particularly effective window into their culture --- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File' maintained by hackers themselves for over fifteen years. This one (like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes `topic entries' which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries. Though the format is that of a reference, it is also intended that the material be enjoyable to browse or read straight through. Even a complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous word-play to make strong, sometime combative statements about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes which have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that *everyone's* sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is. The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences (fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture) will benefit from them. A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor are included in appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to Appendix B, the Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Appendix C is a bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker culture. Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one which each individual must choose by their actions to join), one should not be surprised that the line between description and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier Jargon File versions have played a central role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one will do likewise. Revision History ================ The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker slang from technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975, though some terms in it date back considerably earlier ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT and are are believed to date at least back to the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered `Version 1'. In 1976, Mark Crispin brought the File to MIT; he and Guy Steele then added a first wave of new entries. Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter, and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic re-synchronizations). The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related coinages. A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass market, was edited by Guy L. Steele into a book published in 1983 as `The Hacker's Dictionary' (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to the revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book is hereafter referred to as `Steele-1983'. It is now out of print. Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983 the File effectively stopped growing and changing. The PDP-10-centered cultures that had originally nourished it were dealt a serious blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at DEC. The AI-Lab culture died and its best and brightest dispersed; the File's compilers moved on to other things. By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT's; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hackish slang and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related materials like the AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously, but the Jargon File passed from living document to icon and remained essentially untouched for seven years. This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries have been dropped following careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 which are now also obsolete. This new version casts a wider net than the old jargon file; its aim is to cover not just AI but all the technical computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the entries now derive from USENET and represent slang now current in the C and UNIX communities, but special efforts have been made to collect slang from other cultures including IBM-PC programmers, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe world. Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies: Berkeley University of California at Berkeley. Cambridge The university in England (*not* the town in Massachusetts!). CMU Carnegie-Mellon University Commodore Commodore Business Machines. Fidonet See the {Fidonet} entry. IBM International Business Machines MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab culture of roughly 1971 to 1983. Some MITisms go as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT c.1960. NYU New York University. Purdue Purdue University. SAIL Stanford Artificial Intelliegence Laboratory. Stanford Stanford University. Sun Sun Microsystems. UCLA University of California at Los Angeles. USENET See the {USENET} entry. WPI Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of PDP-10 hackers during the Seventies. Xerox PARC Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research in user interface design and networking. Yale Yale University. Some other etymology abbreviations such as {UNIX}, {PDP-10}, etc. refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or other environments. Eric S. Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com) maintains the new File with assistance from Guy L. Steele (gls@think.com); these are the persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections and correspondence relating to the jargon file to jargon@thyrsus.com (UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can use ...!uunet!snark!jargon). (Warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not guaranteed to be correct* later than the revision date on the first line. *Don't* email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces --- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people) Some snapshot of this on-line version will become the main text of a `New Hacker's Dictionary' by MIT Press possibly as early as Summer 1991. The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the jargon file through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the hacker community. Here is a chronology of the recent on-line revisions: Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the jargon file comes alive again after a seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and microcomputer-based slang were added at that time (as well as The Untimely Demise of Mabel The Monkey). Some obsolete usages (mostly PDP-10 derived) were moved to Appendix B. Version 2.1.5, Nov 28 1990: changes and additions by ESR in response to numerous USENET submissions and comment from the First Edition co-authors. The bibliography (Appendix C) was also appended. Version 2.2.1, Dec 15 1990: most of the contents of the 1983 paper edition edited by Guy Steele was merged in. Many more USENET submissions added, including the International Style and the material on Commonwealth Hackish. This version had 9394 lines, 75954 words, 490501 characters, and 1046 entries. Version 2.3.1, Jan 03 1991: the great format change --- case is no longer smashed in lexicon keys and cross-references. A very few entries from jargon-1 which were basically straight tech-speak were deleted; this enabled the rest of Appendix B to be merged back into main text and the appendix replaced with the Portrait of J. Random Hacker. More USENET submissions were added. This version had 10728 lines, 85070 words, 558261 characters, and 1138 entries. Version 2.4.1, Jan 14 1991: the Story of Mel and many more USENET submissions merged in. More material on hackish writing habits added. Numerous typo fixes. This version had 12362 lines, 97819 words, 642899 characters, and 1239 entries. Version 2.5.1, Jan 29 1991: many new entries merged in. Discussion of inclusion styles added. This version had 14145 lines, 111904 words, 734285 characters, and 1425 entries. Version 2.6.1, Feb 13 1991: second great format change; no more <> around headwords or references. Merged in results of serious copy-editing passes by Guy Steele, Mark Brader. Still more entries added. This version had 15011 lines, 118277 words, 774942 characters, and 1485 entries. Version numbering: Read versions as major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy Steele). Someday, the next maintainer will take over and spawn `version 3'. In general, later versions will either completely supersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old versions around. Our thanks to the other co-authors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance; also to all the USENETters who contributed entries and encouragement. Special thanks go to our Scandinavian correspondent Per Lindberg (per@front.se), author of the remarkable Swedish language 'zine `Hackerbladet', for bringing FOO! comics to our attention and smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Also, much gratitude to ace hacker/linguist Joe Keane (jkg@osc.osc.com) for helping us improve the pronunciation guides; and to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. Finally, Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) submitted many thoughtful comments and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles, and Eric Tiedemann (est@thyrsus.com) contributed sage advice on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism. Format For New Entries ====================== Try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words and cross-references in angle brackets, pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets, single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set (no high-half characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a character tty. We are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many other related fields. Send us your slang! We are *not* interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories. We are also not interested in `joke' entries --- there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they think. It is OK to submit items of slang you have originated if they have spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two different sites. A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These are usually generalizations suggested by editors or USENET respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These are *not* represented as established jargon. The jargon file will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute --- this is *your* monument! Jargon Construction =================== There are some standard methods of jargonification which became established quite early (i.e. before 1970), spreading from such sources as the MIT Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include: Verb doubling: A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!". Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involve {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {chomp}: "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." "Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame." "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!" Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon. Soundalike slang: Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. It is considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to include some other slang word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine `Dr. Dobb's Journal' is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have been in fairly wide use include names for newspapers: Boston Herald American => Horrid (or Harried) American Boston Globe => Boston Glob Houston Chronicle => the Crocknicle New York Times => New York Slime However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples include: Prime Time => Slime Time Data General => Dirty Genitals IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly Government Property - Do Not Duplicate (seen on keys) => Government Duplicity - Do Not Propagate for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas hacker rhyming slang is intentionally transparent. The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate (a Boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: Q: "Foodp?" A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!" Q: "State-of-the-world-P?" A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home." A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state." On the phone to Florida: Q: "State-p Florida?" A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?" [One of the best of these is a {Gosperism} (i.e., due to Bill Gosper). When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" ---GLS] Overgeneralization: A very conspicuous feature of hackerspeak is the frequency with which names of program tools, command language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus, (to cite one of the best-known examples) UNIX hackers often {grep} for things rather than *searching* for them. Many of the lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind. Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or vice versa). For example, because porous => porosity generous => generosity hackers happily generalize: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferrosity obvious => obviosity dubious => dubiosity Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. e.g.: "All nouns can be verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve. Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. Thus: win => winnitude, winnage disgust => disgustitude hack => hackification Finally, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms. Anything ending in x may form plurals in -xen (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g. `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of {frobboz} (see main text) and `Unices' and `Tenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Tenexes'; see {UNIX}, {TENEX} in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Tenexen' are *never* used; it has been suggested that this is because -ix and -ex are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of an inflectional rule which (in English) is either an import or a fossil (such as Hebrew plural in `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon plural in `en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply. This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. Spoken inarticulations: Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in email. Another expression sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!" Of the five listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun formations, and (especially!) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but rhyming slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large universities, and the P convention is found only where LISPers flourish. Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum: MONSTROSITY BRAIN-DAMAGE SCREW BUG LOSE MISFEATURE CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE ELEGANCE PERFECTION The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never actually attained. Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that "{Computer geeks} have more words for equipment failures than Inuit have for snow", or than Yiddish has for obnoxious people. Hacker Speech Style =================== This features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or `street slang'. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued --- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence is essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as `in the culture'; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude are considered tacky and the mark of a loser. This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. Unlike the jargon construction methods, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom. It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions --- or, at least, the people they're talking to are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they've done so much coding that distinguishes between if (going) { and if (!going) { that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it seems to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there (in some other languages, including Chinese and Japanese, the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise). Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French `si' or German `doch' with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question. For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use a double negative even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows it. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be mis-parsed as a negative tends to disturb them. Hacker Writing Style ==================== Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parens, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase, and so is "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes) but it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussing programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck. For example: First do "foo -acrZ tempo | bar -," then ... is different from First do "foo -acrZ tempo | bar -", then ... from a computer's point of view. While the first is correct according to the stylebooks and would probably be parsed correctly by the a human recipient, the second is unambiguous. The Jargon File follows hackish usage consistently throughout. Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great Britain, though the older style (which became established for typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. Hart's Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' style quoting. Another hacker quirk about quoting style is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports of speech or text included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this as correct general usage, but mainstream American English has gone to using double-quotes thoroughly enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked with USENET --- ESR]. One further permutation that is definitely *not* standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on string and character literal syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-only terminals display a vertical single quote). There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the effect that precision of expression is more important than conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information they can be discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in hacker slang is a substantial part of its humor! There is another respect in which hackish usage often parallels British usage; it tends to choose British spellings whenever these seem more phonetically consistent than the American ones. For example, a hacker is likely to insist on (British-style) `signalling' rather than American-standard `signaling' on the grounds that the latter ought to be pronounced /sig'nay'ling/ rather than /sig'n@-ling/. Similarly, `travelling' is preferred to `traveling'. Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available. One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting, please, you're hurting my ears!". Also, it is common to use bracketing with asterisks to signify emphasis, as in "What the *hell*?" (note that this interferes with the common use of asterisk suffix as a footnote mark). An alternative form uses paired slash and backslash: "What the \hell/?". The latter is never used in text documents, as many formatters treat backslash as an {escape} and may do inappropriate things with the following text. Also note that there is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this*, (which emphasizes the phrase as a whole) and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young child or mentally impaired person). In a formula, `*' signifies multiplication, and two asterisks in a row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN). Thus, one might write `2 ** 8 = 256'. Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2 ^ 8 = 256'. This goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow' that later became caret; this was picked up by Kemeny & Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the bc(1) and dc(1) UNIX tools that have probably done most to reinforce the convention on USENET. The notation is mildly confusing to C programmers, because `^' means logical {XOR} in C. Despite this, it was favored 3/1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of USENET. It is used consistently in this text. Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example, one year is about 3e7 seconds long. The tilde (`~') is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately'; that is, `~50' means `about fifty'. Underlining is often suggested by substituting underscores for spaces and prepending and appending one underscore to the underlined phrase. Example: "It is often alleged that Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ in response to Robert Heinlein's earlier _Starship_Troopers_". Occasionally this underline indication is used for emphasis, like the paired asterisks. On USENET and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical and relational operators (`|', `!', `==', `!=', `>', `<') are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, `<>', is also recognized. The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'. Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a term; this derives from conventions used in {BNF}. Uses like the following are common: So this walks into a bar one day, and... One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of UNIX hackers in particular is a tendency for some things which are normally all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an appropriate reflex because UNIX and C both distinguish cases and confusing them can lead to lossage). A way of escaping this dilemma is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences. Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string that names that number in English. So, hackers write "1970s" rather than "nineteen-seventies" or "1970's". Finally, it should be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English. Partly this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP ((which uses deeply nested parentheses (like this) in its syntax) (a lot (see?))), but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation. One area where hackish conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux is the marking of included material from earlier messages --- what would be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), there derived the notation of included text being indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under UNIX and many other environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent. Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD `Mail(1)' was the first message agent to support inclusion, and early USENETters emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push included text too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading ">" or "> " became standard, perhaps because the character suggests movement to the right (alternatively, it may derive from the ">" that some V7 UNIX mailers use to quote leading instances of "From" in text). Inclusions within inclusions keep their ">" leaders, so the `nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent. A few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they're automatically generated. One particularly ugly one looks like this: /* Written hh:mm pm Mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in local:group */ /* ---------- "Subject of article chopped to 35 ch" ---------- */ <> /* End of text from local:group */ It's generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called `notesfiles'. The overall trend, however, is definitely away from such verbosity. Now, it was rapidly observed that the practice of including text helped solve what had been a major nuisance on USENET: the fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong", or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, in about 1984, new news-posting software was created with a facility to automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the *entire* text of a preceding article, *followed* only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree". Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with ">", but this too has led to undesirable workarounds such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold. Because the default mailers supplied with UNIX and other operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the preferred form in both netnews and mail. Practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion style occasionally leads to {holy wars}. One variant style reported uses the citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained. One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of "> " for everyone, another (the most common) is "> > > > ", "> > > ", etc. (or ">>>> ", ">>> ", etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say "> ", ": ", "| ", "} " (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet *another* style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster. Occasionally one sees a "# " leader used for quotations from *authoritative* sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special UNIX command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged super-user). International Style =================== Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of English slang (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!) the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers. There are some references to `Commonwealth English'. These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc., though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on {Commonwealth Hackish} reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish. Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage which are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here. A note or two on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers. UNIX Manual Conventions ======================= References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX facilities (some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed over USENET). The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to from any of the entries. Pronunciation Guide =================== Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listing for all entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious compounds of same. Slashes bracket a phonetic pronunciation to be interpreted using the following conventions: 1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an apostrophe or back-apostrophe follows each accented syllable (the back apostrophe marks a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). 2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound (but it is sometimes doubled at the end of syllables to emphasize this). The digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". 3. Vowels are represented as follows: a back, that ah father, palm ar far, mark aw flaw, caught ay bake, rain e less, men ee easy, ski eir their, software i trip, hit ie life, sky o cot, top oh flow, sew oo loot, through or more, door ow out, how oy boy, coin uh but, some u put, foot y yet yoo few [y]oo /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) An at-sign is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'@n/ and /kuhl'@r/. Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters are sorted to the beginning. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug. The `OED' referred to in several entries is, of course, the Oxford English Dictionary. In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used in to bracket words which themselves have entries in the File. This isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and might wish to refer to its entry. In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}". The Jargon Lexicon ****************** = [^A-Za-z] (see {regexp}) = ============================ 'Snooze: /snooz/ [FidoNet] n. Fidonews, the weekly official on-line newsletter of FidoNet. As the editorial policy of Fidonews is "anything that arrives, we print", there are often large articles completely unrelated to FidoNet, which in turn tend to elicit {flamage} in subsequent issues. (tm): [USENET] ASCII rendition of the trademark symbol, appended to phrases that the author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents, and `look and feel' lawsuits. /dev/null: /dev-nuhl/ [from the UNIX null device, used as a data sink] n. 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}, {null device}. 120 reset: [from 120 volts, wall current] n. To cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare {Big Red Switch}, {power cycle}. 2: infix. In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents the syllable *to* with the connotation `translate to'; as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string) and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). @-party: /at'par`tee/ [from the @-sign in an Internet address] n. (also `@-sign party' /at'sien par`tee/) Semi-closed parties thrown at science-fiction conventions (esp. the annual Worldcon) for hackers; one must have a {network address} to get in, or at least be in company with someone who does. One of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare {boink}. @Begin: [written only; primarily CMU] n. Equivalent of {\begin} in the Scribe text formatting language; used as an idiomy by Scribe users. \begin: [written only, from the LaTeX command] With \end, used humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. For example: \begin{Flame} Predicate logic is the only good programming language. Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also, computers should be tredecimal instead of binary. \end{Flame} The Scribe users at CMU and elsewhere used to use @Begin/@End in an identical way. On USENET, this construct would more frequently be rendered as "" and "". = A = ===== abbrev: /@'breev/ n. Common abbreviation for `abbreviation'. accumulator: n. Archaic term for a register. Cited here because on-line use of it is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in A derive from historical use of `accumulator' (and not, actually, from `arithmetic'!). Confusingly, though, an `a' register name prefix may also stand for `address', as for example on the Motorola 680x0 family. ACK: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream *Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}. 2. [prob. from the Bloom County comic strip] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in "Oop ack!". Semi-humorous. 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". See also {NAK}. There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense #1) meaning "Are you there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK} (sense #2), i.e., "I'm not here"). ad-hockery: /ad-hok'@r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior, but are in fact entirely arbitrary. 2. Special-case code to cope with some awkward input which would otherwise cause a program to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery'. Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/1 of the 1980s"; hackers find the exception handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious). Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use her name has been latterly put to; the kindest thing that has been said about it it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk. adger: /adj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the whole project." Compare {dumbass attack}. admin: /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing on the latter). Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system mangler}. ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure, but the {TOPS-10} operating system only permitted 6-letter filenames. See also {vadding}. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak. "A huge green fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here." (for some noun X). "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The "magic words" {xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game. Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth/Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a `Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance. AI koans: pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around various major figures of the Lab's culture. A selection are included in Appendix A. See also {ha ha only serious} and {{Humor, Hacker}}. AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome ("A*" matches, but not limited to, Apple), this condition is the quite often the result of practicing unsafe {SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse}, {virgin}. airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (see also {KISS Principle}. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to design to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a *really good* basket. aliasing bug: [C programmers] n. A class of subtle programming errors which can arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc(3)'. If more than one pointer addresses (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the storage is freed through one alias and then referenced through another, leading to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also avoidable by use of higher-level languages such as {LISP} which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {overrun screw}, {spam}. all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See also {mess-doss}. ALT: /awlt/ [PDP-10] n.obs. Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character, after the keycap labeling on some older terminals. Also `ALTMODE'. This character was almost never pronounced "escape" on an ITS system, in TECO, or under TOPS-10 --- always ALT, as in "Type ALT ALT to end a TECO command" or "ALT U onto the system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This was probably because ALT is more convenient to say than "escape", especially when followed by another ALT or a character (or another ALT *and* a character, for that matter!). alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}. Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common Lisp: The Language', by Guy L. Steele Jr., Digital Press, first edition, 1984, second edition 1990. Strictly speaking, only the first edition is the aluminum book, since the second edition has a yucky pale green cover. See also {Blue Book}, {Red Book}, {Green Book}, {Silver Book}, {Purple Book}, {Orange Book}, {White Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Wizard Book}. amoeba: /@-mee'b@/ n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer. amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&' operator. angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' and `>' (ASCIIless-than or greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than sign. See {broket}, {{ASCII}}. AOS: 1. /aws/ (East coast), /ay-os/ (West coast) [based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of something. "Aos the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now obsolete. See {SOS}. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. 2. A crufty {Multics}-derived OS supported at one time by Data General. This was pronounced /ay-oh-ess/ or /ay-os/, the latter being prevalent internally at DG. A spoof of the standard AOS system administrator's manual (`How to load and generate your AOS system') was created, issued a part number, and allegedly released. It was called `How to goad and levitate your chaos system'. Historical note: AOS in sense #1 was the name of a {PDP-10} instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added one to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask, does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions: AOSE added one and then skipped the next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added one and then skipped if the result was Greater than zero; AOSN added one and then skipped if the result was Not zero; AOSA added one and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never skipped. For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even more bizarre, SKIP meant `Do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP means `Do not JUMP'. Such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming. app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing developers to do for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those apps. Oppose {tool}, {operating system}. arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a group of files using the SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or compatible program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression techniques. See {tar and feather}, {zip}. arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC outperformed ARC on both compression and speed while largely retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type which could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of PKARC was changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better compression algorithms. arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic storage. So named from a semi-mythical `malloc: corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions became terminally confused. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {smash the stack}. arg: /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine function takes one arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either one or two args". Compare {param}, {var}. armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}. asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer} so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as to the intended application of the cork should consult the etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity --- but there's no agreement on *which* few. asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET} posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit {flamage}. Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc. ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange] /as'kee/ n. Common slang names for ASCII characters are collected here. See individual entries for {bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat}, {twiddle}, {what}, {wow}, and {Yu-Shiang whole fish}. This list derives from revision 2.2 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 which are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are parenthesized. `!' Common: {bang}, pling, excl, shriek, (exclamation mark). Rare: factorial, exclam, smash, cuss, boing, yell, wow, hey, wham, spot-spark, soldier. `"' Common: double quote, quote. Rare: literal mark, double-glitch, (quotation marks), (dieresis), dirk. `#' Common: (number sign), pound, hash, sharp, {crunch}, mesh, hex, octothorpe. Rare: flash, crosshatch, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, thud, {splat}. `$' Common: dollar, (dollar sign). Rare: currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC), escape (from {TOPS-10}), ding, cache. `%' Common: percent, (percent sign), mod, grapes. `&' Common: (ampersand), amper, and. Rare: address (from C), reference (from C++), andpersand, bitand, background (from `sh(1)'), pretzel, amp. `'' Common: single quote, quote, (apostrophe). Rare: prime, glitch, tick, irk, pop, spark, (closing single quotation mark), (acute accent). `()' Common: left/right paren, left/right parenthesis, left/right, paren/thesis, open/close paren, open/close, open/close parenthesis, left/right banana. Rare: lparen/rparen, so/already, wax/wane, (opening/closing parenthesis), left/right ear, parenthisey/unparenthisey, open/close round bracket. `*' Common: star, {splat}, (asterisk). Rare: wildcard, gear, dingle, mult, spider, aster, times, twinkle, glob (see {glob}), {Nathan Hale}. `+' Common: (plus), add. Rare: cross. `,' Common: (comma). Rare: (cedilla). `-' Common: dash, (hyphen), (minus). Rare: worm, option, dak, bithorpe. `.' Common: dot, point, (period), (decimal point). Rare: radix point, full stop. `/' Common: slash, stroke, (slant), forward slash. Rare: diagonal, solidus, over, slak, virgule. `:' Common: (colon). Rare: two-spot. `;' Common: (semicolon), semi. Rare: weenie. `<>' Common: (less/greater than), left/right angle bracket, bra/ket, left/right broket. Rare: from/{into,towards}, read from/write to, suck/blow, comes-from/gozinta, in/out, crunch/zap (all from UNIX). `=' Common: (equals), gets. Rare: quadrathorpe. `?' Common: query, (question mark), {ques}. Rare: whatmark, what, wildchar, huh, hook, buttonhook, hunchback. `@' Common: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, (commercial at). `V' Rare: vee, book. `[]' Common: left/right square bracket, (opening/closing bracket), bracket/unbracket left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare. `\' Common: backslash, escape (from C/UNIX), reverse slash, slosh, backslant. Rare: bash, backwhack, (reverse slant), reversed virgule. `^' Common: hat, control, uparrow, caret, (circumflex). Rare: chevron, shark (or shark fin), to the (`to the power of'), fang. `_' Common: (underline), underscore, underbar, under. Rare: score, backarrow. ``' Common: backquote, left quote, open quote, (grave accent), grave. Rare: backprime, backspark, unapostrophe, birk, blugle, back tick, back glitch, push, (opening single quotation mark), quasiquote. `{}' Common: open/close brace, left/right brace, left/right squiggly bracket/brace, left/right curly bracket/brace, (opening/closing brace). Rare: brace/unbrace, curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit. `|' Common: bar, or, or-bar, v-bar, pipe. Rare: vertical bar, (vertical line), gozinta, thru, pipesinta (last three ones from UNIX). `~' Common: (tilde), squiggle, {twiddle}, not. Rare: approx, wiggle, swung dash, enyay, sqiggle. The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad idea; Commonwealth hackish has its own rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes call `#' on a US-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. Also note that the `swung dash' or `approx' sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material, but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle brackets}). Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#', `$', `>', and `&' chars, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas Instruments, and & on the Sinclair and some other Z80 machines). asymptotic: adj. Infinitely close to. This is used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to allege that something is {within epsilon of} some standard, reference, or goal (see {epsilon}). attoparsec: n. `atto-' is the official SI prefix for multiplication by 10 ^ -18; an attoparsec is thus 1 parsec (parallax-second, 3.26 light years) times 10 ^ -18, or about 1.3 cm. This unit is reported to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in Great Britain. See {micro-} autobogotiphobia: /aw'to-boh-got'@-foh`bee-uh/ n. See {bogotify}. automagically: /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ or /aw-toh-maj'i-k@l-ee/ adv. Automatically, but in a way which, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See {magic}. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes `cc(1)' to produce an executable." awk: 1. n. [UNIX] An interpreted language developed by Aho, Weinberg, and Kernighan (the name is from their initials). It is characterized by: C-like syntax, a BASIC-like approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also {Perl}. 2. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal regular expression facilities. 3. vt. To process data using `awk(1)'. = B = ===== back door: n. A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for this is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. The infamous RTM worm of late 1988, for example, used a back door in the {BSD} UNIX `sendmail(1)' utility. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. The binaries of the C compiler had code in them which would automatically patch itself into the output executable whenever the compiler itself was being recompiled, and also patch the `login' command, when *it* was being recompiled, to accept a password that gave Thompson entry to the computer whether or not an account had been created for him! Thompson describes this hack as a {Trojan Horse}. This talk was published as `Reflections on Trusting Trust', Communications of the ACM 27,8 (August 1984) pp761-763. Although Thompson didn't say whether the hacked version ever made it off site, it is commonly believed that this back door was in fact propagated through hundreds of machines without any clue to it ever showing up in source. Syn. {trap door}; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also {iron box}, {cracker}, {worm}, {logic bomb}. backbone cabal: n. A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the {Great Renaming} and reined in the chaos of {USENET} during most of the 1980s. The cabal {mailing list} disbanded in late 1988 after a bitter internal catfight, but the net hardly noticed. backbone site: n. A key USENET and email site; one which processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it's the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the USENET maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1991 include `uunet' and the mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare {rib site}, {leaf site}. background: n.,adj. A task running in background is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose {foreground}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {UNIX}, but it appears first to have been used in this sense on OS/360. By extension, to do a task `in background' is to do it whenever {foreground} matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity. Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they've queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take when encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare {amp off}, {slopsucker}. backspace and overstrike: interj. Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. Common among APL programmers. backward combatability: /bak'w@rd kom-bat'@-bil'@-tee/ [corruption of "backward compatibility"] adj. A property pertaining to hardware or software in which all previous protocols, formats and layouts are discarded in favour of the `new and improved' protocols, formats and layouts. Occurs usually when making the transition between major releases. When the change is so drastic that the old formats are not retained in the new version, it is said to be `backward combatable'. BAD: [IBM; acronym, Broken As Designed] adj. Said of a program which is {bogus} due to bad design and misfeatures rather than due to bugginess. See {working as designed}. Bad Thing: [from the 1962 Sellars & Yeatman parody `1066 and All That'] n. Something which can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the 9600 baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing." Oppose {Good Thing}. British correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings, but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond. bagbiter: /bag'biet-@r/ n. 1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. Example: "This text editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly. Synonyms: {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}. 3. adj. `bagbiting' Having the quality of a bagbiter. "This bagbiting system won't let me compute the factorial of a negative number." Compare {losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}). 4. `bite the bag' vi. To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting the bag." The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current usage they have become almost completely sanitized. bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from old X-men comics] interj. Notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in or out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality} (esp. {MUD}) electronic fora when a character wishes to make a dramatic entrance or exit. 2. The sound of magical transformation, used in vertual reality fora like sense #1. 3. [from `Don Washington's Survival Guide'] n. Acronym for `Bad-Ass Mother Fucker', used to refer to one of the handful of nastiest monsters on an LPMUD or similar MUD. banana label: n. The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape} reels, so called because they're shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence. banana problem: n. [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say there is a banana problem of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See also item 176 under {HAKMEM}. bandwidth: n. 1. Used by hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics but I missed some of the detail --- not enough bandwidth, I guess." 2. Attention span. 3. On {USENET}, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how network news items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth. bang: 1. n. Common spoken name for `!' (ASCII 0100001), especially when used in pronouncing a {bang path} in spoken hackish. In elder days this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring {excl} or {shriek}; but the spread of UNIX has carried {bang} with it (esp. via the term {bang path}) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for `!'. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written `!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the exact characters `FOO!', one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See {shriek}, {{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!". Often used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has been called on it. bang path: n. An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each {hop} is signified by a {bang} sign. Thus the path `...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me' directs correspondents to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine `foovax' to the account of user `me' on `barbox'. In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see {glob}) to give paths from *several* big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example: ...!{seismo, ut-sally, gatech}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths of 8 to ten hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late night dial-up uucp links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See {{Internet address}}, {network, the}, and {sitename}. banner: n. 1. The title page added to printouts by most print spoolers see {spool}. Typically includes user or account ID information in very large character-graphics capitals. 2. A similar printout generated (typically on multiple pages of fan-fold paper) from user-specified text, e.g. by a program such as UNIX's `banner([16])'. 3. On interactive software, a first screen containing a logo and/or author credits and/or copyright notice. bar: /bar/ n. 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after {foo} and before {baz}. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to {foo} to produce {foobar}. bare metal: n. 1. New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, {HLL}, or even assembler. Commonly in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment. 2. The same phrase is also used to describe a style of {hand-hacking} that relies on bit-level peculiarities of a particular hardware design, esp. tricks for speed and space optimization that rely on crocks such as overlapping opcodes (or, as in the famous case described in Appendix A, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimize fetch delays due to the device's rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs of programming time and machine resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments like industrial embedded systems. See {real programmer}. barf: /barf/ [from mainstream slang meaning `vomit'] 1. interj. Term of disgust. This is the closest hackish equivalent of the Valspeak `gag me with a spoon' (Like, euwww!). See {bletch}. 2. To say "Barf!" or emit some similar expression of disgust. "I showed him my latest hack and he barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he literally vomited. 3. vi. To fail to work because of unacceptable input. May mean to give an error message. Examples: "The division operation barfs if you try to divide by zero." (that is, division by zero fails in some unspecified spectacular way) "The text editor barfs if you try to read in a new file before writing out the old one." See {choke}, {gag}. Note that in Commonwealth hackish, `barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'. {barf} is sometimes also used as a metasyntactic variable like {foo} or {bar}. barfulation: interj. Variation of {barf} used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?" barfulous: adj. (also `barfucious') Said of something which would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons. baroque: adj. Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (esp.) software designs, this has many of the connotations of {elephantine} or {monstrosity} but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. See also {rococo}. BartleMUD: /bar'tl-muhd/ n. Any of the MUDs which are derived from the original MUD game (see {MUD}) or use the same software drivers. BartleMUDs are noted for their (usually slightly offbeat) humor, dry but friendly syntax, and lack of adjectives in object descriptions, so a player is likely to come across `brand172', for instance (see {brand brand brand}). Some mudders intensely dislike Bartle and this term, preferring to speak of `MUD-1'. bat file: [MS-DOS] n. Abbreviation for {batch file}, the MSDOS equivalent of the UNIX shell script, derived from the .BAT extension required for the command interpreter to find the batch file and execute it. batch: adj. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive conmmand input are often referred to as `batch mode' switches. A `batch file' is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running in batch mode. bathtub curve: n. Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time: initially high, dropping to near zero for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'. See also {burn-in period}, {infant mortality}. baud: /bawd/ [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second. Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousand bits per second. The technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing or stop bits. Hackers are generally aware of these nuances but blithely ignore them. baud barf: /bawd barf/ n. The garbage one gets on the monitor when using a modem connection with some protocol setting (esp. line speed) incorrect, or when someone picks up a voice extension on the same line, or when really bad line noise disrupts the connection. Baud barf is not completely {random}, by the way; hackers with a lot of serial-line experience can usually tell whether the device at the other end is expecting a higher or lower speed than the terminal is set to. *Really* experienced ones can identify particular speeds. baz: /baz/ n. [Stanford corruption of {bar}] 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after {foo} and {bar} and before {quux} (or, occasionally, `qux'). "Suppose we have three functions FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which calls BAZ...." 2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for two or three seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/. 3. Occasionally appended to {foo} to produce `foobaz'. bboard: /bee'bord/ [contraction of `bulletin board'] n. 1. Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a USENET {newsgroup} (in fact, use of the term for a newsgroup is generally marks one as a {newbie}). 2. At CMU and other colleges with similar facilities, refers to campuswide electronic bulletin boards. 3. The term `physical bboard' is sometimes used to refer to a non-electronic old-fashioned cork memo board. At CMU, it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge. In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the name of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or `market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in [at CMU] "Don't post for-sale ads on general". BBS: [acronym, Bulletin Board System] n. An electronic bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into topic areas. Thousands of local BBS systems are in operation throughout the U.S., typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Fans of USENET and Internet or the big commercial timesharing bboards like CompuServe or GEnie tend to consider local BBSes the `low-rent district' of the hacker culture, but they serve a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange code at all. beam: [from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"] vt. To transfer {softcopy} of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as `beam me a copy' or `beam that over to his site'. Compare {blast}, {snarf}, {BLT}. beep: n.,v. Syn. {feep}. This term seems to be preferred among micro hobbyists. bells and whistles: [by analogy with steam calliopes] n. Features added to a program or system to make it more {flavorful} from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from {chrome} which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." However, no one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. bells, whistles, and gongs: n. A standard elaborated form of {bells and whistles}; typically said with a pronounced and ironic accent on the `gongs'. If you need this explained, you will never understand it. benchmark: n. An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see {gabriel}), Rhealstone (see {h}) and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, {MIPS}. berklix: /ber'kliks/ n.,adj. [contraction of `Berkeley UNIX'] See {BSD}. Not used at Berkeley itself. May be more common among {suit}s attempting to sound like cognoscenti than among hackers, who usually just say `BSD'. berserking: vi. A {MUD} term meaning to gain points *only* by killing other players and mobiles (non-player characters). Hence a Berserker-Wizard is a player character that has achieved enough points to become a wizard, but only by killing other characters. Berserking is sometimes frowned upon because of its inherently antisocial nature, but some MUDs have a `berserker mode' in which a player becomes *permanently* berserk, can never flee out of a fight, cannot use magic, gets no score for treasure, but *does* get double kill points. "Berserker wizards can seriously damage your elf!" Berzerkeley: [from "berserk"] /b@r-zer'klee/ [from the name of a now-deceased record label] n. Humorous, distortion of `Berkeley' used esp. to refer to the practices or products of the {BSD} UNIX hackers. See {software bloat}, {Missed'em-five}. beta: /be't@/, /bay't@/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't@/ n. 1. In the {Real World}, software often goes through two stages of testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Software is said to be `in beta'. 2. Anything that is new and experimental is in beta. "His girlfriend is in beta." 3. Beta software is notoriously buggy, so `in beta' connotes flakiness. Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it available to selected customers and users. This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. `Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta Test' was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design. BFI: n. See {brute force and ignorance}. Also encountered in the variant `BFMI', `brute force and *massive* ignorance'. bible: n. 1. One of a small number of fundamental source books such as {Knuth} and {K&R}. 2. The most detailed and authoritative reference for a particular language, operating system, or other complex software system. BiCapitalization: adj. The act said to have been performed on trademarks such as NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TKsolver, EasyWriter and others which have been raised above the hoi polloi of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. {Marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare {studlycaps}. BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the prototypical {newbie}. Articles from BIFF are characterized by all upper case letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode} abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled sig}), and unbounded naivete. BIFF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. BIFF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However, BITNET seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: BIFF@BIT.NET. biff: /bif/ vt. To notify someone of incoming mail; from the BSD utility `biff(1)' which was in turn named after the implementor's dog; it barked whenever the mailman came. Big Grey Wall: n. What greets a {VMS} user searching for documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before adding layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor networking, programming tools etc. Recent (since VMS V5) DEC documentation comes with grey binders; under VMS V4 the binders were orange (`big orange wall'), and under V3 they were blue. See {VMS}. big iron: n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of {number crunching} supercomputers such as Crays, but can include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of approval; compare {heavy metal}, oppose {dinosaur}. Big Red Switch: [IBM] n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the `Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM {mainframe} or the power switch on an IBM-PC where it really is large and red. "This !@%$% {bitty box} is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." Sources at IBM report that, in tune with the company's passion for {TLA}s, this is often acronymized as `BRS' (this has also become established on FidoNet and in the PC {clone} world). It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on a 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; modern ones physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately.. Compare {power cycle}, {three-finger salute}. big-endian: [From Swift's `Gulliver's Travels' via a famous paper `On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace' by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137 dated 1 April 1980] 1. adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given multi-byte numeric representation, the most significant byte comes first (the word is stored `big-end-first'). Most processors including the IBM 370 family and the {PDP-10} and Motorola microprocessor families and most of the various RISC designs current in mid-1991 are big-endian. See {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. 2. adj. An {internet address} the wrong way round. Most of the world follows the Internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the UK the Joint Academic Networking Team (JANET) decided to do it the other way round. E.g. `random@uk.ac.redbrick.cs'. Most gateway sites have {ad-hockery} in their mailers to handle this, but can still be confused. In particular the address above could be in the UK (code `uk') or Czechoslovakia (code `cs'). bignum: /big'nuhm/ [orig. from MIT MACLISP] n. 1. A multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!" Most computer languages provide a kind of data called `integer', but such computer integers are usually very limited in size; usually they must be smaller than 2^31 (2147483648) or (on a losing {bitty box}) 2^15 (32768). If you want to work with numbers larger than that, you have to use floating-point numbers, which are usually accurate to only six or seven decimal places. Computer languages that provide bignums can perform exact calculations on very large numbers, such as 1000! (the factorial of 1000, which is 1000 times 999 times 998 times ... times 2 times 1). For example, this value for 1000! was computed by the MACLISP system using bignums: 40238726007709377354370243392300398571937486421071 46325437999104299385123986290205920442084869694048 00479988610197196058631666872994808558901323829669 94459099742450408707375991882362772718873251977950 59509952761208749754624970436014182780946464962910 56393887437886487337119181045825783647849977012476 63288983595573543251318532395846307555740911426241 74743493475534286465766116677973966688202912073791 43853719588249808126867838374559731746136085379534 52422158659320192809087829730843139284440328123155 86110369768013573042161687476096758713483120254785 89320767169132448426236131412508780208000261683151 02734182797770478463586817016436502415369139828126 48102130927612448963599287051149649754199093422215 66832572080821333186116811553615836546984046708975 60290095053761647584772842188967964624494516076535 34081989013854424879849599533191017233555566021394 50399736280750137837615307127761926849034352625200 01588853514733161170210396817592151090778801939317 81141945452572238655414610628921879602238389714760 88506276862967146674697562911234082439208160153780 88989396451826324367161676217916890977991190375403 12746222899880051954444142820121873617459926429565 81746628302955570299024324153181617210465832036786 90611726015878352075151628422554026517048330422614 39742869330616908979684825901254583271682264580665 26769958652682272807075781391858178889652208164348 34482599326604336766017699961283186078838615027946 59551311565520360939881806121385586003014356945272 24206344631797460594682573103790084024432438465657 24501440282188525247093519062092902313649327349756 55139587205596542287497740114133469627154228458623 77387538230483865688976461927383814900140767310446 64025989949022222176590433990188601856652648506179 97023561938970178600408118897299183110211712298459 01641921068884387121855646124960798722908519296819 37238864261483965738229112312502418664935314397013 74285319266498753372189406942814341185201580141233 44828015051399694290153483077644569099073152433278 28826986460278986432113908350621709500259738986355 42771967428222487575867657523442202075736305694988 25087968928162753848863396909959826280956121450994 87170124451646126037902930912088908694202851064018 21543994571568059418727489980942547421735824010636 77404595741785160829230135358081840096996372524230 56085590370062427124341690900415369010593398383577 79394109700277534720000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000. 2. [Stanford] n. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice are called `bignums', especially a roll of double fives or double sixes. See also {El Camino Bignum}. bigot: n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular language, operating system, editor or other tool (see {religious issues}). Usually found with a specifier; thus, `APL bigot', `VMS bigot', `EMACS bigot'. True bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolesce the favored tool. It is said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much." Compare {weenie}. bit: [from the mainstream meaning and `binary digit'] n. 1. The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question for which the two outcomes are equally probable (this is straight technicalese). 2. A computational quantity that can take on one of two values, such as true and false, or zero and one. 3. A mental flag: a reminder that something should be done eventually. Example: "I have a bit set for you." (I haven't seen you for a while, and I'm supposed to tell or ask you something.) "I just need one bit from you" is a polite way of indicating that you intend only a short interruption for a question which can presumably be answered with a yes or no. A bit is said to be `set' if its value is true or one, and `reset' or `clear' if its value is false or zero. One speaks of setting and clearing bits. To `toggle' or `invert' a bit is to change it, either from zero to one or from one to zero. See also {flag}, {trit}, {mode bit}. bit bang: n. Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit at the appropriate times (popular on certain early models of Prime computers, presumably when UARTs were too expensive, and on archaic Z-80 micros with a Zilog PIO but no SIO). The technique is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte. Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {wannabee}s. bit bashing: n. (also, `bit diddling' or `bit twiddling') Term used to describe any of several kinds of low-level programming characterized by manipulation of {bit}, {flag}, {nybble} and other smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data: these include low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavors of graphics programming (see {bitblt}), and assembler/compiler code generation. May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more usually the former). "The command decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs." See also {bit bang}, {mode bit}. bit bucket: n. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). Data that is discarded, lost, or destroyed is said to `go to the bit bucket'. On {UNIX}, often used for {/dev/null}. Sometimes amplified as `the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. This term is used purely in jest. It's based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed, but only misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them "out of the bit box". See also {chad box}, {null device}. bit decay: n. See {bit rot}. People with a physics background tend to prefer this one for the analogy with particle decay. See also {computron}, {quantum bogodynamics}. bit rot: n. Also {bit decay}. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if `nothing has changed'. The theory explains that bits decay as if they were radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will become increasingly garbled. There actually are physical processes that produce such effects (the alpha particles such as are found in cosmic rays can change the contents of a computer memory unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt files in mass storage) but they are quite rare. The term {software rot} is almost synonymous. bit-paired keyboard: n. obs. A non-standard keyboard layout which seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The TTY was a mechanical device (see {EOU}) so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern which could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or CTRL key were pressed. This meant that in order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was the design had to group on one keytop characters which shared the same basic bit pattern. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: 3 high 4 low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 space ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 That's why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (except that 0 was moved over to the right-hand side). This was *not* the weirdest variant of {QWERTY} layout widely seen, by the way; that prize probably goes to the (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular in the early 1970s there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as `bit-paired' and `typewriter-paired' keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical --- and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The `typewriter-paired' standard became universal, `bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse. bitblt: /bit'blit/ n. [from {BLT}, q.v.] 1. Any of a closely related family of algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display memory (the requirement to do the Right Thing in the case of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky). 2. Synonym for {blit} or {BLT}. bits: n. 1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare {core dump}, sense #4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrasted with paper. "I only have a photocopy of the Jargon File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See {softcopy}. 3. Also in `the source of all good bits' n. A person from whom (or a place from which) information may be obtained. If you need to know about a program, a {wizard} might be the source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a particularly competent secretary. bitty box: /bit'ee boks/ n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines like the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. Pejorative. More generally, the opposite of `real computer' (see {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, and {toy}. bixie: /biks'ee/ n. Variant {emoticon}s used on BIX (the Byte Information Exchange). The `smiley' bixie is <@_@>, apparently intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others have been reported. black art: n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area. VLSI design and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been written became merely {heavy wizardry}. The huge proliferation of formal and informal channels for spreading around new computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made both the term `black art' and what it describes less common than formerly. See also {voodoo programming}. black hole: n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a {bounce message}) it is commonly said to have "fallen into a black hole". Similarly, one might say "I think there's a black hole at foovax!" to convey suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. Compare {bit bucket}. blast: vt.,n. Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large data sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}. Usage: uncommon. The variant `blat' has been reported. 2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense #3). Sometimes the message "Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?" would appear in the command window upon logout. blazer: n. (also {'blazer}) Nickname for the Telebit Trailblazer, an expensive but extremely reliable and effective high-speed modem, popular at UNIX sites that pass large volumes of {email} and {USENET} news. bletch: /blech/ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to vomit] 1. interj. Term of disgust. Often in "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}. bletcherous: /blech'@-rus/ adj. Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced). See {losing}, {cretinous}, {bagbiter}, {bogus}, and {random}. {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast, something that is {losing} or {cretinous} may be failing to meet objective criteria. See {bogus} and {random}, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above. blinkenlights: /blink'@n-lietz/ n. Front-panel diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. Derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic "ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!" notice in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. The sign in its entirety ran: ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS Das computermachine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten. This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford University and had already gone international by the early '60s, when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site. There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'. It is reported, by the way, that an analogous travesty in mangled English is posted in German computer laboratories. blit: /blit/ vt. 1. To copy a large array of bits from one part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high memory, and at the end {blit}s it all back down again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {DD}, {cat}, {blast}, {snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2. All-capitalized as `BLIT': An early experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T 5620. The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal' is incorrect. blitter: n. A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but in 1991 the trend is away from them (but see {cycle of reincarnation}). blivet: [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware which can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort. This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; in particular, among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork which appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way. block: [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi. To delay while waiting for something. "We're blocking until everyone gets here." 2. `block on' vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked on Phil's arrival." block transfer computations: n. From the Dr. Who television series: in the show, it referred to computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not be performed by machines. Used to refer to any task that should be expressible as an algorithm in theory, but isn't. blow an EPROM: v. To program a read-only-memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. blow away: vt. To remove files and directories from permanent storage with extreme prejudice, generally by accident. Oppose {nuke}. blow out: vi. Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow past}. blow past: vt. To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The server blew past the 5K reserve buffer." blow up: vi. [scientific computation] To become unstable. Suggests that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will soon either overflow or at least go {nonlinear}. blt: /bee ell tee/, /bl@t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. 1. Synonym for {blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the ancestor of {bitblt}. In these versions the usage has outlasted the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which {BLT} derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost always means `Branch if Less Than Zero'. Blue Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard references on the page-layout and graphics-control language PostScript (`PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook', Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN 0-201-10179-3); the other two official guides are known as the {Green Book} and {Red Book}. 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on Smalltalk: `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation'. David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64, ISBN 0-201-11371-63 (this is also associated with green and red books). 3. Any of the 1988 standards issues by the CCITT 9th plenary assembly. Until now, they have changed color each review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1992 would be {Green Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {Red Book}, {Green Book}, {Silver Book}, {Purple Book}, {Orange Book}, {White Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book}, {Dragon Book}, {Aluminum Book}, {Wizard Book}. Blue Glue: [IBM] n. IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture) an incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} protocol suite widely favored at commercial shops that don't know any better. The official IBM definition is "That which binds blue boxes together." See {fear and loathing}. It may not be irrelevant that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors so common in computer installations. A correspondent at U.Minn. reports that the CS dept. there has about 80 bottles of Blue Glue hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as `using the blue glue'. blue goo: n. Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to prevent {gray goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution, put ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and to promote truth, justice, and the American way, etc., etc. See {nanotechnology}. BNF: /bee-en-ef/ n. 1. Acronym for `Backus-Naur Form', a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of programming languages, command sets and the like. Widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider this BNF for a postal address: ::= ::= [] ::= | "." ::= [] ::= "," of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A name-part consists of a first-name followed by an optional middle-part followed by a last-name. A middle-part consists of either a middle name or a middle initial followed by a dot. A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consts of a town-name, followed by a state code, followed by a zip-code. Note that many things such as the format of a first-name, apartment specifier or zip-code are left unspecified. These are presumed to be obvious from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also {parse}. A major reason BNF is listed here is that the term is also used loosely for any number of variants and extensions, possibly containing some or all of the {glob} wildcards. 2. In {{Science-Fiction Fandom}}, BNF expands to `Big Name Fan' (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions. This confused the hacker contingent terribly. boa: [IBM] n. Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is rumored within IBM that 370 channel cables are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas get dangerous ... and it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the trademark `Anaconda'. boat anchor: n. 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe, implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or useless. 2. Also used of people who just take up space. bogo-sort: n. The generic bad algorithm. The origin is a fictitious contest at CMU to design the worst running time sort algorithm (apparently after a student found an n^3 algorithm to do sorting while trying to design a good one). Bogo-sort is equivalent to throwing a deck of cards in the air, picking them up, then testing whether they are in order. If not, repeat. Usage: when one is looking at a program and sees a dumb algorithm, one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare {bubble sort}, {bogus}, {brute force}. bogometer: n. See {bogosity}. bogon: /boh'gon/ [by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons', see Appendix C] n. 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). For instance, "the ethernet is emitting bogons again", meaning that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon." 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivatives in 1-4. bogon filter: /boh'gon fil'tr/ n. Any device, software or hardware, which limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons. Example: "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and the VAXen and now we're getting fewer dropped packets." bogosity: /boh-go's@-tee/ n. 1. The degree to which something is {bogus}. At CMU, bogosity is measured with a {bogometer}; typical use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say, "My bogometer just triggered.". More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer." means "You just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale (pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading).". The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (uL). The consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. 2. The potential field generated by a bogon flux; see {quantum bogodynamics}. [Historical note: microLenat was invented as a attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a {tenured graduate student}. Doug had failed him on the AI Qual after the student gave "AI is bogus" as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends argue that `of course' a microLenat is bogus, since it's only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be re-designated after the grad student, as the microReid.] bogotify: /boh-go't@-fie/ vt. To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you'd better not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional `autobogotiphobia' /aw'to-boh-got'@-foh`bee-uh/ n., defined as the fear of becoming bogotified; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' slang rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. bogue out: /bohg owt/ vi. To becomes bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question, then he bogued out and did nothing but {flame} afterwards." bogus: [WPI, Yale, Stanford] adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of {random}.) It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at Princeton, in the late 1960s. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see {autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). By the early 1980s it was also current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent at Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of bogus grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means rather specifically `counterfeit' as in "a bogus pound note". Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ [from quantum physics] n. A repeatable {bug}; one which manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}. boink: /boynk/ [USENET, perh. from the TV series `Moonlighting'] 1. To have sex with; compare {bounce}, sense #3. (This is mainstream) In Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is more common. 2. After the original Peter Korn `Boinkon' {USENET} parties, used for almost any net social gathering, e.g. Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in 1988; Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks, Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area. Compare {@-party}. bomb: v. 1. General synonym for {crash}, esp. used of software or OS failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll bomb out." 2. Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of {panic} or {guru} (sense 2), where icons of little black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed indicating the system has died. On the Mac this may be accompanied by a decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went wrong, similar to the Amiga GURU MEDITATION number. {Mess-dos} machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation. bondage-and-discipline language: A language such as Pascal, APL, or Prolog that, though ostensibly general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of "right programming" even though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of things "having the B&D nature" etc. See {{Pascal}}; oppose {languages of choice}. bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ interj. In the {MUD} community, it has become traditional to express pique or censure by `bonking' the offending person. There is a convention that one should acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and a myth to the effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance, causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented special commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk mode}, {posing}. boot: [from `by one's bootstraps'] vi.,n. To load and initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer slang (having become jargon in the strict sense), but it is sometimes used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange: "You've lost me." "O.K., reboot. Here's the theory....". Also found in the variants `cold boot' (from power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash). Another variant: `soft boot', re-initialization of only part of a system, under control of other software that's still running: "If you're running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running." Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the machine being booted. "I'll have to hard-boot this losing Sun" or "I recommend booting it hard." Historically, this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short program meant to reside in a fixed location on a disk. The machine would be hardwired to load the bootstrap from this `boot block' and hand control to it; the bootstrap would in turn load the actual OS and hand control to it. This was thought of as the software pulling itself up by its bootstraps. bottom-up implementation: n. Hackish opposite of the straight technical term `top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action in increasing detail until you get to actual code. Hackers often find (especially in exploratory designs which cannot be closely specified in advance) that it works best to `build' things in the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive operations and then knitting them together. bounce: v. 1. [UNIX, perhaps from the image of a thrown ball bouncing off a wall] An electronic mail message which is undeliverable and returns an error notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. See also {bounce message}. 2. [Stanford] To play volleyball. At one time there was a volleyball court next to the computer laboratory. From 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5:00 the computer would become unavailable, and over the intercom a voice would cry , "Bounce, bounce!" 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob. from the expression `bouncing the mattress', but influenced by Piglet's psychosexually loaded "Bounce on me too, Tigger!" from the Winnie-the-Pooh books. Compare {boink}. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset it. bounce message: [UNIX] n. Notification message returned to sender by a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet address}} recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see {bounce}). Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled username or a down relay site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. The collective `bounce mail' is also common. box: n. 1. [within IBM] A computer; esp. in the construction "foo box" where foo is some functional qualifier, like `graphics', or the name of an OS (thus, `UNIX box', `MS-DOS box', etc. 2. Without qualification but within an SNA-using site (see {Blue Glue}), this refers specifically to an IBM front-end processor or FEP /eff-ee-pee/. An FEP is a small computer necessary to enable an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the limits of the {dinosaur pen}. Typically used in expressions like the cry that goes up when an SNA network goes down, "Looks like the {box} has fallen over." (see {fall over}) See also {IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {Blue Glue}. boxed comments: n. Comments (explanatory notes in code) which occupy several lines by themselves; so called because in assembler and C code they are often surrounded by a box in a style something like this: /************************************************* * * This is a boxed comment in C style * *************************************************/ Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column two or add a matching row of asterisks closing the right end of the box. The sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters at the extreme left; the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}. boxen: /bok'sn/ pl n. [by analogy with {VAXen}] Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `UNIX boxen', used to describe commodity {UNIX} hardware. The connotation is that any two UNIX boxen are interchangeable. boxology: /bok-sol'@-jee/ n. 1. The fine art of drawing diagrams using the `box' characters (mainly, `|', `-', and `+') in ASCII-monospace fonts. Also known as `character graphics' or `ASCII graphics'. 2. Boxological drawings. "His report has a lot of boxology in it". brain dump: n. The act of telling someone everything one knows about a particular topic or project. Typically used when someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code. Analogous to an operating system {core dump} in the sense that the state of the person's important "registers" are saved before exiting. Example: "You'll have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR, before you start your new job at HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense #4). At Sun, this is also known as `TOI' (transfer of information). brain-damaged: [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell {Multics}] adj. Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to work is due to poor design rather than some accident. brain-dead: adj. Brain-damaged in the extreme. Not quite like mainstream use, as it tends to imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple stupidity. braino: /bray'no/ n. Syn. for {thinko}. branch to Fishkill: [IBM, from the location of one of their facilities] n. Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump off into never-never land}. brand brand brand: n. Humorous catch-phrase from {BartleMUD}s, in which players were described carrying a list of objects, the most common of which would usually be a brand. Often used as a joke in {talk mode} as in "Fred the wizard is here, carrying brand ruby brand brand brand kettle broadsword flamethrower". Prob. influenced by the infamous Monty Python {Spam} skit. break: 1. vt. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. v. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a "breakpoint". 3. vi. To send an RS-232 break (125 msec. of line high) over a serial comm line. 4. [UNIX] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally break (sense 3) or delete does this. breakage: 1. Brokenness and the consequent mess. 2.[IBM] n. The extra people that must be added to an organization because its master plan has changed; used esp. of software and hardware development teams. breath-of-life packet: [Xerox PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that contained bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that had happened to crash. The machines had hardware or firmware that would wait for such a packet after a catastrophic error. bring X to its knees: v. Of a machine, operating system, piece of software, or algorithm; to present it with a load so extreme or pathological that it grinds virtually to a halt. "To bring a MicroVAX to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} --- or four running {EMACS}." Compare {hog}. brittle: adj. Said of software that's functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Often describes the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but can be applied to commercially developed software. Oppose {robust}. broadcast storm: n. An incorrect packet broadcast on a network that causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically with wrong answers that start the process over again. Also called `network meltdown'. See also {Chernobyl packet}. broken: adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving strangely; especially, (when used of people) exhibiting extreme depression. broket: /broh'k@t/ or /broh'ket/ [by analogy with `bracket': a `broken bracket'] n. Either of the characters `<' and `>', when used as paired enclosing delimiters. This word originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken bracket', that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT, and apparently in the {Real World} as well, these are usually called {angle brackets}.) Brooks's Law: prov. "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" --- a result of the fact that the advantage from splitting work between N programmers is O(N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBMs OS/360 project and author of `The Mythical Man-Month', an excellent early book on software engineering. Hackers have never forgotten this advice; too often, {management} does. BRS: n. Syn. {Big Red Switch}. This abbreviation is fairly common on-line. brute force: adj. Describes a certain kind of primitive programming style; broadly speaking, one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing power instead of using his/her own intelligence to simplify the problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The {canonical} example of a brute force algorithm is associated with the `Travelling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical NP-hard problem: suppose a person is in Boston and wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should he/she visit them in order to minimize the distance travelled? The brute force method is to simply generate all possible routes and compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to implement, this algorithm is clearly very `stupid' in that it considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly inefficient when N increases (for N=15, there are already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider). See also {NP-}. A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the first number off the front. Note that whether brute-force programming should be considered stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem isn't too big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a more `intelligent' algorithm. Alternatively, a more intelligent algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing than are justified by the speed improvement. Ken Thompson, co-inventor of UNIX, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original UNIX kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over fragile `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgement. brute force and ignorance: n. A popular design technique at many software houses --- {brute force} coding unrelieved by any knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to encourage it. Characteristic of early {larval stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often abbreviated BFI, as in: "Gak, they used a bubble sort! That's strictly from BFI." Compare {bogosity}. BSD: /bee-ess-dee/ n. [acronym for Berkeley System Distribution] a family of {UNIX} versions for the DEC {VAX} developed by Bill Joy and others at University of California at Berkeley starting around 1980, incorporating paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking enhancements and many other features. The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and commercial versions derived from them (SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical lead in the UNIX world until AT&T's successful standardization efforts after about 1986, and are still widely popular. See {UNIX}, {USG UNIX}. bubble sort: n. A standard technical term for a particular sorting technique. Because it is not very good compared to other methods, and is the one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the canonical example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could only issue from {brain damage} or willful perversity. bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ [primarily Stanford] n. The bits produced by the CTRL, META, SUPER, and HYPER shift keys, esp. on a Stanford or MIT (Knight) keyboard (see {space-cadet keyboard}). By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any keyboard, e.g. the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on a Macintosh. It is rumored that these were in fact named for Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at Stanford. Unfortunately, legend also has it that `Bucky' was Niklaus Wirth's nickname when *he* was consulting at Stanford and that he first suggested the idea of the meta key, so its bit was named after him. See {double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}. buffer overflow: n. What typically happens when an {OS} or application is fed data faster than it can handle. Used metaphorically of human mental processes. "Sorry, I got four phone calls in three minutes last night and lost your message to a buffer overflow." bug: n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or hardware, esp. one which causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards." "The system crashed because of a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs." (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems.) Some have said this term came from telephone company usage: "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines, but this appears to be an incorrect folk etymology. Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a technician solved a persistent {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual physical bug out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface Warfare Center; it now resides in the Smithsonian. The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 3, Number 3 (July 1981), on pages 285 and 286. Interestingly, the text of the log entry, which reads "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found." seems to establish that the term was already in use at the time, and a similar incident is alleged to have occurred on the original ENIAC machine. Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and `bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! In the First Edition of Johnson's Dictionary a `bug' is a `frightful object'; this is traced to `bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing games. In any case, in hacker's slang the word almost never refers to insects. Here is a plausible conversation that never actually happened: "This ant-farm has a bug." "What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it." "That's the bug." bug compatible: n. Said of a design or revision the design of which has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with {fossil}s or {misfeature}s in other programs or (esp.) previous releases of itself. bug-for-bug compatible: n. Same as {bug-compatible}, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated. buglix: n. Pejorative term referring to DEC's ULTRIX operating system in its earlier *severely* buggy versions. Still used to describe ULTRIX but without venom. Compare {HP-SUX}. bulletproof: adj. Used of an algorithm or implementation considered extremely {robust}; lossage-resistant; capable of correctly recovering from any imaginable exception condition. This is a rare and valued quality. Syn. {armor-plated}. bum: 1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." 2. n. A small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. {tune} (and n. {tweak}, {hack}). Note that both these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of English `bum' is interpreted as a rude synonym for `buttocks'. bump: vt. Synonym for increment. Has the same meaning as C's ++ operator. Used esp. of counter variables, pointers, and index dummies in `for', `while', and `do-while' loops. burble: vi. Like {flame}, but connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep contempt. burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems with {marginal} components before they get out the door; the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the {bathtub} curve. 2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, sex, etc. See {hack mode}, {larval stage}. busy-wait: vi. To wait on an event by {spin}ning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. A wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may hog the processor. Syn. {spin-lock}. May be used of human behavior to convey that one is busy waiting for some one or some thing and that one intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up (for example, if one is waiting at the office door of a person in conference); thus that one cannot do anything else at the moment. buzz: vi. 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program which is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, but you never get out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. Example: "The program buzzes for about ten seconds trying to sort all the names into order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity by applying an AC signal as opposed to applying a DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. BWQ: /bee duhb'l-yoo kyoo/ [IBM; acronym, Buzz Word Quotient] The percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional to {bogosity}. See {TLA}. by hand: adv. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial and/or tedious one) which ought to be performed automatically by the computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. "My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand". Compare {eyeball search}. byte:: n. A unit of memory or data equal to the amount needed to represent one character; usually 8 bits, occasionally 9 (on 36-bit machines). The term originated in 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it was described as one to six bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The term `byte' was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally misspelt as {bit}. See also {nybble}. bytesexual: /biet-seks'u-@l/ adj. Said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data in either {big-endian} or {little-endian} format (depending, presumably, on a {mode bit} somewhere). See also {NUXI problem}. = C = ===== C: n. 1. The third letter of the Latin alphabet. 2. The name of a programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie during the early 1970s and immediately used to re-implement {UNIX}. So called because many features derived from an earlier interpreter named `B' in commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL; before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should be named `D' or `P'. C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications programming. See also {languages of choice}, {indent style}. C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as "a language which combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with the readability and maintainability of assembly language". calculator: [Cambridge] n. Syn. for {bitty box}. can: vt. To abort a job on a time-sharing system. Used esp. when the person doing the deed is an operator, as in "canned from the {{console}}". Frequently used in an imperative sense, as in "Can that print job, the LPT just popped a sprocket!". Synonymous with {gun}. It is said that the ASCII character with mnemonic CAN (0011000) was used as a kill-job character on some early OSs. canonical: [historically, `according to religious law'] adj. The usual or standard state or manner of something. This word has a somewhat more technical meaning in mathematics. For example, one sometimes speaks of a formula as being in canonical form. Two formulas such as `9 + x' and `x + 9' are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in canonical form because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of `x' first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. The slang meaning is a relaxation of the technical meaning (this generalization is actually not confined to hackers, and may be found throughout academia). A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon and hacker slang. Over his loud objections, GLS and RMS made a point of using it as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word `canonical' in slang-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used `canonical' in the canonical way." Of course, canonicality depends on context, but is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally do things. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious law" is *not* the canonical meaning of `canonical'. card: n. 1. An electronic printed-circuit board (see also {tall card}, {short card}. 2. obs. Syn. {{punched card}}. card walloper: n. An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs that do stupid things like print people's paychecks. Compare {code grinder}. See also {{punched card}}, {eighty-column mind}. cargo-cult programming: n. A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo-cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually, neither the bug nor the reason the code avoided the bug were ever fully understood (compare {shotgun debugging}). The term cargo-cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as "cargo-cult science" in `Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman'. case and paste: [from `cut and paste'] n. 1. The addition of a new {feature} to an existing system by selecting the code from an existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes. Common in telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are selected using case statements. Leads to {software bloat}. In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by Meta-W', because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. The term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to integrate the code for two similar cases. casters-up mode: /cas'trz uhp mohd/ [IBM] n. Yet another synonym for `broken' or `down'. casting the runes: n. The act of getting a {guru} to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare {incantation}, {runes}, {examining the entrails}; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in Appendix A. cat: [from `catenate' via {UNIX} `cat(1)'] vt. To spew an entire file to the screen or some other output sink without pause; by extension, to dump large amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of browsing it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside UNIX sites. See also {DD}, {BLT}. Among UNIX-haters, `cat(1)' is considered the canonical example of poor user-interface design. This because it is more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to concatenate two files. The name `cat(1)' for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's {cdr}. catatonic: adj. Describes a condition of suspended animation in which something is so {wedged} or {hung} that it makes no response. For example, if you are typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia (possibly because it has crashed). cdr: /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ [from LISP] vt. To remove the first item from a list of things. In the form `cdr down', to trace down a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also {loop through}. Historical note: the instruction format of the IBM 7090 that hosted the original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called the `address' and `decrement' parts. The term `cdr' was originally `Contents of Decrement Register', referring to the decrement part (but not, confusingly, to a separate register). Similarly, `car' stood for `Contents of Address Register'. The `cdr' and `car' operations have since become bases for formation of compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls, for example, a programming project in which strings were represented as linked lists; the get-character and skip-character operations were of course called CHAR and CHDR. chad: /chad/ n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called {selvage} and {perf}. 2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this was also called `chaff', `computer confetti', and `keypunch droppings'. Historical note: one correspondent believes `chad' (sense #2) derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the `Chadless' keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'. chad box: n. {Iron Age} card punches contained boxes inside them, about the size of a lunchbox, that held the {chad} (squares of paper punched out of punch cards). You had to open the covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box. The {bit bucket} was notionally the equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was typically across the room in another great grey-and-blue box. chain: [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] vi. When used of programming languages, refers to a statement that allows a parent executable to hand off execution to a child or successor without going through the {OS} command interpreter. The state of the parent program is lost and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular most UNIX programmers will think of this as an {exec}. Oppose the more modern {subshell}. char: /keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/ n. Shorthand for `character'. Esp. used by C programmers, as `char' is C's typename for character data. chase pointers: 1. vi. To go through multiple levels of indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure. Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common data type. This is almost jargon in the strict sense, but remains slang when used of human networks. "I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you could tell me who to talk to about...." 2. [Cambridge] `pointer chase' or `pointer hunt': the process of going through a dump (interactively or on a large piece of paper printed with hex {runes}) following dynamic data-structures. Only used in a debugging context. chemist: [Cambridge] n. Someone who wastes computer time on {number-crunching} when you'd far rather the machine were doing something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or running {life} patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry. Chernobyl packet: /cher-noh'b@l pak'@t/ n. A network packet which induces {network meltdown}, in memory of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, 1987. The type case of this is an IP Ethergram which 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. chiclet keyboard: n. A keyboard with small rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum (Chiclet is a brand-name and also the Spanish common noun for the stuff). Used esp. to describe the original PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more. Chinese Army technique: n. Syn. {Mongolian Hordes technique}. choke: vt. To reject input, often ungracefully. "I tried building an {EMACS} binary to use {X}, but `cpp(1)' choked on all those `#define's." See {barf}, {gag}, {vi}. chomp: vt. To lose; specifically, to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See {bagbiter}. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting of the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet, and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a biting action (much like what the PacMan does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means "chomp chomp" (see Verb Doubling). The hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. For example, to do this to a person is equivalent to saying "You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. You might do this if someone told you that a program you had written had failed in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated it. chomper: n. Someone or something that is chomping; a loser. See {loser}, {bagbiter}, {chomp}. Christmas tree: n. A kind of RS-232 line tester or breakout box featuring rows of blinking red and green LEDs like Christmas lights. Christmas tree packet: n. A packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is in use. chrome: [from automotive slang via wargaming] n. Showy features added to attract users but which contribute little or nothing to the power of a system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they certainly are `pretty' chrome!" Distinguished from {bells and whistles} by the fact that the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness. Church of the Sub-Genius: n. A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism} launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the `Reverend' Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as: `Bob' the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much Sub-Genius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of `slack'. See also {ha ha only serious}. Cinderella book: [CMU] n. `Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation', by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman, Addison-Wesley, 1979. So-called because the cover depicts a girl (putatively Cinderella) sitting in front of a Rube Goldberg device and holding a rope from that device. The back cover depicts the girl with the Rube Goldberg in shambles after having pulled on the rope. Classic C: /klas'ik see/ [a play on `Coke Classic'] n. The C programming language as defined in the first edition of {K&R}, with some small additions. It is also known as `K&R C'. The name came into use during the standardization process for C by the ANSI X3J11 committee. Also `C Classic'. This is sometimes applied elsewhere: thus, `X Classic' where X = Star Trek (referring to the original TV series), or X = PC (referring to IBM's ISA-bus machines as opposed to the PS/2 series). This construction is especially used of product series in which the newer versions are considered serious losers relative to the older ones. In one particularly strong parallel to the Coke fiasco, Apple Computer released a new computer called the Mac Classic. Unfortunately, just as the Coca-Cola company had `restored' Coke Classic made with nasty-tasting corn syrup rather than real sugar, the new Mac Classic was inferior in some respects to the machine Mac hackers had always called the `classic Mac' (the original 128K Macintosh) causing much confusion and upset. clean: 1. adj. Used of hardware or software designs, implies `elegance in the small', that is, a design or implementation which may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is {grungy} or {crufty}. 2. v. To remove un-needed or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter. "I'm cleaning up my account", or "I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100 Meg free on that partition". CLM: /see el em/ [Sun, `Career Limiting Move'] 1. n. An action endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and raises, also possibly one's job. "He used a {bubble-sort}! What a CLM!" 2. adj. Denotes extreme severity of a bug, discovered by a customer and obviously due to poor testing: "That's a CLM bug!" clobber: vt. To overwrite; usually unintentionally. As in "I walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash the stack}. clocks: n. Processor logic cycles, so called because each generally corresponds to one clock pulse in the processor's timing. The relative execution times of instructions on a machine are usually discussed in clocks rather than absolute fractions of a second. Compare {cycle}. clone: n. 1. An exact duplicate, as in "Our product is a clone of their product." Implies a legal re-implementation from documentation or by reverse-engineering, as opposed to the illegalities under sense #3. Also connotes lower price. 2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "Their product is a clone of our product." 3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright, patent, or trade secret protections, as in "Your product is a clone of my product." This usage implies legal action is pending. 4. A `PC clone'; a PC-BUS/ISA or EISA-compatible 80x86 based microcomputer (this use is sometimes spelled `klone' or `PClone'). These invariably have much more bang for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble. 5. In the construction `UNIX clone': An OS designed to deliver a UNIX-lookalike environment sans UNIX license fees, or with additional `mission-critical' features such as support for real-time programming. 6. v. To make an exact copy of something. "Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that file before you {mung} it". clustergeeking: /kluh'ster-gee`king/ [CMU] n. An activity defined by spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend breathing. COBOL: [COmmon Business-Oriented Language] n. Synonymous with {evil} --- a weak, verbose, and flabby language used to do boring mindless things on {dinosaur} mainframes. Hackers believe all COBOL programmers are {suit}s or {code grinder}s, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions of disgust or horror. See also {fear and loathing}, {software rot}. COBOL fingers: /koh'bol fing'grs/ n. Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from programming in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all reason. Programming too much in COBOL causes the fingers to wear down (by endless typing), until short stubs remain. This deformity is called "COBOL fingers". "I refuse to type in all that source code again; it would give me COBOL fingers!" code grinder: n. 1. A {suit}-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In his native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The {code grinder}'s milieu is about as far from hackerdom as you can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See {Real World}, {suit}. 2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique, rule-boundedness, and utter lack of imagination. Compare {card walloper}. code police: [by analogy with `thought police'] n. A mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and arrest one for violating style rules. May be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive weenies. The ironic usage is perhaps more common. codewalker: n. A program component that traverses other programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front-ends. Other utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in "This new `vgrind' feature would require a codewalker to implement." coefficient of x: n. Hackish speech makes rather heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index' and `quotient'. They are often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle distinctions between them that convey information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. `Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example is {fudge factor}. It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be, "I would have won except for the luck factor", but using *quotient* emphasises that it was bad luck overpowering good luck. `Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane cost of living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus say "coefficient of bogosity", whereas others might feel it is a combination of factors and thus say "bogosity index". cokebottle: /kohk'bot-l/ n. Any very unusual character, particularly one that isn't on your keyboard so you can't type it. MIT people used to complain about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complained right back about the `altmode-altmode-cokebottle' commands at MIT. After the demise of the {space-cadet keyboard}, cokebottle faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be due for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif window manager, mwm, has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not) `control-meta-bang'. Since the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down coke bottle, Motif hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as cokebottle. See also {quadruple bucky}. COME FROM: n. A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to'; COME FROM