20090531

Living room door

If you find a door in front, you can open it or not. If you open the door, you can enter a new room. To enter, you will have to overcome the doubt, hesitation or fear. If you win at the end of this step, you took a big step in the living room. But this also has a price because there are numerous other ports that you discover after this. The big secret is knowing when and where the best door should be opened. Life is not exact: it gives right and wrong. Mistakes can be made into hits when you learn from them. The security of eternal wisdom does not exist. Life is generous: each room in which you live, you will find many other doors. Life enriches those who dare to open new doors and discovering his secret doors and generous offers of luck. But life can also be harsh and severe. But if you do not overstep the current door you will always be the same for the front door. It is the repetition before creation. It is the chromatic monotony before the rainbow. It is the stagnation of life. For life, the doors are not barriers, but simply different paths to different results.

IBM

Once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved to hate; today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.
From hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, IBM was regarded with active loathing. Common expansions of the corporate name included: 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 (see also {fear and loathing}). What galled hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level wasn't so much that they were underpowered and overpriced (though that counted against them), but that the designs were incredibly archaic, {crufty}, and {elephantine} ... and you couldn't fix them -- source code was locked up tight, and programming tools were expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you had found them.
We didn't know how good we had it back then. In the 1980s IBM had its own troubles with Microsoft and lost its strategic way, receding from the hacker community's view. Then, in the 1990s, Microsoft became more noxious and omnipresent than IBM had ever been.
In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a services company, began to release open-source software through its AlphaWorks group, and began shipping {Linux} systems and building ties to the Linux community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a staunch friend of the hacker community and {open source} development, with ironic consequences noted in the {FUD} entry.
This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within IBM's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.

20090530

twilight zone

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twilight zone

[IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where {IRC} operators live. An {op} is said to have a "connection to the twilight zone".

20090529

warez d00dz

A substantial subculture of {cracker}s refer to themselves as warez d00dz; there is evidently some connection with {B1FF} here. As `Ozone Pilot', one former warez d00d, wrote:

Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted software. If it has copy protection on it, they break the protection so the software can be copied. Then they distribute it around the world via several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass group names like RAZOR and the like. They put up boards that distribute the latest ware, or pirate program. The whole point of the Warez sub-culture is to get the pirate program released and distributed before any other group. I know, I know. But don't ask, and it won't hurt as much. This is how they prove their poweress [sic]. It gives them the right to say, "I released King's Quest IVXIX before you so obviously my testicles are larger." Again don't ask...

The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is emit 0-day warez, that is copies of commercial software copied and cracked on the same day as its retail release. Warez d00ds also hoard software in a big way, collecting untold megabytes of arcade-style games, pornographic JPGs, and applications they'll never use onto their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely observes:

[BELONG] is the only word you will need to know. Warez d00dz want to belong. They have been shunned by everyone, and thus turn to cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they always start groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...] Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide behind their terminals. More likely, if you were given a sample of 100 people, the person whose handle is Hellraiser is the last person you'd associate with the name.

The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive. See {cracker}, {wannabee}, {handle}, {elite}, {courier}, {leech}; compare {weenie}, {spod}.

20090528

winner

n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer, or person.
real winner: Often sarcastic, but also used as high praise (see also the note under {user}). "He's a real winner -- never reports a bug till he can duplicate it and send in an example."

20090527

user-obsequious

Emphatic form of {user-friendly}. Connotes a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." See {WIMP environment}, {Macintrash}.

20090526

Blue Glue

[IBM; obs.] IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture), an incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous} communications protocol once widely favored at commercial shops that didn't know any better (like other proprietary networking protocols, it became obsolete and effectively disappeared after the Internet explosion c.1994). The official IBM definition is "that which binds blue boxes together." See {fear and loathing}. It may not be irrelevant that Blue Glue is the trade name of a 3M product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to the removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. A correspondent at U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has about 80 bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to any messy work to be done as using the blue glue.

20090525

wetware

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wetware

[prob.: from the novels of Rudy Rucker]

The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers."
Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. See {liveware}, {meatware}.

20090524

write-only memory

The obvious antonym to read-only memory. Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a double-page spread in Electronics magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs.: Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs.: number of socket insertions", and "AQL vs.: selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, ±2%.

20090523

GECOS

See {GCOS}.

trap

n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.
vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming (interrupt or exception is more common among {HLL} programmers) and appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers (see {system}, sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).

20090522

Great Renaming

The {flag day} in 1987 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. Used esp. in discussing the history of newsgroup names. "The oldest sources group is comp.sources.misc; before the Great Renaming, it was net.sources." There is a Great Renaming FAQ on the Web.

20090521

FISH queue

[acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In, First Out)] `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.

20090520

(TM)

[Usenet] ASCII rendition of the (TM) appended to phrases that the author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents and look and feel lawsuits. See also {UN*X}.

ARMM

[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet cancelbot created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.

ARMM's bug produced a recursive {cascade} of messages each of which mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer and longer.

Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term {despew}), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread on the subject is archived here. Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also {software laser}, {network meltdown}.

BI

Common written abbreviation for {Breidbart Index}.

CTSS

Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the design of interactive timesharing operating systems, ancestral to {Multics}, {Unix}, and {ITS}. The name {ITS} (Incompatible Time-sharing System) was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O services should be presented to user programs. See {timesharing}.

DED

Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED). Compare {SED}, {LER}, {write-only memory}. In the early 1970s both Signetics and Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as {AFJ}s (suggested uses included "as a power-off indicator").

ECP

See {spam} and {velveeta}.

virtual

[via the technical term virtual memory, prob.: from the term virtual image in optics]

Common alternative to {logical}; often used to refer to the artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical memory) simulated by a computer system as a convenient way to manage access to shared resources.
Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really there. An imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate. Oppose {real}.

Iron Age

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

Life is hard

Life is hard:

[XEROX PARC] This phrase has two possible interpretations:

"While your suggestion may have some merit, I will behave as though I hadn't heard it."
"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.

If you find a door in front, you can open it or not. If you open the door, you may enter into a new room. To enter, you will have to overcome the doubt, hesitation or fear. If you win, you took a big step in the living room. But it also has a price: there are numerous other ports that you discover. The big secret is knowing when and where the door should be opened. Life is not exact: it provides and wrongs. Mistakes can be made into hits when you learn from them. The security of eternal wisdom does not exist. Life is generous: each room in which you live, you'll find many other doors. Life enriches those who dare to open new doors and discovering its secrets privilege and generously offers ports of luck. But life can also be harsh and severe, if you do not exceed the door will always be the same for the front door. It is the repetition before creation. It is the chromatic monotony before the rainbow. It is the stagnation of life. For life, the doors are not obstacles, but just different paths to different results. This is one simple side of life.

20090531

20090530

twilight zone

20090529

20090528

winner

20090527

user-obsequious

20090526

Blue Glue

20090525

20090524

20090523

GECOS

20090522

20090521

FISH queue

20090520

(TM)

ARMM

BI

CTSS

DED

ECP

virtual

Life is hard:

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