The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992 (part 2)

:demon: n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See {daemon}. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. Demons are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to {daemon} —- especially in the {{UNIX}} world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.

:depeditate: /dee-ped'*-tayt/ [by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] vt. Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters are said to have been depeditated.

:deprecated: adj. Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for many years. This term appears with distressing frequency in standards documents when the committees which write them decide that a sufficient number of users have written code which depends on specific features which are out of favor.

:deserves to lose: adj. Said of someone who willfully does the {Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be {marginal}. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's {losing} actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use {mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" ({{ITS}} fans used to say this of {{UNIX}}; many still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}.

:desk check: n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs. No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers —- though some maintain stoutly that it ought to be. Compare {eyeball search}, {vdiff}, {vgrep}.

:Devil Book: n. `The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System', by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989) —- the standard reference book on the internals of {BSD} UNIX. So called because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of UNIX, the `fork(2)' system call).

:devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a development group. See also {doco} and {mango}.

:dickless workstation: n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50 and other machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk server. These combine all the disadvantages of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal computers; typically, they cannot even {boot} themselves without help (in the form of some kind of {breath-of-life packet}) from the server.

:dictionary flame: [USENET] n. An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality.

:diddle: 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly serious manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away." See {tweak} and {twiddle}. 2. n. The action or result of diddling. See also {tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}.

:die: v. Syn. {crash}. Unlike {crash}, which is used
primarily of hardware, this verb is used of both hardware and
software. See also {go flatline}, {casters-up mode}.

:die horribly: v. The software equivalent of {crash and burn},
and the preferred emphatic form of {die}. "The converter
choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".

:diff: /dif/ n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences between (and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the plural `diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2. Specifically, such a listing produced by the `diff(1)' command, esp. when used as specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a common method of distributing patches and source updates in the UNIX/C world. See also {vdiff}, {mod}.

:digit: n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {DEChead}, {double DECkers}, {field circus}.

:dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike something out' means to use such cutters to remove something. Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections of code.

:ding: n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among hackers, but commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged': What happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for having a messy desk."

:dink: /dink/ n. Said of a machine that has the {bitty box}
nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with —-
sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. First
heard from an MIT hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K, in
reference to any 6502 system, then from fans of 32-bit
architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on
that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky',
which isn't sufficiently pejorative.

:dinosaur: n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special
power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast
with newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from
the 1988 UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the mainframe in the massive
IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping
its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare
{big iron}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative
user; a {zipperhead}.

:dinosaur pen: n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See {boa}.

:dinosaurs mating: n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron} merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the {mainframe} industry. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was `IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out early, and it was `IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 —- this was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is written (early 1991) AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first six years in the hardware industry by absorbing NCR. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.

:dirtball: [XEROX PARC] n. A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the major or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox is not a dirtball company".

[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such that this superior attitude is not much resented. —- ESR]

:dirty power: n. Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively known as {power hit}s).

:disclaimer: n. [USENET] n. Statement ritually appended to many USENET postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of the organization running the machine through which the article entered the network.

:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers. Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's `{Illuminatus!}' trilogy as a sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners —- it should on no account be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes. Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from `Principia Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See {Religion} under {appendix B}, {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.

:disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).

:display hack: n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX `rain(6)' program, `worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes, and the {X} `kaleid(1)' program. Display hacks can also be implemented without programming by creating text files containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.

:Dissociated Press: [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] n. An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a {marketroid}. You start by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step you search for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or letter. {EMACS} has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of this Jargon File:

wart: n. A small, crocky {feature} that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question.

Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source:

window sysIWYG: n. A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!

A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and {vgrep} the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, `window sysIWYG' and `informash' show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called `travesty generators' have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of USENET flamers; see {pseudo}.

:distribution: n. 1. A software source tree packaged for distribution; but see {kit}. 2. A vague term encompassing mailing lists and USENET newsgroups (but not {BBS} {fora}); any topic-oriented message channel with multiple recipients. 3. An information-space domain (usually loosely correlated with geography) to which propagation of a USENET message is restricted; a much-underutilized feature.

:do protocol: [from network protocol programming] vi. To perform an interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill. See {protocol}.

:doc: /dok/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for `documentation'. Often used in the plural `docs' and in the construction `doc file' (documentation available on-line).

:doco: /do'koh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A documentation writer. See also {devo} and {mango}.

:documentation:: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware products (see also {tree-killer}). Hackers seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line. A common comment on this is "You can't {grep} dead trees". See {drool-proof paper}, {verbiage}.

:dodgy: adj. Syn. with {flaky}. Preferred outside the U.S.

:dogcow: /dog'kow/ n. See {Moof}.

:dogwash: /dog'wosh/ [From a quip in the `urgency' field of a very optional software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like "Urgency: Wash your dog first".] 1. n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work. 2. v. To engage in such a project. Many games and much {freeware} get written this way.

:domainist: /doh-mayn'ist/ adj. 1. Said of an {{Internet address}} (as opposed to a {bang path}) because the part to the right of the `@' specifies a nested series of `domains'; for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the top-level domain called com. See also {big-endian}, sense 2. 2. Said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how to handle domainist addresses. 3. Said of a person (esp. a site admin) who prefers domain addressing, supports a domainist mailer, or prosyletizes for domainist addressing and disdains {bang path}s. This is now (1991) semi-obsolete, as most sites have converted.

:Don't do that, then!: [from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I type control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds." "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't do that!"). Compare {RTFM}.

:dongle: /dong'gl/ n. 1. A security or {copy protection} device for commercial microcomputer programs consisting of a serialized EPROM and some drivers in a D-25 connector shell, which must be connected to an I/O port of the computer while the program is run. Programs that use a dongle query the port at startup and at programmed intervals thereafter, and terminate if it does not respond with the dongle's programmed validation code. Thus, users can make as many copies of the program as they want but must pay for each dongle. The idea was clever, but it was initially a failure, as users disliked tying up a serial port this way. Most dongles on the market today (1991) will pass data through the port and monitor for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines) with minimal if any interference with devices further down the line —- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of software. The devices are still not widely used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key or transferrable ID required for a program to function. See {dongle-disk}.

[Note: in early 1992, advertising copy from Rainbow Technologies (a manufacturer of dongles) included a claim that the word derived from "Don Gall", allegedly the inventor of the device. The company's receptionist will cheerfully tell you that the story is a myth invented for the ad copy. Nevertheless, I expect it to haunt my life as a lexicographer for at least the next ten years. —-ESR]

:dongle-disk: /don'gl disk/ n. See {dongle}; a `dongle-disk' is a floppy disk which is required in order to perform some task. Some contain special coding that allows an application to identify it uniquely, others *are* special code that does something that normally-resident programs don't or can't. (For example, AT&T's "Unix PC" would only come up in {root mode} with a special boot disk.) Also called a `key disk'.

:donuts: n.obs. A collective noun for any set of memory bits. This is extremely archaic and may no longer be live jargon; it dates from the days of ferrite-{core} memories in which each bit was implemented by a doughnut-shaped magnetic flip-flop.

:doorstop: n. Used to describe equipment that is non-functional and halfway expected to remain so, especially obsolete equipment kept around for political reasons or ostensibly as a backup. "When we get another Wyse-50 in here, that ADM 3 will turn into a doorstop." Compare {boat anchor}.

:dot file: [UNIX] n. A file which is not visible by default to normal directory-browsing tools (on UNIX, files named with a leading dot are, by convention, not normally presented in directory listings). Many programs define one or more dot files in which startup or configuration information may be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. (Therefore, dot files tend to {creep} —- with every nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's home directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course without the user's really being aware of it.) See also {rc file}.

:double bucky: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."

This term originated on the Stanford extended-ASCII keyboard, and was later taken up by users of the {space-cadet keyboard} at MIT. A typical MIT comment was that the Stanford {bucky bits} (control and meta shifting keys) were nice, but there weren't enough of them; you could type only 512 different characters on a Stanford keyboard. An obvious way to address this was simply to add more shifting keys, and this was eventually done; but a keyboard with that many shifting keys is hard on touch-typists, who don't like to move their hands away from the home position on the keyboard. It was half-seriously suggested that the extra shifting keys be implemented as pedals; typing on such a keyboard would be very much like playing a full pipe organ. This idea is mentioned in a parody of a very fine song by Jeffrey Moss called "Rubber Duckie", which was published in `The Sesame Street Songbook' (Simon and Schuster 1971, ISBN 0-671-21036-X). These lyrics were written on May 27, 1978, in celebration of the Stanford keyboard:

Double Bucky

Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun.
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky! Half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh,
I sure wish that I
Had a couple of
Bits more!
Perhaps a
Set of pedals to
Make the number of
Bits four:
Double double bucky!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!

—- The Great Quux (with apologies to Jeffrey Moss)

[This, by the way, is an excellent example of computer {filk} —- ESR] See also {meta bit}, {cokebottle}, and {quadruple bucky}.

:double DECkers: n. Used to describe married couples in which both partners work for Digital Equipment Corporation.

:doubled sig: [USENET] n. A {sig block} that has been included twice in a {USENET} article or, less commonly, in an electronic mail message. An article or message with a doubled sig can be caused by improperly configured software. More often, however, it reveals the author's lack of experience in electronic communication. See {BIFF}, {pseudo}.

:down: 1. adj. Not operating. "The up escalator is down" is considered a humorous thing to say, and "The elevator is down" always means "The elevator isn't working" and never refers to what floor the elevator is on. With respect to computers, this usage has passed into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds of machine is still hackish. 2. `go down' vi. To stop functioning; usually said of the {system}. The message from the {console} that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is "The system will go down in 5 minutes". 3. `take down', `bring down' vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work or {PM}. "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the tape drive." Occasionally one hears the word `down' by itself used as a verb in this vt. sense. See {crash}; oppose {up}.

:download: vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger `host' system (esp. a {mainframe}) over a digital comm link to a smaller `client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose {upload}.

However, note that ground-to-space communications has its own usage rule for this term. Space-to-earth transmission is always download and the reverse upload regardless of the relative size of the computers involved. So far the in-space machines have invariably been smaller; thus the upload/download distinction has been reversed from its usual sense.

:DP: /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a {suit}. See {DPer}. 2. Common abbrev for {Dissociated Press}.

:DPB: /d*-pib'/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To plop something down in the middle. Usage: silly. "DPB yourself into that couch there." The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to sit in. DPB means `DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function of the same name.

:DPer: /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that {suit}s use this term self-referentially. "*Computers* process data, not people!" See {DP}.

:dragon: n. [MIT] A program similar to a {daemon}, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by the `name dragon'. Usage: rare outside MIT —- under UNIX and most other OSes this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}. The best-known UNIX example of a dragon is `cron(1)'. At SAIL, they called this sort of thing a `phantom'.

:Dragon Book: n. The classic text `Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled `complexity of compiler design' and a knight bearing the lance `LALR parser generator' among his other trappings. This one is more specifically known as the `Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier edition, sans Sethi and titled `Principles Of Compiler Design' (Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman; Addison-Wesley, 1977; ISBN 0-201-00022-9), was the `Green Dragon Book' (1977). (Also `New Dragon Book', `Old Dragon Book'.) The horsed knight and the Green Dragon were warily eying each other at a distance; now the knight is typing (wearing gauntlets!) at a terminal showing a video-game representation of the Red Dragon's head while the rest of the beast extends back in normal space. See also {{book titles}}.

:drain: [IBM] v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.

:dread high-bit disease: n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to mention talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled manfully to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most {cretinous} design tradeoffs ever made. See {meta bit}. A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.

:DRECNET: /drek'net/ [from Yiddish/German `dreck', meaning dirt] n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the {VMS} community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible. See also {connector conspiracy}.

:driver: n. 1. The {main loop} of an event-processing program; the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution. 2. [techspeak] In `device driver', code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape unit. 3. In the TeX world and the computerized typesetting world in general, `driver' also means a program that translates some device-independent or other common format to something a real device can actually understand.

:droid: n. A person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or `the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the `letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; an "It's not my job, man" attitude.

Typical droid positions include supermarket checkout assistant and bank clerk; the syndrome is also endemic in low-level government employees. The implication is that the rules and official procedures constitute software that the droid is executing. This becomes a problem when the software has not been properly debugged. The term `droid mentality' is also used to describe the mindset behind this behavior. Compare {suit}, {marketroid}; see {-oid}.

:drool-proof paper: n. Documentation that has been obsessively {dumbed down}, to the point where only a {cretin} could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the `drool-proof paper syndrome' or to have been `written on drool-proof paper'. For example, this is an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."

:drop on the floor: vt. To react to an error condition by silently
discarding messages or other valuable data. "The gateway
ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the
floor." Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay
sites that lose messages. See also {black hole}, {bit bucket}.

:drop-ins: [prob. by analogy with {drop-outs}] n. Spurious
characters appearing on a terminal or console as a result of line
noise or a system malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these
are interspersed with one's own typed input. Compare
{drop-outs}.

:drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch}); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation (this can happen under UNIX when a bad connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character interrupts). 3. Mental glitches; used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See {glitch}, {fried}.

:drugged: adj. (also `on drugs') 1. Conspicuously stupid, heading toward {brain-damaged}. Often accompanied by a pantomime of toking a joint (but see {appendix B}). 2. Of hardware, very slow relative to normal performance.

:drum: adj,n. Ancient techspeak term referring to slow,
cylindrical magnetic media which were once state-of-the-art
mass-storage devices. Under BSD UNIX the disk partition used for
swapping is still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to
considerable humor and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus
`explanations' getting foisted on {newbie}s. See also "{The
Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}.

:drunk mouse syndrome: (also `mouse on drugs') n. A malady
exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The
typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in
random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual
mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and
plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice
is to rotate your mouse pad 90 degrees.

At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough {cruft} to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse was declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.

:Duff's device: n. The most dramatic use yet seen of {fall through} in C, invented by Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm. Trying to {bum} all the instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied data serially onto an output port, he decided to {unroll} it. He then realized that the unrolled version could be implemented by *interlacing* the structures of a switch and a loop:

register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */

switch (count % 8)
{
case 0: do { *to = *from++;
case 7: *to = *from++;
case 6: *to = *from++;
case 5: *to = *from++;
case 4: *to = *from++;
case 3: *to = *from++;
case 2: *to = *from++;
case 1: *to = *from++;
} while (—n > 0);
}

Having verified that the device is valid portable C, Duff announced it. C's default {fall through} in case statements has long been its most controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This code forms some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for or against."

:dumb terminal: n. A terminal which is one step above a {glass tty}, having a minimally-addressable cursor but no on-screen editing or other features which are claimed by a {smart terminal}. Once upon a time, when glass ttys were common and addressable cursors were something special, what is now called a dumb terminal could pass for a smart terminal.

:dumbass attack: /duhm'as *-tak'/ [Purdue] n. Notional cause of a novice's mistake made by the experienced, especially one made while running as {root} under UNIX, e.g., typing `rm -r *' or `mkfs' on a mounted file system. Compare {adger}.

:dumbed down: adj. Simplified, with a strong connotation of *over*simplified. Often, a {marketroid} will insist that the interfaces and documentation of software be dumbed down after the designer has burned untold gallons of midnight oil making it smart. This creates friction. See {user-friendly}.

:dump: n. 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare {core dump}), and most especially one consisting of hex or octal {runes} describing the byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. In {elder days}, debugging was generally done by `groveling over' a dump (see {grovel}); increasing use of high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made this uncommon, and the term `dump' now has a faintly archaic flavor. 2. A backup. This usage is typical only at large timesharing installations.

:dumpster diving: /dump'-ster di:'-ving/ n. 1. The practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical installation to extract confidential data, especially security-compromising information (`dumpster' is an Americanism for what is elsewhere called a `skip'). Back in AT&T's monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office equipment, phone phreaks (see {phreaking}) used to organize regular dumpster runs against phone company plants and offices. Discarded and damaged copies of AT&T internal manuals taught them much. The technique is still rumored to be a favorite of crackers operating against careless targets. 2. The practice of raiding the dumpsters behind buildings where producers and/or consumers of high-tech equipment are located, with the expectation (usually justified) of finding discarded but still-valuable equipment to be nursed back to health in some hacker's den. Experienced dumpster-divers not infrequently accumulate basements full of moldering (but still potentially useful) {cruft}.

:dup killer: /d[y]oop kill'r/ [FidoNet] n. Software that is supposed to detect and delete duplicates of a message that may have reached the FidoNet system via different routes.

:dup loop: /d[y]oop loop/ (also `dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more {echo}es, with different identification information that renders {dup killer}s ineffective. If such a duplicate message eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a {dup loop}.

:dusty deck: n. Old software (especially applications) which one is
obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term
implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch
days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and
{number-crunching} software, much of which was written in FORTRAN
and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to
replace. See {fossil}.

:DWIM: /dwim/ [acronym, `Do What I Mean'] 1. adj. Able to guess,
sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was
provided. 2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted
to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common
errors. See {hairy}. 3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled
at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping
over legalisms (see {legalese}).

Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different. This led a number of victims of DWIM to claim the acronym stood for `Damn Warren's Infernal Machine!'.

In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed `delete *$' to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files by appending `$' to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported `*$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'.' It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a half dozen or so files were lost.

The hacker later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type `delete *$' twice.

DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about `DWIMC' (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see {Right Thing}.

:dynner: /din'r/ 32 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and {{byte}}. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also {playte}, {tayste}, {crumb}.

= E = =====

:earthquake: [IBM] n. The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.

:Easter egg: [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and many psparts of Europe] n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire development team.

:Easter egging: [IBM] n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of {field circus} techs and do not love them for it. Compare {shotgun debugging}.

:eat flaming death: imp. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"

:EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] n. An alleged character set used on IBM {dinosaur}s. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC from {{punched card}} code in the early 1960s and promulgated it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector conspiracy}), spurning the already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very *name* of EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest {evil}. See also {fear and loathing}.

:echo: [FidoNet] n. A {topic group} on {FidoNet}'s echomail system. Compare {newsgroup}.

:eighty-column mind: [IBM] n. The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as follows:

He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.

The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. See {IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {card walloper}.

:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.

The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/) means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to 7 significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar `real' types).

When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started calling it `El Camino Double Precision' —- but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)

:elder days: n. The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic `The Lord of the Rings'. Compare {Iron Age}; see also {elvish}.

:elegant: [from mathematical usage] adj. Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever', `winning', or even {cuspy}.

:elephantine: adj. Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare `has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}. See also {second-system effect} and {baroque}.

:elevator controller: n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one period (1983—84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library —- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}.

:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ [AI community] n. The tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that people associate it with addition. Using `+' or `plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.

This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum, which simulated a Rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system. Compare {ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.

:elvish: n. 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the `Book of Kells'. Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in `The Lord of The Rings' as an orthography for his fictional `elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically elegant) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be interested by artificial languages in general). It is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the like to support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo items. See also {elder days}. 2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called `B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/ [from Editing MACroS] n. The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It was originally written by Richard Stallman in {TECO} under {{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor". It has since been reimplemented any number of times, by various hackers, and versions exist which run under most major operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used version, also written by Stallman and now called "{GNU} EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs principally under UNIX. It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail; many hackers spend up to 80% of their {tube time} inside it. Other variants include {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS.

Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too heavyweight and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as `Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping', `Eventually `malloc's All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). See also {vi}.

:email: /ee'mayl/ 1. n. Electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast {snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network address}. 2. vt. To send electronic mail.

Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED; it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or arranged in a net work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is derived from French `emmailleure', network.

:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ n. An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually required under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums such as USENET; the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by {newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in
common use. These include:

:-)
`smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
occasionally sarcasm)

:-(
`frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)

;-)
`half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious});
also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.

:-/
`wry face'

(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)

The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered. Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also {bixie}. On {USENET}, `smiley' is often used as a generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon.

It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980. He later wrote: "I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS confirms that he remembers this original posting].

Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that you've gone over the line.

:empire: n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. There are five or six multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication, and one single-player version implemented for both UNIX and VMS; the latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are notoriously addictive.

:engine: n. 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. Today we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer. 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.

The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.

:English: 1. n.,obs. The source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is at least as readable as English. Usage: used mostly by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. 2. The official name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: n. {Marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a {feature} —- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself to be a feature.

:ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?' (the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return of {ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not the person felt interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the usage of `FOO?' listed under {talk mode}.

:EOF: /E-O-F/ [abbreviation, `End Of File'] n. 1. [techspeak] Refers esp. to whatever {out-of-band} value is returned by C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is -1 under C libraries postdating V6 UNIX, but was originally 0. 2. [UNIX] The keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) which is mapped by the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3. Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further. "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a {JCL} manual." See also {EOL}.

:EOL: /E-O-L/ [End Of Line] n. Syn. for {newline}, derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the example entry under {BNF}. See also {EOF}.

:EOU: /E-O-U/ n. The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User) that could make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This parodied the numerous obscure delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when it was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.

:epoch: [UNIX: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] n. The time and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. Under most UNIX versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 GMT of November 17, 1858 (base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides). System time is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of UNIX is good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't increase by then. See also {wall time}.

:epsilon: [see {delta}] 1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than {marginal}. "We can get this feature for epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon of': close enough to be indistinguishable for all practical purposes. This is even closer than being `within delta of'. "That's not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of working."

:epsilon squared: n. A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}.

:era, the: Syn. {epoch}. Webster's Unabridged makes these words almost synonymous, but `era' usually connotes a span of time rather than a point in time. The {epoch} usage is recommended.

:Eric Conspiracy: n. A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986; this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style}) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about fourteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more than one site.

:Eris: /e'ris/ n. The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion, and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including hackerdom. See {Discordianism}, {Church of the SubGenius}.

:erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ n. [Helsinki University of Technology,
Finland] n. English-language university slang for electronics.
Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics
excites them and makes them warm.

:error 33: [XEROX PARC] n. 1. Predicating one research effort upon
the success of another. 2. Allowing your own research effort to be
placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a research
effort or not).

:essentials: n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a 20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP via a 'blazer to a friendly Internet site, and thou."

:evil: adj. As used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the {cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This is more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral one in the mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a {Blue Glue} interface but decided it was too evil to deal with." "{TECO} is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." Often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/.

:exa-: /ek's*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:examining the entrails: n. The process of {grovel}ling through a core dump or hex image in the attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare {runes}, {incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.

:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ vt. To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location. Many newer hackers tend to be thinking instead of the {PostScript} exchange operator (which is usually written in lowercase).

:excl: /eks'kl/ n. Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See {bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.

:EXE: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ n. An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among UNIX programmers even though UNIX executables don't have any required suffix.

:exec: /eg-zek'/ vt.,n. 1. [UNIX: from `execute'] Synonym for {chain}, derives from the `exec(2)' call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command interpreter for an {OS} (see {shell}); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating systems. 3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command file (among VM/CMS users).

The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is *not* used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program, never a person.

:exercise, left as an: [from technical books] Used to complete a proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof (or the rest) is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.

:eyeball search: n. To look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any other automated search tool. Also called a {vgrep}; compare {vdiff}, {desk check}.

= F = =====

:fab: /fab/ [from `fabricate'] v. 1. To produce chips from a design that may have been created by someone at another company. Fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a {silicon foundry}. To a hacker, `fab' is practically never short for `fabulous'. 2. `fab line': the production system (lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip manufacturer. Different `fab lines' are run with different process parameters, die sizes, or technologies, or simply to provide more manufacturing volume.

:face time: n. Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face time with him at the last Usenix."

:factor: n. See {coefficient of X}.

:fall over: [IBM] vi. Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}. `Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.

:fall through: v. (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through') 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a switch statement reaches a `case' label other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial example:

switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green;
break;
case PINK:
do_pink;
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red;
break;
default:
do_blue;
break;
}

The variant spelling `/* FALL THRU */' is also common.

The effect of this code is to `do_green' when color is `GREEN', `do_red' when color is `RED', `do_blue' on any other color other than `PINK', and (and this is the important part) `do_pink' *and then* `do_red' when color is `PINK'. Fall-through is {considered harmful} by some, though there are contexts (such as the coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it is generally considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the fall-through where one would normally expect a break.

:fandango on core: [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n. In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a {core dump}, or corrupts the `malloc(3)' {arena} in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have `done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal machines without an MMU, this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage. Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {core}.

:FAQ list: /F-A-Q list/ or /fak list/ [USENET] n. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall Frequently Asked Questions. This lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular posting. Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and "What's that funny name for the `#' character?" are both Frequently Asked Questions. Several extant FAQ lists do (or should) make reference to the Jargon File (the on-line version of this lexicon).

:FAQL: /fa'kl/ n. Syn. {FAQ list}.

:farming: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. What the heads of a disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the magnetic media. Associated with a {crash}. Typically used as follows: "Oh no, the machine has just crashed; I hope the hard drive hasn't gone {farming} again."

:fascist: adj. 1. Said of a computer system with excessive or annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from getting interesting work done. The variant `fascistic' seems to have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with `touristic' (see {tourist}). 2. In the design of languages and other software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most restrictive and structured way of capturing a particular function; the implication is that this may be desirable in order to simplify the implementation or provide tighter error checking. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}, but that term is global rather than local.

:fat electrons: n. Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation of computer glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line current out of the big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. When the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean up, and use special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. Now, this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are heavier and so settle to the bottom of the generator. These flow down ordinary wires just fine, but when they have to turn a sharp corner (as in an integrated-circuit via) they're apt to get stuck. This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating. Obviously, fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon} absorption —- ESR] Compare {bogon}, {magic smoke}.

:faulty: adj. Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as {bletcherous}, {losing}, q.v., but the connotation is much milder.

:fd leak: /F-D leek/ n. A kind of programming bug analogous to a {core leak}, in which a program fails to close file descriptors (`fd's) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See {leak}.

:fear and loathing: [from Hunter Thompson] n. A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous —- Intel 8086s, or {COBOL}, or {{EBCDIC}}, or any {IBM} machine except the Rios (a.k.a. the RS/6000). "Ack! They want PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing time!"

:feature: n. 1. A good property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). 3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works better that way —- such an inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry for a classic example. 4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of Common LISP's `format' function is the ability to print numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats (see {bells, whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behavior that was put in to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. A bug that has been documented. To call something a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and that the program responded in a way that was unexpected but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. See also {feetch feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green lightning}.

The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange between two hackers on an airliner:

A: "This seat doesn't recline."

B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to be kept clear."

A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the spacing between rows here."

B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it would have been a wart —- they would've had to make nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced seats."

A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing."

B: "Indeed."

`Undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous euphemism for a {bug}.

:feature creature: [poss. fr. slang `creature feature' for a horror movie] n. 1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision, or {taste}. 2. Alternately, a semi-mythical being that induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also {feeping creaturism}, {creeping featurism}.

:feature key: n. The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower', `pretzel', `clover', `propeller', `beanie' (an apparent reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie), {splat}, or the `command key'. The Mac's equivalent of an {alt} key. The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one subtle peril of iconic interfaces.

Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St. Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark sites of historical interest. Many of these are old churches; hence, the Swedish idiom for the symbol is `kyrka', cognate to English `church' and Scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in modern Swedish. This is in fact where Apple got the symbol; they give the translation "interesting feature"!

:feature shock: [from Alvin Toffler's book title `Future Shock'] n. A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has too many features and poor introductory material.

:featurectomy: /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ n. The act of removing a feature from a program. Featurectomies come in two flavors, the `righteous' and the `reluctant'. Righteous featurectomies are performed because the remover believes the program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and better way to achieve the same end. (This is not quite the same thing as removing a {misfeature}.) Reluctant featurectomies are performed to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or execution speed.

:feep: /feep/ 1. n. The soft electronic `bell' sound of a display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to prefer {beep}). 2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: {beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip "Shoe", uses the word `eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term `breedle' was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for 5 seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also {ding}.

:feeper: /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the {feep} sound.

:feeping creature: [from {feeping creaturism}] n. An unnecessary feature; a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.

:feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ n. A deliberate spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn't really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.

:feetch feetch: /feech feech/ interj. If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of resignation, it means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done".

:fence: n. 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished ({out-of-band}) characters (or other data items), used to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel'). The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is a fence. Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way. See {zigamorph}. 2. [among users of optimizing compilers] Any technique, usually exploiting knowledge about the compiler, that blocks certain optimizations. Used when explicit mechanisms are not available or are overkill. Typically a hack: "I call a dummy procedure there to force a flush of the optimizer's register-coloring info" can be expressed by the shorter "That's a fence procedure".

:fencepost error: n. 1. A problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary condition. Often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?" Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10. For example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m + 1. A program that used the `obvious' formula would have a fencepost error in it. See also {zeroth} and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. Occasionally, an error induced by unexpectedly regular spacing of inputs, which can (for instance) screw up your hash table.

:fepped out: /fept owt/ adj. The Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine has a Front-End Processor called a `FEP' (compare sense 2 of {box}). When the main processor gets {wedged}, the FEP takes control of the keyboard and screen. Such a machine is said to have `fepped out'.

:FidoNet: n. A worldwide hobbyist network of personal computers which exchange mail, discussion groups, and files. Founded in 1984 and originally consisting only of IBM PCs and compatibles, FidoNet now includes such diverse machines as Apple ][s, Ataris, Amigas, and UNIX systems. Though it is much younger than {USENET}, FidoNet is already (in early 1991) a significant fraction of USENET's size at some 8000 systems.

:field circus: [a derogatory pun on `field service'] n. The field service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but especially DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus engineers:

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

[See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.]

There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the {plan file} for
DEC on MIT-AI):

Maynard! Maynard!
Don't mess with us!
We're mean and we're tough!
If you get us confused
We'll screw up your stuff.

(DEC's service HQ is located in Maynard, Massachusetts.)

:field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ n.
Representative of a field service organization (see {field
circus}). This has many of the implications of {droid}.

:Fight-o-net: [FidoNet] n. Deliberate distortion of {FidoNet},
often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular
{echo}, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see {'Snooze}).

:File Attach: [FidoNet] 1. n. A file sent along with a mail message
from one BBS to another. 2. vt. Sending someone a file by using
the File Attach option in a BBS mailer.

:File Request: [FidoNet] 1. n. The {FidoNet} equivalent of {FTP}, in which one BBS system automatically dials another and {snarf}s one or more files. Often abbreviated `FReq'; files are often announced as being "available for FReq" in the same way that files are announced as being "available for/by anonymous FTP" on the Internet. 2. vt. The act of getting a copy of a file by using the File Request option of the BBS mailer.

:file signature: n. A {magic number} sense 3.

:filk: /filk/ [from SF fandom, where a typo for `folk' was adopted as a new word] n.,v. A `filk' is a popular or folk song with lyrics revised or completely new lyrics, intended for humorous effect when read and/or to be sung late at night at SF conventions. There is a flourishing subgenre of these called `computer filks', written by hackers and often containing rather sophisticated technical humor. See {double bucky} for an example. Compare {hing} and {newsfroup}.

:film at 11: [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{{ITS}} crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11." 2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional information will be available at some future time, *without* the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event. For example, "The mail file server died this morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. Film at 11." would indicate that a major failure had occurred but the people working on it have no additional information about it. Use of the phrase in this way suggests gently people would appreciate it if users would quit bothering them and wait for the 11:00 news for additional information.

:filter: [orig. {{UNIX}}, now also in {{MS-DOS}}] n. A program that processes an input data stream into an output data stream in some well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else except possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a stage in a `pipeline' (see {plumbing}).

:Finagle's Law: n. The generalized or `folk' version of {Murphy's Law}, fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can go wrong, will". One variant favored among hackers is "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also {Hanlon's Razor}). The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this `Belter' culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.

:fine: [WPI] adj. Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}. The word `fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to the higher level implied by {cuspy}.

:finger: [WAITS, via BSD UNIX] 1. n. A program that displays a particular user or all users logged on the system or a remote system. Typically shows full name, last login time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal location (where applicable). May also display a {plan file} left by the user. 2. vt. To apply finger to a username. 3. vt. By extension, to check a human's current state by any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and see if she's idle." 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters) depicting `the finger'. Originally a humorous component of one's plan file to deter the curious fingerer (sense 2), it has entered the arsenal of some {flamer}s.

:finger-pointing syndrome: n. All-too-frequent result of bugs, esp. in new or experimental configurations. The hardware vendor points a finger at the software. The software vendor points a finger at the hardware. All the poor users get is the finger.

:finn: [IRC] v. To pull rank on somebody based on the amount of time one has spent on {IRC}. The term derives from the fact that IRC was originally written in Finland in 1987.

:firebottle: n. A large, primitive, power-hungry active electrical device, similar in function to a FET but constructed out of glass, metal, and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low density, low reliability, high-temperature operation, and high power dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the U.S. or a `valve' in England; another hackish term is {glassfet}.

:firefighting: n. 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I spent the whole afternoon fighting fires." 2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project, esp. to get it out before deadline. See also {gang bang}, {Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term `firefighting' connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than adding features.

:firehose syndrome: n. In mainstream folklore it is observed that
trying to drink from a firehose can be a good way to rip your lips
off. On computer networks, the absence or failure of flow control
mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending system
sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate receiving
system; more than it can handle. Compare {overrun}, {buffer
overflow}.

:firewall code: n. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone
switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since
users always want to be able to do everything but never want to
suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a
question not only of defensive coding but also of interface
presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those
corners of a system where they can burn themselves.

:firewall machine: n. A dedicated gateway machine with special security precautions on it, used to service outside network connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from {cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based UNIX box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and public network ports on it but just one carefully watched connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and even a complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}.

:fireworks mode: n. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.

:firmy: /fer'mee/ Syn. {stiffy} (a 3.5-inch floppy disk).

:fish: [Adelaide University, Australia] n. 1. Another {metasyntactic variable}. See {foo}. Derived originally from the Monty Python skit in the middle of "The Meaning of Life" entitled "Find the Fish". 2. A pun for `microfiche'. A microfiche file cabinet may be referred to as a `fish tank'.

:FISH queue: [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] n. `First In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out that processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has stopped dead. Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter may be applied to any network that is running really slowly or exhibiting extreme flakiness.

:FITNR: // [Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In the Next Release. A written-only notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful thinking.

:fix: n.,v. What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored.

:flag: n. A variable or quantity that can take on one of two values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done. "This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing the message." "The program status word contains several flag bits." Used of humans analogously to {bit}. See also {hidden flag}, {mode bit}.

:flag day: n. A software change that is neither forward- nor backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word {flag} to mean a variable that has two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}} timesharing system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also {backward combatability}.

:flaky: adj. (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent {lossage}. This use is of course related to the common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working, sort of —- enough that you are tempted to try to use it —- but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.

:flamage: /flay'm*j/ n. Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings to {USENET} or other electronic {fora}. Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. See {flame}.

:flame: 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).

USENETter Marc Ramsey, who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976, adds: "I am 99% certain that the use of `flame' originated at WPI. Those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use a TTY for `real work' came to be known as `flaming asshole lusers'. Other particularly annoying people became `flaming asshole ravers', which shortened to `flaming ravers', and ultimately `flamers'. I remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't think `flame on/off' was ever much used at WPI." See also {asbestos}.

The term may have been independently invented at several different places; it is also reported that `flaming' was in use to mean something like `interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions' (late-night bull sessions) at Carleton College during 1968—1971.

It's possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's `Troilus and Cressida', Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would be right at home on USENET.

:flame bait: n. A posting intended to trigger a {flame war}, or one that invites flames in reply.

:flame on: vi.,interj. 1. To begin to {flame}. The punning
reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely
recognized. 2. To continue to flame. See {rave}, {burble}.

:flame war: n. (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute,
especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as
{USENET}.

:flamer: n. One who habitually {flame}s. Said esp. of obnoxious
{USENET} personalities.

:flap: vt. 1. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap…). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and {microtape}s were 1, 2,… and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. 2. By extension, to unload any magnetic tape. See also {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many tape-eating failure modes.)

:flarp: /flarp/ [Rutgers University] n. Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). Among those who use it, it is associated with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs which *do* contain the magic word.

:flat: adj. 1. Lacking any complex internal structure. "That {bitty box} has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form is {flatten}. 2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear address space (typically with each possible value of a processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented designs are generally considered {cretinous}).

Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a {Good Thing}.

:flat-ASCII: adj. Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter or markup language, and no {meta}-characters). Syn. {plain-ASCII}. Compare {flat-file}.

:flat-file: adj. A {flatten}ed representation of some database or tree or network structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one in {flat-ASCII} form.

:flatten: vt. To remove structural information, esp. to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to {flat-ASCII}. "This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent {canonical} form."

:flavor: n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." See {vanilla}. 2. The attribute that causes something to be {flavorful}. Usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "This convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down." See {vanilla}. This usage was certainly reinforced by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) —- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.

:flavorful: adj. Full of {flavor}; esthetically pleasing. See {random} and {losing} for antonyms. See also the entries for {taste} and {elegant}.

:flippy: /flip'ee/ n. A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition of a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over for the second side to be accessible. No longer common.

:flood: [IRC] v. To dump large amounts of text onto an {IRC} channel. This is especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other users are trying to carry on a serious conversation.

:flowchart:: [techspeak] n. An archaic form of visual control-flow specification employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate them with {COBOL} programmers, {card walloper}s, and other lower forms of life. This is because (from a hacker's point of view) they are no easier to read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it or require extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code). See also {pdl}, sense 3.

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

:flush: v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [UNIX/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an `fflush(3)' call. This is *not* an abort or deletion as in sense 1, but a demand for early completion! 3. To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a person.

`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they can be printed. The UNIX/C usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the `fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers at DEC and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965). UNIX/C hackers find the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.

:flypage: /fli: payj/n. (alt. `fly page') A {banner}, sense 1.

:Flyspeck 3: n. Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by analogy with such names as `Helvetica 10' for 10-point Helvetica). Legal boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.

:flytrap: n. See {firewall machine}.

:FM: n. *Not* `Frequency Modulation' but rather an
abbreviation for `Fucking Manual', the back-formation from
{RTFM}. Used to refer to the manual itself in the {RTFM}.
"Have you seen the Networking FM lately?"

:FOAF: // [USENET] n. Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an unverified, possibly untrue story. This was not originated by hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is much better recognized on USENET and elsewhere than in mainstream English.

:FOD: /fod/ v. [Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name from fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with no regard for other people. From {MUD}s where the wizard command `FOD <player>' results in the immediate and total death of <player>, usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This migrated to other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is burning all the cycles." Compare {gun}.

In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens when a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in flight. Finger of Death is a distressingly apt description of what this does to the engine.

:fold case: v. See {smash case}. This term tends to be used more by people who don't mind that their tools smash case. It also connotes that case is ignored but case distinctions in data processed by the tool in question aren't destroyed.

:followup: n. On USENET, a {posting} generated in response to another posting (as opposed to a {reply}, which goes by email rather than being broadcast). Followups include the ID of the {parent message} in their headers; smart news-readers can use this information to present USENET news in `conversation' sequence rather than order-of-arrival. See {thread}.

:fontology: [XEROX PARC] n. The body of knowledge dealing with the construction and use of new fonts (e.g. for window systems and typesetting software). It has been said that fontology recapitulates file-ogeny.

[Unfortunately, this reference to the embryological dictum that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is not merely a joke. On the Macintosh, for example, System 7 has to go through contortions to compensate for an earlier design error that created a whole different set of abstractions for fonts parallel to `files' and `folders' —- ESR]

:foo: /foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of {metasyntactic variable}s used in syntax examples. See also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge}, {grault}, {garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}.

The etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. When used in connection with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later bowdlerized to {foobar}. (See also {FUBAR}).

However, the use of the word `foo' itself has more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons. The old "Smokey Stover" comic strips by Bill Holman often included the word `FOO', in particular on license plates of cars; allegedly, `FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!"; oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be related to the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").

It is even possible that hacker usage actually springs from `FOO, Lampoons and Parody', the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958; the byline read `C. Crumb' but the style of the art suggests this may well have been a sort-of pseudonym for noted weird-comix artist Robert Crumb. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. What the word meant to Mr. Crumb is anybody's guess.

An old-time member reports that in the 1959 `Dictionary of the
TMRC Language', compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that went
something like this:

FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME
HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.

For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}. Almost
the entire staff of what became the MIT AI LAB was involved with
TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.

Very probably, hackish `foo' had no single origin and derives
through all these channels from Yiddish `feh' and/or English
`fooey'.

:foobar: n. Another common {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo}.
Hackers do *not* generally use this to mean {FUBAR} in
either the slang or jargon sense.

:fool: n. As used by hackers, specifically describes a person who
habitually reasons from obviously or demonstrably incorrect
premises and cannot be persuaded by evidence to do otherwise; it is
not generally used in its other senses, i.e., to describe a person
with a native incapacity to reason correctly, or a clown. Indeed,
in hackish experience many fools are capable of reasoning all too
effectively in executing their errors. See also {cretin},
{loser}, {fool file, the}.

:fool file, the: [USENET] n. A notional repository of all the most
dramatically and abysmally stupid utterances ever. There is a
subgenre of {sig block}s that consists of the header "From the
fool file:" followed by some quote the poster wishes to represent
as an immortal gem of dimwittery; for this to be really effective,
the quote has to be so obviously wrong as to be laughable. More
than one USENETter has achieved an unwanted notoriety by being
quoted in this way.

:Foonly: n. 1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating system. The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC timesharing system SAIL was running to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the new operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10. 2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion. 3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained Foonly of its financial resources, and they turned towards building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately, these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX variant called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring individual attention from more than usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project cancellation in 1983 Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and the company never quite recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the continuation and moral of this story.

:footprint: n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware. 2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in plural, `footprints'). See also {toeprint}.

:for free: adj. Said of a capability of a programming language or hardware equipment that is available by its design without needing cleverness to implement: "In APL, we get the matrix operations for free." "And owing to the way revisions are stored in this system, you get revision trees for free." Usually it refers to a serendipitous feature of doing things a certain way (compare {big win}), but it may refer to an intentional but secondary feature.

:for the rest of us: [from the Mac slogan "The computer for the rest of us"] adj. 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very overpriced products. 2. Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not `confuse' a na"ive user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor lusers might not be able to handle them. Becomes `the rest of *them*' when used in third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash}, {point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}.

:for values of: [MIT] A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the canonical {random numbers} as placeholders for variables. "The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42." "There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50." This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realizes that it was not recognized as such, but even `non-random' numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 —- for small values of pi and large values of 3.

Historical note: this usage probably derives from the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an Algol-like language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-60s. It had a control structure FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO … that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that only works for arithmetic sequences of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in UNIX's shell languages).

:fora: pl.n. Plural of {forum}.

:foreground: [UNIX] vt. To foreground a task is to bring it to the top of one's {stack} for immediate processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks. "If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground writing up the design document."

Technically, on a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user; oppose {background}. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with {{UNIX}}, but it appears first to have been used in this sense on OS/360. Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a good way to {lose}.

:fork bomb: [UNIX] n. A particular species of {wabbit} that can be written in one line of C (`main {for(;;)fork;}') or shell (`$0 & $0 &') on any UNIX system, or occasionally created by an egregious coding bug. A fork bomb process `explodes' by recursively spawning copies of itself (using the UNIX system call `fork(2)'). Eventually it eats all the process table entries and effectively wedges the system. Fortunately, fork bombs are relatively easy to spot and kill, so creating one deliberately seldom accomplishes more than to bring the just wrath of the gods down upon the perpetrator. See also {logic bomb}.

:forked: [UNIX; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] adj. Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent {fork bomb}.

:Fortrash: /for'trash/ n. Hackerism for the FORTRAN language,
referring to its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax,
limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled
semantics.

:fortune cookie: [WAITS, via UNIX] n. A random quote, item of
trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or
(less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often
been used as fortune cookies. See {cookie file}.

:forum: n. [USENET, GEnie, CI$; pl. `fora' or `forums'] Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in {BBS}, a {mailing list}, or a {newsgroup} (see {network, the}). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users submit {posting}s for all to read and discussion ensues. Contrast real-time chat via {talk mode} or point-to-point personal {email}.

:fossil: n. 1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See {dusty deck}. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD} UNIX tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. In a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later {USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits. 3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software in preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do not support interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal} serial port programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video fossil'.

:four-color glossies: 1. Literature created by {marketroid}s that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally {content-free}. "Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.

:fragile: adj. Syn {brittle}.

:fred: n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike {J. Random Hacker} or `J. Random Loser', this name has no positive or negative loading (but see {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}). See also {barney}. 2. An acronym for `Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be substituted for `flipping'.

:frednet: /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some {random} and uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem."

:freeware: n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, {USENET}, or other electronic media. At one time, `freeware' was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See {shareware}.

:freeze: v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries the strong implication that the item in question will `unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll freeze for release."

There are more specific constructions on this. A `feature freeze', for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new features; a `code freeze' connotes no more changes at all. At Sun Microsystems and elsewhere, one may also hear references to `code slush' —- that is, an almost-but-not-quite frozen state.

:fried: adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical event. (Sometimes this literally happens to electronic circuits! In particular, resistors can burn out and transformers can melt down, emitting noxious smoke —- see {friode}, {SED} and {LER}. However, this term is also used metaphorically.) Compare {frotzed}. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put it in." Esp. common in conjunction with `brain': "My brain is fried today, I'm very short on sleep."

:friode: /fri:'ohd/ [TMRC] n. A reversible (that is, fused or blown) diode. Compare {fried}; see also {SED}, {LER}.

:fritterware: n. An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink}); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway.

:frob: /frob/ 1. n. [MIT] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a `frob' is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob. See {frobnitz}. 2. vt. Abbreviated form of {frobnicate}. 3. [from the {MUD} world] A command on some MUDs that changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also, to request {wizard} privileges on the `professional courtesy' grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. The command is actually `frobnicate' but is universally abbreviated to the shorter form.

:frobnicate: /frob'ni-kayt/ vt. [Poss. derived from {frobnitz}, and usually abbreviated to {frob}, but `frobnicate' is recognized as the official full form.] To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. One frequently frobs bits or other 2-state devices. Thus: "Please frob the light switch" (that is, flip it), but also "Stop frobbing that clasp; you'll break it". One also sees the construction `to frob a frob'. See {tweak} and {twiddle}. Usage: frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a continuum. `Frob' connotes aimless manipulation; `twiddle' connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; `tweak' connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it, he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen, he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. The variant `frobnosticate' has been recently reported.

:frobnitz: /frob'nits/, pl. `frobnitzem' /frob'nit-zm/ or `frobni' /frob'ni:/ [TMRC] n. An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to `frotz', or more commonly to {frob}. Also used are `frobnule' (/frob'n[y]ool/) and `frobule' (/frob'yool/). Starting perhaps in 1979, `frobozz' /fr*-boz'/ (plural: `frobbotzim' /fr*-bot'zm/) has also become very popular, largely through its exposure as a name via {Zork}. These can also be applied to nonphysical objects, such as data structures.

Pete Samson, compiler of the {TMRC} lexicon, adds, "Under the TMRC [railroad] layout were many storage boxes, managed (in 1958) by David R. Sawyer. Several had fanciful designations written on them, such as `Frobnitz Coil Oil'. Perhaps DRS intended Frobnitz to be a proper name, but the name was quickly taken for the thing". This was almost certainly the origin of the term.

:frog: alt. `phrog' 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. n. Of things, a crock. 4. n. Of people, somewhere in between a turkey and a toad. 5. `froggy': adj. Similar to `bagbiting' (see {bagbiter}), but milder. "This froggy program is taking forever to run!"

:frogging: [University of Waterloo] v. 1. Partial corruption of a text file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch, as opposed to random events like line noise or media failures. Might occur, for example, if one bit of each incoming character on a tty were stuck, so that some characters were correct and others were not. See {terminak} for a historical example. 2. By extension, accidental display of text in a mode where the output device emits special symbols or mnemonics rather than conventional ASCII. Often happens, for example, when using a terminal or comm program on a device like an IBM PC with a special `high-half' character set and with the bit-parity assumption wrong. A hacker sufficiently familiar with ASCII bit patterns might be able to read the display anyway.

:front end: n. 1. An intermediary computer that does set-up and filtering for another (usually more powerful but less friendly) machine (a `back end'). 2. What you're talking to when you have a conversation with someone who is making replies without paying attention. "Look at the dancing elephants!" "Uh-huh." "Do you know what I just said?" "Sorry, you were talking to the front end." See also {fepped out}. 3. Software that provides an interface to another program `behind' it, which may not be as user-friendly. Probably from analogy with hardware front-ends (see sense 1) that interfaced with mainframes.

:frotz: /frots/ 1. n. See {frobnitz}. 2. `mumble frotz': An interjection of very mild disgust.

:frotzed: /frotst/ adj. {down} because of hardware problems. Compare {fried}. A machine that is merely frotzed may be fixable without replacing parts, but a fried machine is more seriously damaged.

:frowney: n. (alt. `frowney face') See {emoticon}.

:fry: 1. vi. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware
failures. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never
said of software, only of hardware and humans. See {fried},
{magic smoke}. 2. vt. To cause to fail; to {roach}, {toast},
or {hose} a piece of hardware. Never used of software or humans,
but compare {fried}.

:FTP: /F-T-P/, *not* /fit'ip/ 1. [techspeak] n. The File
Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the
Internet. 2. vt. To {beam} a file using the File Transfer
Protocol. 3. Sometimes used as a generic even for file transfers
not using {FTP}. "Lemme get a copy of `Wuthering
Heights' ftp'd from uunet."

:FUBAR: n. The Failed UniBus Address Register in a VAX. A good example of how jargon can occasionally be snuck past the {suit}s; see {foobar}, and {foo} for a fuller etymology.

:fuck me harder: excl. Sometimes uttered in response to egregious misbehavior, esp. in software, and esp. of misbehaviors which seem unfairly persistent (as though designed in by the imp of the perverse). Often theatrically elaborated: "Aiighhh! Fuck me with a piledriver and 16 feet of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence *and no lubricants*!" The phrase is sometimes heard abbreviated `FMH' in polite company.

[This entry is an extreme example of the hackish habit of coining elaborate and evocative terms for lossage. Here we see a quite self-conscious parody of mainstream expletives that has become a running gag in part of the hacker culture; it illustrates the hackish tendency to turn any situation, even one of extreme frustration, into an intellectual game (the point being, in this case, to creatively produce a long-winded description of the most anatomically absurd mental image possible —- the short forms implicitly allude to all the ridiculous long forms ever spoken). Scatological language is actually relatively uncommon among hackers, and there was some controversy over whether this entry ought to be included at all. As it reflects a live usage recognizably peculiar to the hacker culture, we feel it is in the hackish spirit of truthfulness and opposition to all forms of censorship to record it here. —ESR & GLS]

:FUD: /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This was traditionally done by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See {IBM}.

:FUD wars: /fuhd worz/ n. [from {FUD}] Political posturing engaged in by hardware and software vendors ostensibly committed to standardization but actually willing to fragment the market to protect their own shares. The UNIX International vs. OSF conflict is but one outstanding example.

:fudge: 1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it —- I'll fix it later." 2. n. The resulting code.

:fudge factor: n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms `tolerance' and {slop} are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. A good example is the `fuzz' typically allowed in floating-point calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are frequently adjusted incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import. See also {coefficient of X}.

:fuel up: vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?" "Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a {great-wall}!" See also {{oriental food}}.

:fuggly: /fuhg'lee/ adj. Emphatic form of {funky}; funky + ugly). Unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. To say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken. Usage: humorous. "Man, the {{ASCII}}-to-{{EBCDIC}} code in that printer driver is *fuggly*." See also {wonky}.

:fum: [XEROX PARC] n. At PARC, often the third of the standard {metasyntactic variable}s (after {foo} and {bar}. Competes with {baz}, which is more common outside PARC.

:funky: adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. {TECO} and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they age. "The new mailer is installed, but is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no reason, try resubmitting it." "This UART is pretty funky. The data ready line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA mode." See {fuggly}.

:funny money: n. 1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit opposition to real or `green' money). In New Zealand and Germany the odd usage `paper money' has been recorded; in Gremany, the particularly amusing synonym `transfer rouble' commemmorates the worthlessness of the ex-USSR's currency. When your funny money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to small-scale black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension, phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: `real money'.

:fuzzball: [TCP/IP hackers] n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite of homebrewed software written by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators, used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol testbedding and experimentation. These were used as NSFnet backbone sites in its early 56KB-line days; a few are still active on the Internet as of early 1991, doing odd jobs such as network time service.

= G = =====

:G: [SI] pref.,suff. See {{quantifiers}}.

:gabriel: /gay'bree-*l/ [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and volleyball fanatic] n. An unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. Also, `pulling a Gabriel', `Gabriel mode'.

:gag: vi. Equivalent to {choke}, but connotes more disgust. "Hey, this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler gagged." See also {barf}.

:gang bang: n. The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a product in a short time. Though there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in Steven Levy's `Hackers'), most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in {orthogonal}ity. When market-driven managers make a list of all the features the competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, they often miss the importance of maintaining a coherent design. See also {firefighting}, {Mongolian Hordes technique}, {Conway's Law}.

:garbage collect: vi. (also `garbage collection', n.) See {GC}.

:garply: /gar'plee/ [Stanford] n. Another metasyntactic variable (see {foo}); once popular among SAIL hackers.

:gas: [as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. "The system's getting {wedged} every few minutes. Gas!" 3. vt. To {flush} (sense 1). "You should gas that old crufty software." 4. [IBM] n. Dead space in nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by data that has been deleted; the compression operation that removes it is called `degassing' (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term in vacuum technology). 5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a disk that has been clandestinely allocated against future need.

:gaseous: adj. Deserving of being {gas}sed. Disseminated by Geoff Goodfellow while at SRI; became particularly popular after the Moscone-Milk killings in San Francisco, when it was learned that the defendant Dan White (a politician who had supported Proposition 7) would get the gas chamber under Proposition 7 if convicted of first-degree murder (he was eventually convicted of manslaughter).

:GC: /G-C/ [from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect'] 1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is equivalent to {GFR}. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process.

`Garbage collection' is computer-science jargon for a particular class of strategies for dynamically reallocating computer memory. One such strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage collection.

In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} is more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself.

:GCOS:: /jee'kohs/ n. A {quick-and-dirty} {clone} of System/360 DOS that emerged from GE around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing. After the buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell, the name was changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as `God's Chosen Operating System', allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. All this might be of zero interest, except for two facts: (1) The GCOS people won the political war, and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell {{Multics}}, and (2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on UNIX. Some early UNIX systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to carry GCOS ID information was called the `GECOS field' and survives today as the `pw_gecos' member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information. GCOS later played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was itself ditched for UNIX in the late 1980s when Honeywell retired its aging {big iron} designs.

:GECOS:: /jee'kohs/ n. See {{GCOS}}.

:gedanken: /g*-don'kn/ adj. Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested. `Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term `gedanken experiment' is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because you can reason about it theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but you have to be careful. It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect of the real world in contructing your `apparatus'.

Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. It is said of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A `gedanken thesis' is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.

:geef: v. [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. {mung}. See also {blinkenlights}.

:geek out: vi. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek out for a moment." See {computer geek}.

:gen: /jen/ n.,v. Short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken and written contexts.

:gender mender: n. A cable connector shell with either two male or two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result when some {loser} didn't understand the RS232C specification and the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format. Also called `gender bender', `gender blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual adapter'; however, there appears to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual adapter' has pins on both sides (is male) or sockets on both sides (connects two males).

:General Public Virus: n. Pejorative name for some versions of the {GNU} project {copyleft} or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or {app}s incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's official position as of January 1991 is that copyright law limits the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted (as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton). Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of the version 2.00 license may eliminate this problem.

:generate: vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of {parse}. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (though often humorously) when used of human behavior. "The guy is rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."

:gensym: /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v. To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is `Gnnnn' where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name. These are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).

:Get a life!: imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see {computer geek}). Often heard on {USENET}, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of {theology} too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream currency around early 1992.

:Get a real computer!: imp. Typical hacker response to news that
somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that
(a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address
space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991; note that
the threshold for `real computer' rises with time, and it may well
be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be
generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that
they already are in some circles). See {essentials}, {bitty
box}, and {toy}.

:GFR: /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp
Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space
clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). Often
generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have
his phone number, but I guess I {GFR}ed it." See also
{prowler}, {reaper}. Compare {GC}, which discards only
provably worthless stuff.

:gig: /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {{quantifiers}}.

:giga-: /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:GIGO: /gi:'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' —- usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. 2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.

:gilley: [USENET] n. The unit of analogical bogosity. According to
its originator, the standard for one gilley was "the act of
bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines for a
day with the killing of one person". The milligilley has been
found to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.

:gillion: /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from {giga-} by analogy
with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an
American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces
this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or
soft `g'.

:GIPS: /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with {MIPS}] n.
Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of
Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). In 1991, this is used
of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected
to change. Compare {KIPS}.

:glark: /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January 1981 `Scientific American'). It is conjectured that hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was already an established jargon term. Compare {grok}, {zen}.

:glass: [IBM] n. Synonym for {silicon}.

:glass tty: /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (appendix A) for an interesting true story about a glass tty.

:glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn. {firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.

:glitch: /glich/ [from German `glitschen' to slip, via Yiddish `glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}). This is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say, "Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See {gritch}. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.

All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).

:glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the following:

* wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})

?
wildcard for any character (generally read this way only at
the beginning or in the middle of a word)

delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters

{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'

Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}.

Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the UNIX shell.

:glork: /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. vt. Similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked itself." See also {glark}.

:glue: n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that
connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue
Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything
used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.

:gnarly: /nar'lee/ adj. Both {obscure} and {hairy} in the
sense of complex. "{Yow!} —- the tuned assembler
implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but
less specific usage in surfer slang.

:GNU: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not UNIX!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, founder of USENET's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.

:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}. Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.

:go flatline: [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To {die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

:go root: [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.

:go-faster stripes: [UK] Syn. {chrome}.

:gobble: vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'. "The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer." "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also {snarf}.

:Godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this! 2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets.

:golden: adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.

:golf-ball printer: n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridians of latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a different golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time —- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.

:gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.

:gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.

:gonzo: /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but without the implication of obscurity or complexity.

:Good Thing: n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relaying netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad Thing}.

:gorilla arm: n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those {spiffy} touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized; hence `gorilla arm'. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in *real* use?".

:gorp: /gorp/ [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another {metasyntactic variable}, like {foo} and {bar}.

:GOSMACS: /goz'maks/ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] n. The first {EMACS}-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by {GNUMACS}. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author (James Gosling) went on to invent {NeWS}.

:Gosperism: /gos'p*r-izm/ A hack, invention, or saying by arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in {HAKMEM} are Gosperisms; see also {life}.

:gotcha: n. A {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it behaves in an unexpected way. For example, a classic gotcha in {C} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}' is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the value of `b' into `a' and then executes `code' if `a' is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was `if (a==b) {code;}', which executes `code' if `a' and `b' are equal.

:GPL: /G-P-L/ n. Abbrev. for `General Public License' in
widespread use; see {copyleft}.

:GPV: /G-P-V/ n. Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in
widespread use.

:grault: /grawlt/ n. Yet another {metasyntactic variable}, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See {corge}.

:gray goo: n. A hypothetical substance composed of {sagan}s of sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies of themselves out of whatever is available. The image that goes with the term is one of the entire biosphere of Earth being eventually converted to robot goo. This is the simplest of the {{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue goo}.

:Great Renaming: n. The {flag day} on which all of the non-local
groups on the {USENET} had their names changed from the net.-
format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.

:Great Runes: n. Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some
archaic operating systems still emit these. See also {runes},
{smash case}, {fold case}.

Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the Teletype Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER or all lower. The question was, which one to choose. A study was conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won; it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the letters are mangled or partly obscured. The results were filtered up through {management}. The chairman of Teletype killed the proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion:

"It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity correctly."

In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s. Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years.

:Great Worm, the: n. The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by {RTM}. This is a play on Tolkien (compare {elvish}, {Elder Days}). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anything before or since.

:great-wall: [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of N, which is the number of people in the group, can be inferred from context (see {N}). See {{oriental food}}, {ravs}, {stir-fried random}.

:Green Book: n. 1. One of the three standard {PostScript} references: `PostScript Language Program Design', bylined `Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN; 0-201-14396-8); see also {Red Book}, {Blue Book}, and the {White Book} (sense 2)). 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on SmallTalk: `Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice', by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983; QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with blue and red books). 3. The `X/Open Compatibility Guide'. Defines an international standard {{UNIX}} environment that is a proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book". 5. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCITT's tenth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1988 {Blue Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book titles}}.

:green bytes: n. (also `green words') 1. Meta-information embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting (ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were being debated and the diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things, green bytes describing the packing method for the image." Compare {out-of-band}, {zigamorph}, {fence} (sense 1).

:green card: n. [after the `IBM System/360 Reference Data' card] This is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if the color is not green. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can check the addressing mode for that instruction." Some green cards are actually booklets.

The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370 was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never to return. See also {card}.

:green lightning: [IBM] n. 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that `something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually *programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000 architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green lightning". See also {feature}.

:green machine: n. A computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform' paint used for military equipment.

:Green's Theorem: [TMRC] prov. For any story, in any group of people there will be at least one person who has not heard the story. [The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. —- ESR]

:grep: /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it, via {{UNIX}} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or set of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?" See also {vgrep}.

:grind: vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; {prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such operations. 2. [UNIX] To generate the formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source. The BSD program `vgrind(1)' grinds code for printing on a Versatec bitmapped printer. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind grind' excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"

:grind crank: n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and noise. See {grind} and {wugga wugga}.

Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind crank —- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button. This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and then keep on cranking.

:gripenet: [IBM] n. A wry (and thoroughly unoffical) name for IBM's internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in more formal channels.

:gritch: /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a {glitch}). 2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).

:grok: /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast {zen}, similar supernal understanding as a single brief flash. See also {glark}. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type these days."

:gronk: /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than `to {frob}'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go "grink, gronk".

:gronk out: vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."

:gronked: adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare {broken}, which means about the same as {gronk} used of hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in people.

:grovel: vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10 minutes now." Compare {grind} and {crunch}. Emphatic form: `grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find the command I wanted."

:grunge: /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is {dead code}.

:gubbish: /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?] n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.

:guiltware: /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of {freeware} decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money. 2. {Shareware} that works.

:gumby: /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters,
poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation character] n.
An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby
maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.

:gun: [ITS: from the `:GUN' command] vt. To forcibly
terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot
left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I
gunned it." Compare {can}.

:gunch: /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device
that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to
{mung}.

:gurfle: /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He
said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week.
Gurfle!" Compare {weeble}.

:guru: n. [UNIX] An expert. Implies not only {wizard} skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}.

:guru meditation: n. Amiga equivalent of `panic' in UNIX (sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic message "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" appears, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Generally a {guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto on a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04.

:gweep: /gweep/ [WPI] 1. v. To {hack}, usually at night. At WPI, from 1977 onwards, this often indicated that the speaker could be found at the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing the {PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20; the term has survived the demise of those technologies, however, and is still live in late 1991. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning" "I gweep from 8pm till 3am during the week." 2. n. One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep."

= H = =====

:h: [from SF fandom] infix. A method of `marking' common words, i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago. H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc.); this is prob. patterning on the original Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the fannish/counterculture h infix.

:ha ha only serious: [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, `Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. For further enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also {{Humor, Hacker}}, and {AI koans}.

:hack: 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed. 3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In an immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?" "I hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly equivalent to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I hack solid-state physics." 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See sense 2 and {hacker} (sense 5). 6. vi. To interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for {hacker}. 8. See {nethack}. 9. [MIT] v. To explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large, institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and (since this is usually performed at educational institutions) the Campus Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and {Zork}. See also {vadding}.

Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy hacking' (a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting among hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more on this totipotent term see "{The Meaning of `Hack'}". See also {neat hack}, {real hack}.

:hack attack: [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack' is reported] n. Nearly synonymous with {hacking run}, though the latter more strongly implies an all-nighter.

:hack mode: n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes amplified as `deep hack mode'.

Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in it is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace} (sense 2).

Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in {hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense 2) in your head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}.

:hack on: vt. To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
something one might {hack up}.

:hack together: vt. To throw something together so it will work.
Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not
necessarily have negative connotations.

:hack up: vt. To {hack}, but generally implies that the result is a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}. To `hack up on' implies a {quick-and-dirty} modification to an existing system. Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up}, {monkey up}, {cruft together}.

:hack value: n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for
expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being
that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had
features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were
installed purely for hack value. See {display hack} for one
method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be
explained. As a great artist once said of jazz: "If you hafta ask,
you ain't never goin' to find out."

:hack-and-slay: v. (also `hack-and-slash') 1. To play a {MUD}
or go mudding, especially with the intention of {berserking} for
pleasure. 2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking
session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace.
This term arose on the British academic network amongst students
who worked nights and logged onto Essex University's MUDs during
public-access hours (2 A.M. to 7 A.M.). Usually more
mudding than work was done in these sessions.

:hacked off: [analogous to `pissed off'] adj. Said of system
administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to
suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized
by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or
even overtly criminal activities. For example, having unreadable
files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot'
would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and
stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.

:hacked up: adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare {critical mass}). Not all programs that are hacked become `hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge better for the experience. Contrast {hack up}.

:hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIX hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. See {cracker}.

The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see {network, the} and {Internet address}). It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see {hacker ethic, the}.

It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled {bogus}). See also {wannabee}.

:hacker ethic, the: n. 1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. 2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally) accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and giving away free software. A few go further and assert that *all* information should be free and *any* proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the {GNU} project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But this principle at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also {samurai}). On this view, it is one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a {superuser} account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged —- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger team}.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as {USENET}, {Fidonet} and Internet (see {Internet address}) can function without central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.

:hacking run: [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard way' (see {phase}).

:Hacking X for Y: [ITS] n. The information ITS made publicly available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these fields were combined into a project description of the form "Hacking X for Y" (e.g., `"Hacking perceptrons for Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has since been carried over to other systems with more general facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s).

:Hackintosh: n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a
Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled
from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.

:hackish: /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said of
something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining to
hackers or the hacker subculture. See also {true-hacker}.

:hackishness: n. The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered mildly silly. Syn. {hackitude}.

:hackitude: n. Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier.

:hair: [back-formation from {hairy}] n. The complications that make something hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous' (tending to promote hair growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right." (or just: "Hair squared!")

:hairy: adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See also {hirsute}.

The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.

:HAKMEM: /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks memo'.) Some of them are very useful techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:

Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less than 2^18.

Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most *probable* suit distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered energy.

Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5 (that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and reflection.

Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1 with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops with period = 1 at -1, you are on a twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, not including the beginning, your machine isn't binary —- the pattern should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you are on a string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 = …111111. Now add X to itself: X + X = …111110 Thus, 2X = X - 1, so X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is two's-complement.

Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two representations are identical.

Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output occurs in the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA…. We note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a loop. An option to find overlapped instances would be useful, although it would require backing up N - 1 characters before seeking the next N-character string.

Note: This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press}
implementation. See also {banana problem}.

HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.

:hakspek: /hak'speek/ n. A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence, `for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to' become `2'; `ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no standard methods of communication. Has become rarer since. See also {talk mode}.

:hammer: vt. Commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}.

:hamster: n. 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel. 2. A tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a receiver on the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable. 3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.

:hand-hacking: n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s from an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {bum}, {by hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}. 2. More generally, manual construction or patching of data sets that would normally be generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by humans.

:handle: [from CB slang] n. An electronic pseudonym; a `nom de
guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity. Network and
BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment
and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term
was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of
{cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of
network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather
than invented legendry.

:hand-roll: [from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in
opposition to `ready-made', referring to cigarettes] v. To
perform a normally automated software installation or configuration
process {by hand}; implies that the normal process failed due to
bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional
in the local environment. "The worst thing about being a gateway
between four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail
configuration every time any of them upgrades."

:handshaking: n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate that they have heard each others' points and say "Oh, they're handshaking!". See also {protocol}.

:handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians] 1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"

If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly…" or "Obviously…" or "It is self-evident that…", it is a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you have said is {bogus}. Failing that, if a listener does object, you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand.

The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than words could express, that his logic is faulty.

:hang: v. 1. To wait for an event that will never occur. "The
system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive".
See {wedged}, {hung}. 2. To wait for some event to occur; to
hang around until something happens. "The program displays a menu
and then hangs until you type a character." Compare {block}.
3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang
off': "We're going to hang another tape drive off the file
server." Implies a device attached with cables, rather than
something that is strictly inside the machine's chassis.

:Hanlon's Razor: prov. A corollary of {Finagle's Law}, similar to
Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can
be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the
common title Hanlon's Razor is unknown; a similar epigram has been
attributed to William James. Quoted here because it seems to be a
particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in {fortune
cookie} files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial
networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of
environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people.

:happily: adv. Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some important fact about its environment, either because it has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of `happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily unaware that its output is going to /dev/null."

:haque: /hak/ [USENET] n. Variant spelling of {hack}, used only for the noun form and connoting an {elegant} hack.

:hard boot: n. See {boot}.

:hardcoded: adj. 1. Said of data inserted directly into a program, where it cannot be easily modified, as opposed to data in some {profile}, resource (see {de-rezz} sense 2), or environment variable that a {user} or hacker can easily modify. 2. In C, this is esp. applied to use of a literal instead of a `#define' macro (see {magic number}).

:hardwarily: /hard-weir'*-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily unreliable." The adjective `hardwary' is *not* traditionally used, though it has recently been reported from the U.K. See {softwarily}.

:hardwired: adj. 1. In software, syn. for {hardcoded}. 2. By extension, anything that is not modifiable, especially in the sense of customizable to one's particular needs or tastes.

:has the X nature: [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded in it truly has the {loser} nature!" See also {the X that can be Y is not the true X}.

:hash bucket: n. A notional receptacle into which more than one thing accessed by the same key or short code might be dropped. When you look up a name in the phone book (for example), you typically hash it by extracting its first letter; the hash buckets are the alphabetically ordered letter sections. This is used as techspeak with respect to code that uses actual hash functions; in jargon, it is used for human associative memory as well. Thus, two things `in the same hash bucket' may be confused with each other. "If you hash English words only by length, you get too many common grammar words in the first couple of hash buckets." Compare {hash collision}.

:hash collision: [from the technical usage] n. (var. `hash clash') When used of people, signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination, especially a persistent one (see {thinko}). True story: One of us [ESR] was once on the phone with a friend about to move out to Berkeley. When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the friend replied: "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women throwing Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in my hash tables." Compare {hash bucket}.

:hat: n. Common (spoken) name for the circumflex (`^', ASCII 1011110) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:HCF: /H-C-F/ n. Mnemonic for `Halt and Catch Fire', any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The MC6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to {toggle} a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it could; in some configurations this could actually cause lines to burn up.

:heads down: [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed. See also {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although it is not confined to fledgling hackers.

:heartbeat: n. 1. The signal emitted by a Level 2 Ethernet transceiver at the end of every packet to show that the collision-detection circuit is still connected. 2. A periodic synchronization signal used by software or hardware, such as a bus clock or a periodic interrupt. 3. The `natural' oscillation frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division down to the machine's clock rate. 4. A signal emitted at regular intervals by software to demonstrate that it is still alive. Sometimes hardware is designed to reboot the machine if it stops hearing a heartbeat. See also {breath-of-life packet}.

:heatseeker: [IBM] n. A customer who can be relied upon to always buy the latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member the {lunatic fringe}). A 1992 example of a heatseeker is someone who, owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, goes out and buys Windows 3.1 (which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). If all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be made by just fixing the bugs in each release (n) and selling it to them as release (n+1).

:heavy metal: [Cambridge] n. Syn. {big iron}.

:heavy wizardry: n. Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or language or complex application interface. Distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *theoretical* knowledge. Writing device drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in comments similar to "Heavy wizardry begins here …". Compare {voodoo programming}.

:heavyweight: adj. High-overhead; {baroque}; code-intensive; featureful, but costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup time. {EMACS} is a heavyweight editor; {X} is an *extremely* heavyweight window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one man's heavyweight is another's {elephantine} and a third's {monstrosity}. Oppose `lightweight'. Usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in the compound `heavyweight process'.

:heisenbug: /hi:'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from either {fandango on core} phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that {smash the stack}.

:Helen Keller mode: n. 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into {deep space}. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also {go flatline}, {catatonic}. 2. On IBM PCs under DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an {ill-behaved} application which bypasses the interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.

:hello, sailor!: interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of {hello, world}; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with the game {Zork} (which also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally from the traditional hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the boat, of course.

:hello, wall!: excl. See {wall}.

:hello, world: interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the C/UNIX universe. 2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this message. Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to write in a new environment is one that just prints "hello, world" to standard output (and indeed it is the first example program in {K&R}). Environments that generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which require a {hairy} compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to {lose} (see {X}). 3. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the {VAX} back up yet?"

:hex: n. 1. Short for {{hexadecimal}}, base 16. 2. A 6-pack of anything (compare {quad}, sense 2). Neither usage has anything to do with {magic} or {black art}, though the pun is appreciated and occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke, some hackers once offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as protective amulets against hostile magic. The chips were, of course, hex inverters.

:hexadecimal:: n. Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.

Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take `binary' to be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base 10, for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive' number; the corresponding term for base-16 would be something like `sendenary'. `Decimal' is from an ordinal number; the corresponding prefix for 6 would imply something like `sextidecimal'. The `sexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this context, and `hexa-' is Greek. The word `octal' is similarly incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with decimal), or `octonary' (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a base-3 computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented dilemma of a choice between two *correct* forms; both `ternary' and `trinary' have a claim to this throne.

:hexit: /hek'sit/ n. A hexadecimal digit (0—9, and A—F or a—f). Used by people who claim that there are only *ten* digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might seem to imply (see {space-cadet keyboard}).

:HHOK: See {ha ha only serious}.

:HHOS: See {ha ha only serious}.

:hidden flag: [scientific computation] n. An extra option added to a routine without changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for some otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a negative mass. Liberal use of hidden flags can make a program very hard to debug and understand.

:high bit: [from `high-order bit'] n. 1. The most significant bit in a byte. 2. By extension, the most significant part of something other than a data byte: "Spare me the whole {saga}, just give me the high bit." See also {meta bit}, {hobbit}, {dread high-bit disease}, and compare the mainstream slang `bottom line'.

:high moby: /hi:' mohb'ee/ n. The high half of a 512K
{PDP-10}'s physical address space; the other half was of course
the low moby. This usage has been generalized in a way that has
outlasted the {PDP-10}; for example, at the 1990 Washington D.C.
Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a miscommunication
resulted in two separate wakes being held in commemoration of the
shutdown of MIT's last {{ITS}} machines, the one on the upper
floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the `low moby'.
All parties involved {grok}ked this instantly. See {moby}.

:highly: [scientific computation] adv. The preferred modifier for
overstating an understatement. As in: `highly nonoptimal', the
worst possible way to do something; `highly nontrivial', either
impossible or requiring a major research project; `highly
nonlinear', completely erratic and unpredictable; `highly
nontechnical', drivel written for {luser}s, oversimplified to the
point of being misleading or incorrect (compare {drool-proof
paper}). In other computing cultures, postfixing of {in the
extreme} might be preferred.

:hing: // [IRC] n. Fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use among players of {initgame}. Compare {newsfroup}, {filk}.

:hirsute: adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for {hairy}.

:HLL: /H-L-L/ n. [High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants `VHLL' and `MLL' are found. VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level Language' and is used to describe a {bondage-and-discipline language} that the speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often called VHLLs. `MLL' stands for `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used half-jokingly to describe {C}, alluding to its `structured-assembler' image. See also {languages of choice}.

:hobbit: n. 1. The High Order Bit of a byte; same as the {meta bit} or {high bit}. 2. The non-ITS name of vad@ai.mit.edu (*Hobbit*), master of lasers.

:hog: n.,vt. 1. Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which noticeably degrade interactive response. *Not* used of programs that are simply extremely large or complex or that are merely painfully slow themselves (see {pig, run like a}). More often than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g., `memory hog', `core hog', `hog the processor', `hog the disk'. "A controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the bus-hog timer expires." 2. Also said of *people* who use more than their fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of the people use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how many people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem, they typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete.

:holy wars: [from {USENET}, but may predate it] n. {flame war}s over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} in connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included {EMACS} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, {{ITS}} vs. {{UNIX}}, {{UNIX}} vs. {VMS}, {BSD} UNIX vs. {USG UNIX}, {C} vs. {{Pascal}}, {C} vs. {LISP}, etc., ad nauseam. The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See also {theology}.

:home box: n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2 BSD, so there!"

:hook: n. A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use; setting the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in base 5. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible program might examine the variable and treat a value of 16 or less as the base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a {hairy} but powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as Roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the program through the hook. Often the difference between a good program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for future expansion of capabilities ({EMACS}, for example, is *all* hooks). The term `user exit' is synonymous but much more formal and less hackish.

:hop: n. One file transmission in a series required to get a file from point A to point B on a store-and-forward network. On such networks (including {UUCPNET} and {FidoNet}), the important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest path between them, rather than their geographical separation. See {bang path}.

:hose: 1. vt. To make non-functional or greatly degraded in performance. "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the system." See {hosed}. 2. n. A narrow channel through which data flows under pressure. Generally denotes data paths that represent performance bottlenecks. 3. n. Cabling, especially thick Ethernet cable. This is sometimes called `bit hose' or `hosery' (play on `hosiery') or `etherhose'. See also {washing machine}.

:hosed: adj. Same as {down}. Used primarily by UNIX hackers. Humorous: also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse. Probably derived from the Canadian slang `hoser' popularized by the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV. See {hose}. It is also widely used of people in the mainstream sense of `in an extremely unfortunate situation'.

Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodic difficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed. It was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of some coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and users were then assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. See also {dehose}.

:hot spot: n. 1. [primarily used by C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise. Such spikes are called `hot spots' and are good candidates for heavy optimization or {hand-hacking}. The term is especially used of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O operations. See {tune}, {bum}, {hand-hacking}. 2. The active location of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on the `ON' widget and click the left button." 3. A screen region that is sensitive to mouse clicks, which trigger some action. Hypertext help screens are an example, in which a hot spot exists in the vicinity of any word for which additional material is available. 4. In a massively parallel computer with shared memory, the one location that all 10,000 processors are trying to read or write at once (perhaps because they are all doing a {busy-wait} on the same lock).

:house wizard: [prob. from ad-agency lingo, `house freak'] n. A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of UNIX wizards. The term `house guru' is equivalent.

:HP-SUX: /H-P suhks/ n. Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's UNIX port, which eatures some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems). HP-UX is often referred to as `hockey-pux' inside HP, and one respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /H-P ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. Another such alternate spelling and pronunciation is "H-PUX" /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard to complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. Compare {AIDX}, {buglix}. See also {Nominal Semidestructor}, {Telerat}, {Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}, {terminak}.

:huff: v. To compress data using a Huffman code. Various programs that use such methods have been called `HUFF' or some variant thereof. Oppose {puff}. Compare {crunch}, {compress}.

:humma: // excl. A filler word used on various `chat' and `talk' programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say something. The word apparently originated (at least with this definition) on the MECC Timeshare System (MTS, a now-defunct educational time-sharing system running in Minnesota during the 1970s and the early 1980s) but was later sighted on early UNIX systems.

:Humor, Hacker:: n. A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers, having the following marked characteristics:

1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor having to do with confusion of metalevels (see {meta}). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her with "GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time).

2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such as specifications (see {write-only memory}), standards documents, language descriptions (see {INTERCAL}), and even entire scientific theories (see {quantum bogodynamics}, {computron}).

3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.

4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.

5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents of intelligence in it —- for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements of high camp and slapstick is especially favored.

6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See {has the X nature}, {Discordianism}, {zen}, {ha ha only serious}, {AI koans}.

See also {filk}, {retrocomputing}, and {appendix B}. If you have an itchy feeling that all 6 of these traits are really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and (b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though in a less marked form) throughout {{science-fiction fandom}}.

:hung: [from `hung up'] adj. Equivalent to {wedged}, but more common at UNIX/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with {locked up}, {wedged}; compare {hosed}. See also {hang}. A hung state is distinguished from {crash}ed or {down}, where the program or system is also unusable but because it is not running rather than because it is waiting for something. However, the recovery from both situations is often the same.

:hungry puppy: n. Syn. {slopsucker}.

:hungus: /huhng'g*s/ [perhaps related to slang `humongous'] adj. Large, unwieldy, usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a hungus set of modifications."

:hyperspace: /hi:'per-spays/ n. A memory location that is *far* away from where the program counter should be pointing, often inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "Another core dump —- looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow." (Compare {jump off into never-never land}.) This usage is from the SF notion of a spaceship jumping `into hyperspace', that is, taking a shortcut through higher-dimensional space —- in other words, bypassing this universe. The variant `east hyperspace' is recorded among CMU and Bliss hackers.

= I = =====

:I didn't change anything!: interj. An aggrieved cry often heard as bugs manifest during a regression test. The {canonical} reply to this assertion is "Then it works just the same as it did before, doesn't it?" See also {one-line fix}. This is also heard from applications programmers trying to blame an obvious applications problem on an unrelated systems software change, for example a divide-by-0 fault after terminals were added to a network. Usually, their statement is found to be false. Upon close questioning, they will admit some major restructuring of the program that shouldn't have broken anything, in their opinion, but which actually {hosed} the code completely.

:I see no X here.: Hackers (and the interactive computer games they write) traditionally favor this slightly marked usage over other possible equivalents such as "There's no X here!" or "X is missing." or "Where's the X?". This goes back to the original PDP-10 {ADVENT}, which would respond in this wise if you asked it to do something involving an object not present at your location in the game.

:i14y: // n. Abbrev. for `interoperability', with the `14' replacing fourteen letters. Used in the {X} (windows) community. Refers to portability and compatibility of data formats (even binary ones) between different programs or implementations of the same program on different machines.

:i18n: // n. Abbrev. for `internationali{z,s}ation', with the 18 replacing 18 letters. Used in the {X} (windows) community.

:IBM: /I-B-M/ Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-{infinite} number of even less complimentary expansions, including `International Business Machines'. See {TLA}. These abbreviations illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward the `industry leader' (see {fear and loathing}).

What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level isn't so much that they are underpowered and overpriced (though that does count against them), but that the designs are incredibly archaic, {crufty}, and {elephantine} … and you can't *fix* them —- source code is locked up tight, and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you've found them. With the release of the UNIX-based RIOS family this may have begun to change —- but then, we thought that when the PC-RT came out, too.

In the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this lexicon now includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within IBM's own beleaguered hacker underground.

:IBM discount: n. A price increase. Outside IBM, this derives from the common perception that IBM products are generally overpriced (see {clone}); inside, it is said to spring from a belief that large numbers of IBM employees living in an area cause prices to rise.

:ICBM address: n. (Also `missile address') The form used to register a site with the USENET mapping project includes a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy. This is actually used for generating geographically-correct maps of USENET links on a plotter; however, it has become traditional to refer to this as one's `ICBM address' or `missile address', and many people include it in their {sig block} with that name.

:ice: [coined by USENETter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to literally kill the intruder). Also, `icebreaker': a program designed for cracking security on a system. Neither term is in serious use yet as of mid-1991, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the future.

:idempotent: [from mathematical techspeak] adj. Acting exactly once. This term is often used with respect to {C} header files, which contain common definitions and declarations to be included by several source files. If a header file is ever included twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested #include files), compilation errors can result unless the header file has protected itself against multiple inclusion; a header file so protected is said to be idempotent. The term can also be used to describe an initialization subroutine which is arranged to perform some critical action exactly once, even if the routine is called several times.

:If you want X, you know where to find it.: There is a legend that Dennis Ritchie, inventor of {C}, once responded to demands for features resembling those of what at the time was a much more popular language by observing "If you want PL/1, you know where to find it." Ever since, this has been hackish standard form for fending off requests to alter a new design to mimic some older (and, by implication, inferior and {baroque}) one. The case X = {Pascal} manifests semi-regularly on USENET's comp.lang.c newsgroup. Indeed, the case X = X has been reported in discussions of graphics software (see {X}).

:ifdef out: /if'def owt/ v. Syn. for {condition out}, specific to {C}.

:ill-behaved: adj. 1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or computational method that tends to blow up because of accumulated roundoff error or poor convergence properties. 2. Software that bypasses the defined {OS} interfaces to do things (like screen, keyboard, and disk I/O) itself, often in a way that depends on the hardware of the machine it is running on or which is nonportable or incompatible with other pieces of software. In the IBM PC/MS-DOS world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to the effect that (owing to gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved. See also {bare metal}. Oppose {well-behaved}, compare {PC-ism}. See {mess-dos}.

:IMHO: // [from SF fandom via USENET; abbreviation for `In My Humble Opinion'] "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors —- and they look too Pascalish anyhow." Also seen in variant forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).

:Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: [USENET] prov. Since USENET first got off the ground in 1980-81, it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the {signal-to-noise ratio} of USENET has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the {S/N ratio} or the huge and steadily increasing volume.

:in the extreme: adj. A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for example, `obscure in the extreme' under {obscure}, and compare {highly}.

:incantation: n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that
one must mutter at a system to attain a desired result. Not used
of passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used
of tricks that are so poorly documented they must be learned from a
{wizard}. "This compiler normally locates initialized data
in the data segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they
will be forced into text space."

:include: vt. [USENET] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of
another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in a
reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response.
See the the discussion of inclusion styles under "Hacker
Writing Style". 2. [from {C}] `#include <disclaimer.h>'
has appeared in {sig block}s to refer to a notional `standard
{disclaimer} file'.

:include war: n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a discussion {thread}, a practice that tends to annoy readers. In a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as USENET, this can lead to {flame}s and the urge to start a {kill file}.

:indent style: [C programmers] n. The rules one uses to indent code in a readable fashion; a subject of {holy wars}. There are four major C indent styles, described below; all have the aim of making it easier for the reader to visually track the scope of control constructs. The significant variable is the placement of `{' and `}' with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and the guard or controlling statement (`if', `else', `for', `while', or `do') on the block, if any.

`K&R style' —- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples in {K&R} are formatted this way. Also called `kernel style' because the UNIX kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style' (abbrev. 1TBS) by its partisans. The basic indent shown here is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; four are occasionally seen, but are much less common.

if (cond) {
<body>
}

`Allman style' —- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who
wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called
`BSD style'). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol.
Basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is just
as common (esp. in C++ code).

if (cond)
{
<body>
}

`Whitesmiths style' —- popularized by the examples that came
with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent
per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is occasionally
seen.

if (cond)
{
<body>
}

`GNU style' —- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always
four spaces per level, with `{' and `}' halfway between the
outer and inner indent levels.

if (cond)
{
<body>
}

Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most common, with about equal mind shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly universal, but is now much less common (the opening brace tends to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an `if' or `while', which is a {Bad Thing}). Defenders of 1TBS argue that any putative gain in readability is less important than their style's relative economy with vertical space, which enables one to see more code on one's screen at once. Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of {holy wars}.

:index: n. See {coefficient of X}.

:infant mortality: n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since power-up (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as `infant mortality' problems (or, occasionally, as `sudden infant death syndrome'). See {bathtub curve}, {burn-in period}.

:infinite: adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very loosely as in: "This program produces infinite garbage." "He is an infinite loser." The word most likely to follow `infinite', though, is {hair} (it has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair). These uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. The term `semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard. "This compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my program." See also {semi}.

:infinite loop: n. One that never terminates (that is, the machine {spin}s or {buzz}es forever and goes {catatonic}). There is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine: "The Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2 seconds!"

:infinity: n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever). 2. `minus infinity': The smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus infinity. In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2^(N-1) - 1 but minus infinity is - (2^(N-1)), not -(2^(N-1) - 1). Note also that this is different from "time T equals minus infinity", which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.

:initgame: /in-it'gaym/ [IRC] n. An {IRC} version of the venerable trivia game "20 questions", in which one user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a 4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. For example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive, Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can be surprisingly addictive. See also {hing}.

:insanely great: adj. [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD UNIX people via Bill Joy] Something so incredibly {elegant} that it is imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of {hacker}-natures.

:INTERCAL: /in't*r-kal/ [said by the authors to stand for `Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym'] n. A computer language designed by Don Woods and James Lyon in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear:

It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:

DO :1 <- #0$#256

any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.

INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and … appreciation of the language on USENET.

:interesting: adj. In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Oppose {trivial}, {uninteresting}.

:Internet address:: n. 1. [techspeak] An absolute network address of the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a {sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. Contrast with {bang path}; see also {network, the} and {network address}. All Internet machines and most UUCP sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a large amount of behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written since 1980 or so. See also {bang path}, {domainist}. 2. More loosely, any network address reachable through Internet; this includes {bang path} addresses and some internal corporate and government networks.

Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed by a selection of geographical domains:

com
commercial organizations
edu
educational institutions
gov
U.S. government civilian sites
mil
U.S. military sites

Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in
the U.S. or Canada.

us
sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains
su
sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see {kremvax}).
uk
sites in the United Kingdom

Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.

:interrupt: 1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also {trap}. 2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker. Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt —- have you seen Joe recently?" See {priority interrupt}. 3. Under MS-DOS, the term `interrupt' is nearly synonymous with `system call', because the OS and BIOS routines are both called using the INT instruction (see {{interrupt list, the}}) and because programmers so often have to bypass the OS (going directly to a BIOS interrupt) to get reasonable performance.

:interrupt list, the:: [MS-DOS] n. The list of all known software interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for IBM PCs and compatibles, maintained and made available for free redistribution by Ralf Brown <ralf@cs.cmu.edu>. As of early 1991, it had grown to approximately a megabyte in length.

:interrupts locked out: adj. When someone is ignoring you. In a restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's attention, a hacker might well observe "She must have interrupts locked out". The synonym `interrupts disabled' is also common. Variations abound; "to have one's interrupt mask bit set" and "interrupts masked out" is also heard. See also {spl}.

:IRC: /I-R-C/ [Internet Relay Chat] n. A world-wide "party line" network that allows one to converse with others in real time. IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers, each of which accepts connections from client programs, one per user. The IRC community and the {USENET} and {MUD} communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some USENET jargon has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as {emoticon}s. There is also a vigorous native jargon, represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'. See also {talk mode}.

:iron: n. Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of {mainframe} class with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the phrase {big iron}. Oppose {silicon}. See also {dinosaur}.

:Iron Age: n. In the history of computing, 1961—1971 —- the formative era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when {big iron} {dinosaur}s ruled the earth. These began with the delivery of the first PDP-1, coincided with the dominance of ferrite {core}, and ended with the introduction of the first commercial microprocessor (the Intel 4004) in 1971. See also {Stone Age}; compare {elder days}.

:iron box: [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap a {cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough to be traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the cracker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep him interested and logged on. See also {back door}, {firewall machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's account in `{The Cuckoo's Egg}' of how he made and used one (see the Bibliography in appendix C). Compare {padded cell}.

:ironmonger: [IBM] n. Derogatory. A hardware specialist. Compare {sandbender}, {polygon pusher}.

:ITS:: /I-T-S/ n. 1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an influential but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much AI-hacker jargon derives from ITS folklore, and to have been `an ITS hacker' qualifies one instantly as an old-timer of the most venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations, including transparent file sharing between machines and terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see {high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is maintaining one `live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use (however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). See {appendix A}. 2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking that supported only monocase 6-character filenames in one directory per account remains superior to today's state of commercial art (their venom against UNIX is particularly intense). See also {holy wars}, {Weenix}.

:IWBNI: // [abbreviation] `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare {WIBNI}.

:IYFEG: // [USENET] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to avoid offending anyone. See {JEDR}.

= J = =====

:J. Random: /J rand'm/ n. [generalized from {J. Random Hacker}] Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; any old. `J. Random' is often prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly `some particular' or `any specific one'. "Would you let J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most common uses are `J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser', and `J. Random Nerd' ("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to {gun} down other people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of {random} in any sense.

:J. Random Hacker: [MIT] /J rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See {random}, {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been inspired by `J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of {TMRC}, and was probably influenced by `J. Presper Eckert' (one of the co-inventors of the digital computer).

:jack in: v. To log on to a machine or connect to a network or {BBS}, esp. for purposes of entering a {virtual reality} simulation such as a {MUD} or {IRC} (leaving is "jacking out"). This term derives from {cyberpunk} SF, in which it was used for the act of plugging an electrode set into neural sockets in order to interface the brain directly to a virtual reality. It's primarily used by MUD & IRC fans and younger hackers on BBS systems.

:jaggies: /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).

:JCL: /J-C-L/ n. 1. IBM's supremely {rude} Job Control Language. JCL is the script language used to control the execution of programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very {fascist} syntax, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if two spaces appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names. Someone who actually understands and generates unique JCL is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at IBM itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme to express their opinion of the beast. 2. A comparative for any very {rude} software that a hacker is expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As with {COBOL}, JCL is often used as an archetype of ugliness even by those who haven't experienced it. See also {IBM}, {fear and loathing}.

:JEDR: // n. Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR' instead of {IYFEG} or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was {retcon}ned by the expanding these initials as `Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise. JEDR's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit `sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection.

:JFCL: /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt. `jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag set and then CLear the flag"; this does something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one of the jargon-1 co-authors, had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW for years. Usage: rare except among old-time PDP-10 hackers.

:jiffy: n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the computer (see {tick}). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. 2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond {wall time} interval. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to one *nanosecond*. 3. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose {nano}. See also {Real Soon Now}.

:job security: n. When some piece of code is written in a particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by making himself indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a section and says "job security", the other one may just nod.

:jock: n. 1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute-force programs. See {brute force}. 2. When modified by another noun, describes a specialist in some particular computing area. The compounds `compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be the best-established examples of this.

:joe code: /joh' kohd`/ n. 1. Code that is overly {tense} and unmaintainable. "{Perl} may be a handy program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code." 2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.

Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a
particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed
that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code'
was intended in sense 1.

:jolix: n. /johl'liks/ n.,adj. 386BSD, the freeware port of the BSD Net/2 release to the Intel i386 architecture by Bill Jolitz and friends. Used to differentiate from BSDI's port based on the same source tape, which is called BSD/386. See {BSD}.

:JR[LN]: /J-R-L/, /J-R-N/ n. The names JRL and JRN were sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID used under {{TOPS-10}} and {WAITS}; they were understood to be the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Loser' and `J. Random Nerd' (see {J. Random}). For example, if one said "To log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is, "log 1,JRN"), the listener would have understood that he should use his own computer ID in place of `JRN'.

:JRST: /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v.,obs. To suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the previous topic. Usage: rather rare except among PDP-10 diehards, and considered silly. See also {AOS}.

:juggling eggs: vi. Keeping a lot of {state} in your head while modifying a program. "Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs", means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic first-contact SF novel `The Mote in God's Eye', by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See also {hack mode}.

:jump off into never-never land: [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter Pan'] v. Same as {branch to Fishkill}, but more common in technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers that use the term `jump' rather than `branch'. Compare {hyperspace}.

:jupiter: [IRC] vt. To kill an {IRC} {robot} or user, and then take its place by adopting its {nick} so that it cannot reconnect. Named after a particular IRC user who did this to NickServ, the robot in charge of preventing people from inadvertently using a nick claimed by another user.

= K = =====

:K: /K/ [from {kilo-}] n. A kilobyte. This is used both as a spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for megabyte and gigabyte). See {{quantifiers}}.

:K&R: [Kernighan and Ritchie] n. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's book `The C Programming Language', esp. the classic and influential first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-113-110163-3). Syn. {White Book}, {Old Testament}. See also {New Testament}.

:K-line: [IRC] v. To ban a particular person from an {IRC} server, usually for grossly bad {netiquette}. Comes from the `K' code used to accomplish this in IRC's configuration file.

:kahuna: /k*-hoo'nuh/ [IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n. Synonym for {wizard}, {guru}.

:kamikaze packet: n. The `official' jargon for what is more commonly called a {Christmas tree packet}. RFC-1025, `TCP and IP Bake Off' says:

10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze" packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.). That is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options and data).

See also {Chernobyl packet}.

:kangaroo code: n. Syn. {spaghetti code}.

:ken: /ken/ n. 1. [UNIX] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of UNIX. In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read "Love, ken". Old-timers still use his first name (sometimes uncapitalized, because it's a login name and mail address) in third-person reference; it is widely understood (on USENET, in particular) that without a last name `Ken' refers only to Ken Thompson. Similarly, Dennis without last name means Dennis Ritchie (and he is often known as dmr). See also {demigod}, {{UNIX}}. 2. A flaming user. This was originated by the Software Support group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the user community were both named Ken.

:kgbvax: /K-G-B'vaks/ n. See {kremvax}.

:KIBO: /kee'boh/ [acronym] Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. A summary of what happens whenever valid data is passed through an organization (or person) which deliberately or accidentally disregards or ignores its significance. Consider, for example, what advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}.

:kick: [IRC] v. To cause somebody to be removed from a {IRC} channel, an option only available to {CHOP}s. This is an extreme measure, often used to combat extreme {flamage} or {flood}ing, but sometimes used at the chop's whim.

:kill file: [USENET] n. (alt. `KILL file') Per-user file(s) used by some {USENET} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's `rn(1)') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in other media. See also {plonk}.

:killer micro: [popularized by Eugene Brooks] n. A microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack of the killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. Used esp. of RISC architectures.

The popularity of the phrase `attack of the killer micros' is doubtless reinforced by the movie title "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" (one of the {canonical} examples of so-bad-it's-wonderful among hackers). This has even more flavor now that killer micros have gone on the offensive not just individually (in workstations) but in hordes (within massively parallel computers).

:killer poke: n. A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) in a memory-mapped control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore PET) that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. See also {HCF}.

:kilo-: [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:KIPS: /kips/ [abbreviation, by analogy with {MIPS} using {K}] n. Thousands (*not* 1024s) of Instructions Per Second. Usage: rare.

:KISS Principle: /kis' prin'si-pl/ n. "Keep It Simple, Stupid". A maxim often invoked when discussing design to fend off {creeping featurism} and control development complexity. Possibly related to the {marketroid} maxim on sales presentations, "Keep It Short and Simple".

:kit: [USENET; poss. fr. DEC slang for a full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] n. A source software distribution that has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only standard UNIX tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain of references from the top-level {README file}. The more general term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are required.

:klone: /klohn/ n. See {clone}, sense 4.

:kludge: /kluhj/ n. Common (but incorrect) variant of {kluge}, q.v.

:kluge: /klooj/ [from the German `klug', clever] 1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. (A long-ago `Datamation' article by Jackson Granholme said: "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.") 2. n. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often involves {ad-hockery} and verges on being a {crock}. In fact, the TMRC Dictionary defined `kludge' as "a crock that works". 3. n. Something that works for the wrong reason. 4. vt. To insert a kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way." 5. [WPI] n. A feature that is implemented in a {rude} manner.

Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling `kludge'. Reports from {old fart}s are consistent that `kluge' was the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of *hardware* kluges. In 1947, the `New York Folklore Quarterly' reported a classic shaggy-dog story `Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the Armed Forces, in which a `kluge' was a complex and puzzling artifact with a trivial function.

However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a device called a "Kluge paper feeder" dating back at least to 1935, an adjunct to mechanical printing presses. The Kluge feeder was designed before small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to both power and synchronize all its operations from one motive driveshaft. It was accordingly tempermental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair —- but oh, so clever! One traditional folk etymology of `kluge' makes it the name of a design engineer; in fact, `Kluge' is a surname in German, and the designer of the Kluge feeder may well have been the man behind this myth.

The variant `kludge' was apparently popularized by the {Datamation} article mentioned above; it was titled "How to Design a Kludge" (February 1962, pages 30 and 31). Some people who encountered the word first in print or on-line jumped to the reasonable but incorrect conclusion that the word should be pronounced /kluhj/ (rhyming with `sludge'). The result of this tangled history is a mess; in 1991, many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word correctly as /klooj/ but spell it incorrectly as `kludge' (compare the pronunciation drift of {mung}). Some observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning.

:kluge around: vt. To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a {kluge}. Compare {workaround}.

:kluge up: vt. To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than {cruft together} and has some of the connotations of {hack up} (note, however, that the construction `kluge on' corresponding to {hack on} is never used). "I've kluged up this routine to dump the buffer contents to a safe place."

:Knights of the Lambda Calculus: n. A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which LISP is intimately connected. There is no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known to give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who they are….

:Knuth: /nooth/ [Donald E. Knuth's `The Art of Computer Programming'] n. Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: "I think you can find that in Knuth." Contrast {literature, the}. See also {bible}.

:kremvax: /krem-vaks/ [from the then large number of {USENET} {VAXen} with names of the form foovax] n. Originally, a fictitious USENET site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}. This was probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on USENET (which has negligible security against them), because the notion that USENET might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time.

In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in Moscow, demos.su, joined USENET. Some readers needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he *was* a hoax!

Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site *named* kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth and demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [Mr. Antonov also contributed the Russian-language material for this lexicon. —- ESR]

In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings included immediate transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's streets. In those hours, years of speculation that totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking were proved devastatingly accurate —- and the original kremvax joke became a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of `glasnost' and `perestroika' made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to the West.

:kyrka: /shir'k*/ n. See {feature key}.

= L = =====

:lace card: n. obs. A {{punched card}} with all holes punched (also called a `whoopee card'). Card readers tended to jam when they got to one of these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying to produce these things owing to power-supply problems. When some practical joker fed a lace card through the reader, you needed to clear the jam with a `card knife' —- which you used on the joker first.

:language lawyer: n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there". Compare {wizard}, {legal}, {legalese}.

:languages of choice: n. {C} and {LISP}. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities.

There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as {real programmer}s, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming.

Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {{Pascal}} and {{Ada}}, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {COBOL} or other traditional {card walloper} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}.

:larval stage: n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also {wannabee}. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {OS} or programming language.

:lase: /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right things."

:laser chicken: n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: It can {zap} you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams.

In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as `Chernobyl Chicken'. The name is derived from the color of the sauce, which is considered bright enough to glow in the dark (as, mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl).

:Lasherism: [Harvard] n. A program which solves a standard problem (such as the Eight Queens puzzle or implementing the {life} algorithm) in a deliberately nonstandard way. Distinguished from a {crock} or {kluge} by the fact that the programmer did it on purpose as a mental exercise. Lew Lasher was a student at Harvard around 1980 who became notorious for such behavior.

:laundromat: n. Syn. {disk farm}; see {washing machine}.

:LDB: /l*'d*b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract from the middle. "LDB me a slice of cake, please." This usage has been kept alive by Common LISP's function of the same name. Considered silly. See also {DPB}.

:leaf site: n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET news or mail, and does not relay any third-party traffic. Often uttered in a critical tone; when the ratio of leaf sites to backbone, rib, and other relay sites gets too high, the network tends to develop bottlenecks. Compare {backbone site}, {rib site}.

:leak: n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations on them are finished, so they effectively disappear (leak out). This leads to eventual exhaustion as new allocation requests come in. {memory leak} and {fd leak} have their own entries; one might also refer, to, say, a `window handle leak' in a window system.

:leaky heap: [Cambridge] n. An {arena} with a {memory leak}.

:legal: adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the relevant rules', esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of `natural laws' to achieve a desired objective. Their use of `legal' is flavored as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare {language lawyer}, {legalese}.

:legalese: n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a {language lawyer} to {parse} it. Though hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception, {suit}s, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end of the stick.

:LER: /L-E-R/ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] n. A
light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning
up). Ohm's law was broken. See {SED}.

:LERP: /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a
verb or noun for the operation. E.g., Bresenham's algorithm lerps
incrementally between the two endpoints of the line.

:let the smoke out: v. To fry hardware (see {fried}). See {magic smoke} for the mythology behind this.

:letterbomb: n. A piece of {email} containing {live data} intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that the user must cycle power (see {cycle}, sense 3) to unwedge them. Under UNIX, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this could range from silly to tragic. See also {Trojan horse}; compare {nastygram}.

:lexer: /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for `lexical analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like `=-'."

:lexiphage: /lek'si-fayj`/ n. A notorious word {chomper} on ITS. See {bagbiter}.

:life: n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (`Scientific American', October 1970); the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand. Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with it, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented life in {TECO}!; see {Gosperism}). When a hacker mentions `life', he is much more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. 2. The opposite of {USENET}. As in {Get a life!}

:Life is hard: [XEROX PARC] prov. This phrase has two possible interpretations: (1) "While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though I hadn't heard it." (2) "While your suggestion has obvious merit, equally obvious circumstances prevent it from being seriously considered." The charm of the phrase lies precisely in this subtle but important ambiguity.

:light pipe: n. Fiber optic cable. Oppose {copper}.

:lightweight: adj. Opposite of {heavyweight}; usually found in combining forms such as `lightweight process'.

:like kicking dead whales down the beach: adj. Describes a slow,
difficult, and disgusting process. First popularized by a famous
quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of IBM's
mainframe OSes. "Well, you *could* write a C compiler in
COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the beach."
See also {fear and loathing}

:like nailing jelly to a tree: adj. Used to describe a task thought
to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from
poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain.
"Trying to display the `prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs
that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree,
because nobody's sure what `prettiest' means algorithmically."

:line 666: [from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notational line of source at which a program fails for obscure reasons, implying either that *somebody* is out to get it (when you are the programmer), or that it richly deserves to be so gotten (when you are not). "It works when I trace through it, but seems to crash on line 666 when I run it." "What happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf dies on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit hardcoded a buffer size."

:line eater, the: [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called the `line eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater food'. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there *was* a space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the food *and* the beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting. The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater' continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the wall}, and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself is still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways. 2. See {NSA line eater}.

:line noise: n. 1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to
electrical noise in a communications link, especially an RS-232
serial connection. Line noise may be induced by poor connections,
interference or crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms,
{cosmic rays}, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone
wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like
the results of line noise in sense 1. 3. Text that is
theoretically a readable text or program source but employs syntax
so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1 or 2. Yes,
there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is {TECO};
it is often claimed that "TECO's input syntax is indistinguishable
from line noise." Other non-{WYSIWYG} editors, such as Multics
`qed' and Unix `ed', in the hands of a real hacker, also
qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
{INTERCAL}.

:line starve: [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this). On a display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen. "To print `X squared', you just output `X', line starve, `2', line feed." (The line starve causes the `2' to appear on the line above the `X', and the line feed gets back to the original line.) 2. n. A character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to perform this action. ASCII 0011010, also called SUB or control-Z, was one common line-starve character in the days before microcomputers and the X3.64 terminal standard. Unlike `line feed', `line starve' is *not* standard {{ASCII}} terminology. Even among hackers it is considered a bit silly. 3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c (used in System V echo, as well as nroff/troff) that suppresses a {newline} or other character(s) that would normally be emitted.

:link farm: [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to files in a master directory tree of files. Link farms save space when (for example) one is maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source tree, e.g., when the only difference is architecture-dependent object files. "Let's freeze the source and then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of `-I' (include-file directory) arguments on older C preprocessors. However, they can also get completely out of hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of {spaghetti code}.

:link-dead: [MUD] adj. Said of a {MUD} character who has frozen in place because of a dropped Internet connection.

:lint: [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named for the bits of fluff it picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the UNIX utility `lint(1)' is used. This term used to be restricted to use of `lint(1)' itself, but (judging by references on USENET) it has become a shorthand for {desk check} at some non-UNIX shops, even in languages other than C. Also as v. {delint}. 2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as in "this draft has too much lint".

:lion food: [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension,
administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two
lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their
chances but agreed to meet after 2 months. When they finally
meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says:
"How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out
a small army to chase me —- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since
then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." The
fat one replies: "Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and ate a
manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"

:Lions Book: n. `Source Code and Commentary on UNIX level 6', by John Lions. The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire source listing of the UNIX Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on the source discussing the algorithms. These were circulated internally at the University of New South Wales beginning 1976—77, and were for years after the *only* detailed kernel documentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs. Because Western Electric wished to maintain trade secret status on the kernel, the Lions book was never formally published and was only supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees. In spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of the early UNIX hackers.

:LISP: [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] n. The name of AI's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is actually older than any other {HLL} still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in detail from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s, LISP now shares the throne with {C}. See {languages of choice}.

All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values; this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing".

One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example that most newer languages, such as {COBOL} and {Ada}, are full of unnecessary {crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already been done once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer languages.

:literature, the: n. Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes is {trivial}. Thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." Oppose {Knuth}, which has no connotation of triviality.

:little-endian: adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). The PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot of communications and networking hardware are little-endian. See {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. The term is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often these are bits within a byte.

:live data: n. 1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes over program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such as viewing it. One use of such hacks is to break security. For example, some smart terminals have commands that allow one to download strings to program keys; this can be used to write live data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a security-breaking {virus} that is triggered the next time a hapless user strikes that key. For another, there are some well-known bugs in {vi} that allow certain texts to send arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed. 2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s (executable code). 3. An object, such as a {trampoline}, that is constructed on the fly by a program and intended to be executed as code. 4. Actual real-world data, as opposed to `test data'. For example, "I think I have the record deletion module finished." "Have you tried it out on live data?" It usually carries the connotation that live data is more fragile and must not be corrupted, else bad things will happen. So a possible alternate response to the above claim might be: "Well, make sure it works perfectly before we throw live data at it." The implication here is that record deletion is something pretty significant, and a haywire record-deletion module running amok on live data would cause great harm and probably require restoring from backups.

:Live Free Or Die!: imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which appears on that state's automobile license plates. 2. A slogan associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the windmills of industry. The "free" referred specifically to freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and crufty misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. Armando Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to give out fake license plates bearing this motto under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items.

:livelock: /li:v'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. Differs from {deadlock} in that the process is not blocked or waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up.

:liveware: /li:v'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad…"

:lobotomy: n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a joke. 2. The act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form —- everything but the brain.

:locked and loaded: [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use —- that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads are `loaded' whenever the power is up, this description is never used of {{Winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle).

:locked up: adj. Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.

:logic bomb: n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare {back door}.

:logical: [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] adj. Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the `logical' Les Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the replacement.) Compare {virtual}.

At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate system in which `logical north' is toward San Francisco, `logical west' is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between physical (true) north near San Francisco and physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-and-south.) In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco restaurant, get onto {El Camino Bignum} going logical north." Using the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The concept is reinforced by North American highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labeled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT: Route 128 (famous for the electronics industry that has grown up along it) is a 3-quarters circle surrounding Boston at a radius of 10 miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and `counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. A hacker might describe these directions as `logical north' and `logical south', to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those words. (If you went logical south along the entire length of route 128, you would start out going northwest, curve around to the south, and finish headed due east, including one infamous stretch of pavement which is simultaneously route 128 south and Interstate 93 north, and is signed as such!)

:loop through: vt. To process each element of a list of things. "Hold on, I've got to loop through my paper mail." Derives from the computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr down' (under {cdr}), which is less common among C and UNIX programmers. ITS hackers used to say `IRP over' after an obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.

:loose bytes: n. Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or {shim}s many compilers insert between members of a record or structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed by the machine architecture.

:lord high fixer: [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's `lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.

:lose: [MIT] vi. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner. 2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. 3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). See also {deserves to lose}. 4. n. Refers to something that is {losing}, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" and "What a lose!"

:lose lose: interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose, lose."

:loser: n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose occasionally.) Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows not. Emphatic forms are `real loser', `total loser', and `complete loser' (but not *`moby loser', which would be a contradiction in terms). See {luser}.

:losing: adj. Said of anything that is or causes a {lose} or {lossage}.

:loss: n. Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which
something is losing. Emphatic forms include `moby loss', and
`total loss', `complete loss'. Common interjections are
"What a loss!" and "What a moby loss!" Note that `moby loss'
is OK even though *`moby loser' is not used; applied to an abstract
noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person
it implies substance and has positive connotations. Compare
{lossage}.

:lossage: /los'*j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This
is a mass or collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What
lossage!" are nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more
particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latter
implies a continuing {lose} of which the speaker is currently a
victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss,
but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious
lossage.

:lost in the noise: adj. Syn. {lost in the underflow}. This term is from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude cannot be separated from low-intensity noise in the system. Though popular among hackers, it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists, engineers, astronomers, and statisticians all use it.

:lost in the underflow: adj. Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to `floating underflow', a condition that can occur when a floating-point arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow." See also {overflow bit}.

:lots of MIPS but no I/O: adj. Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000, is a notorious recent example).

:low-bandwidth: [from communication theory] adj. Used to indicate a
talk that, although not {content-free}, was not terribly
informative. "That was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you
expect for an audience of {suit}s!" Compare {zero-content},
{bandwidth}, {math-out}.

:LPT: /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ [MIT, via DEC] n. Line
printer, of course. Rare under UNIX, commoner in hackers with
MS-DOS or CP/M background. The printer device is called
`LPT:' on those systems that, like ITS, were strongly
influenced by early DEC conventions.

:lunatic fringe: [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions of software.

:lurker: n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in `the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's {flamage}-emitting regulars.

:luser: /loo'zr/ n. A {user}; esp. one who is also a {loser}. ({luser} and {loser} are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status information, including how many people were already using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or "losers". Finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported `luser' as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term `luser' is often seen in program comments.

= M = =====

:M: [SI] pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers) See {{quantifiers}}.

:macdink: /mak'dink/ [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to encourage such behavior] vt. To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. "When I left at 11 P.M. last night, he was still macdinking the slides for his presentation." See also {fritterware}.

:machinable: adj. Machine-readable. Having the {softcopy} nature.

:machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second'] n. Refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to get half the quoted speed. See {Your mileage may vary}, {benchmark}.

:Macintoy: /mak'in-toy/ n. The Apple Macintosh, considered as a {toy}. Less pejorative than {Macintrash}.

:Macintrash: /mak'in-trash`/ n. The Apple Macintosh, as described
by a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from the
*real computer* by the interface. The term {maggotbox} has
been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle area of North
Carolina. Compare {Macintoy}. See also {beige toaster},
{WIMP environment}, {point-and-drool interface},
{drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}.

:macro: /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. A name (possibly followed by a
formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic
expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the
substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This
definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those
won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have
changed over time.

The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device. During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as {HLL}s, only to fall from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler programming (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is most often used in connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion facility (such as TeX or UNIX's [nt]roff suite).

Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective `macros' is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application control language (whether or not the language is actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).

:macro-: pref. Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people) this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to restrict the latter to quantification.

:macrology: /mak-rol'*-jee/ n. 1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in {LISP}, {TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology in sense 1. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. See also {boxology}.

:macrotape: /ma'kroh-tayp/ n. An industry-standard reel of tape, as
opposed to a {microtape}.

:maggotbox: /mag'*t-boks/ n. See {Macintrash}. This is even
more derogatory.

:magic: adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain; compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an 8-bit byte in three instructions." 2. Characteristic of something that works although no one really understands why (this is especially called {black magic}). 3. [Stanford] A feature not generally publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. Compare {black magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}.

For more about hackish `magic', see {A Story About `Magic'} (in {appendix A}).

:magic cookie: [UNIX] n. 1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on non-UNIX OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell(3)' may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to `fseek(3)', but not operated on in any meaningful way. The phrase `it hands you a magic cookie' means it returns a result whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the same or some other program later. 2. An in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or performing other control functions. Some older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a {glitch}. See also {cookie}.

:magic number: [UNIX/C] n. 1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented `#define'. Magic numbers in this sense are bad style. 2. A number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense 1. 3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to indicate its type to a utility. Under UNIX, the system and various applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon a time, these magic numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that skipped over header data to the start of executable code; the 0407, for example, was octal for `branch 16 bytes relative'. Nowadays only a {wizard} knows the spells to create magic numbers. How do you choose a fresh magic number of your own? Simple —- you pick one at random. See? It's magic!

:magic smoke: n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up —- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.

USENETter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs —- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's Law}.

:mailing list: n. (often shortened in context to `list') 1. An {email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses. Some mailing lists are simple `reflectors', redirecting mail sent to them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by humans are said to be `moderated'. 2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an address.

Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction, along with {USENET}. They predate USENET, having originated with the first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for private information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or inappropriate to public USENET groups. Though some of these maintain purely technical content (such as the Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and others are purely social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most interesting people in hackerdom.

Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike USENET) don't tie up a significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large, at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of Steele-1983.

:main loop: n. Software tools are often written to perform some actions repeatedly on whatever input is handed to them, terminating when there is no more input or they are explicitly told to go away. In such programs, the loop that gets and processes input is called the `main loop'. See also {driver}.

:mainframe: n. Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s, the traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from computing's {Stone Age}.

It is common wisdom among hackers that the mainframe architectural tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for {number-crunching} supercomputers (see {cray})), having been swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost personal computing. As of 1991, corporate America hasn't quite figured this out yet, though the wave of failures, takeovers, and mergers among traditional mainframe makers are certainly straws in the wind (see {dinosaurs mating}).

:management: n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see also {suit}). Spoken derisively, as in "*Management* decided that …". 2. Mythically, a vast bureaucracy responsible for all the world's minor irritations. Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgt'; this derives from the `Illuminatus' novels (see the Bibliography in {appendix C}).

:mandelbug: /mon'del-buhg/ [from the Mandelbrot set] n. A bug
whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its
behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. This term
implies that the speaker thinks it is a {Bohr bug}, rather than a
{heisenbug}. See also {schroedinbug}.

:manged: /monjd/ [probably from the French `manger' or Italian
`mangiare', to eat; perhaps influenced by English n. `mange',
`mangy'] adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged,
usually beyond repair. "The disk was manged after the electrical
storm." Compare {mung}.

:mangle: vt. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent
in its connotations; something that is mangled has been
irreversibly and totally trashed.

:mangler: [DEC] n. A manager. Compare {mango}; see also
{management}. Note that {system mangler} is somewhat different
in connotation.

:mango: /mang'go/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A manager.
Compare {mangler}. See also {devo} and {doco}.

:manularity: [prob. fr. techspeak `granularity' + `manual'] n. A notional measure of the manual labor required for some task, particularly one of the sort that automation is supposed to eliminate. "Composing English on paper has much higher manularity than using a text editor, especially in the revising stage." Hackers tend to consider manularity a symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker confronted with an apparent requirement to do a computing task {by hand} will usually consider it motivation enough to build another tool.

:marbles: [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] pl.n. The minimum needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions. After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to allow a rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "This compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile {hello, world}."

:marginal: adj. 1. Extremely small. "A marginal increase in {core} can decrease {GC} time drastically." In everyday terms, this means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort through it. 2. Of extremely small merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small probability of {win}ning. "The power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it fried."

:Marginal Hacks: n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the
Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the 1980s (from the
{D. C. Power Lab}).

:marginally: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small Eating Place." See {epsilon}.

:marketroid: /mar'k*-troyd/ alt. `marketing slime', `marketing droid', `marketeer' n. A member of a company's marketing department, esp. one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare {droid}.

:Mars: n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone Wrong. Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10 compatible computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group); the multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25M, and the never-built superprocessor SC-40M. These machines were marvels of engineering design; although not much slower than the unique {Foonly} F-1, they were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much slower DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries, including the operating system, with no modifications at about 2—3 times faster than a KL10.

When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems Concepts should have made a bundle selling their machine into shops with a lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their spring 1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were much better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or UNIX boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being purchased by CompuServe.

This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for hackers: if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to learn Real World moves.