What is the meaning of

Living room door

2009-05-31T05:32:00.006+01:00

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

2009-05-31T05:31:00.001+01:00

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.

twilight zone

2009-05-30T04:00:00.000+01:00

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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".

warez d00dz

2009-05-29T00:01:00.000+01:00

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}.

winner

2009-05-28T17:31:00.000+01:00

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."

user-obsequious

2009-05-27T04:00:00.000+01:00

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}.

Blue Glue

2009-05-26T12:31:00.000+01:00

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.

wetware

2009-05-25T18:31:00.000+01:00

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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}.

write-only memory

2009-05-24T16:31:00.001+01:00

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%.

GECOS

2009-05-23T07:31:00.000+01:00

GECOS

See {GCOS}.

trap

2009-05-23T04:01:00.000+01:00

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).

Great Renaming

2009-05-22T06:31:00.000+01:00

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.

FISH queue

2009-05-21T08:31:00.001+01:00

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.

(TM)

2009-05-20T15:31:00.001+01:00

(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

2009-05-20T14:31:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-20T13:31:00.000+01:00

BI

Common written abbreviation for {Breidbart Index}.

CTSS

2009-05-20T11:31:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-20T10:31:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-20T09:31:00.000+01:00

ECP

See {spam} and {velveeta}.

virtual

2009-05-20T05:30:00.000+01:00

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

2009-05-20T04:31:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-20T03:31:00.002+01:00

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.

McQuary limit

2009-05-20T02:31:00.003+01:00

McQuary limit

[from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see {warlording}.] 4 lines of at most 80 characters each, sometimes still cited on Usenet as the maximum acceptable size of a {sig block}. Before the great bandwidth explosion of the early 1990s, long sigs actually cost people running Usenet servers significant amounts of money. Nowadays social pressure against long sigs is intended to avoid waste of human attention rather than machine bandwidth. Accordingly, the McQuary limit should be considered a rule of thumb rather than a hard limit; it's best to avoid sigs that are large, repetitive, and distracting. See also {warlording}.

New Testament

2009-05-20T01:31:00.000+01:00

New Testament

[C programmers] The second edition of K&R's The C Programming Language (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI Standard C. See {K&R}; this version is also called `K&R2'.

PFY

2009-05-20T00:31:00.001+01:00

PFY

[Usenet; common, originally from the {BOFH} mythos] Abbreviation for Pimply-Faced Youth. A {BOFH} in training, esp. one apprenticed to an elder BOFH aged in evil.

RFC

2009-05-19T23:31:00.001+01:00

RFC

[Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.

The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon (since actually implemented; see Appendix A). See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.

The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they frequently manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions.

SEX

2009-05-19T22:31:00.001+01:00

SEX

[Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] n.

Software EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular among hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a {Good Thing}, but unprotected SEX can propagate a {virus}. See also {pubic directory}.
The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign EXtend, a machine instruction found in the {PDP-11} and many other architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the early Elf and SuperElf personal computers had a `SEt X register' SEX instruction, but this seems to have had little folkloric impact. The Data General instruction set also had SEX.
{DEC}'s engineers nearly got a {PDP-11} assembler that used the SEX mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once) marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last time this happened, either. The author of The Intel 8086 Primer, who was one of the original designers of the 8086, noted that there was originally a SEX instruction on that processor, too. He says that Intel management got cold feet and decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed CBW and CWD (depending on what was being extended). Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC keyboards) is also missing straight SEX but has logical-or and logical-and instructions ORL and ANL.
The Motorola 6809, used in the Radio Shack Color Computer and in U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal computer, actually had an official SEX instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed did not. British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.

TAN

2009-05-19T21:31:00.000+01:00

TAN

[Usenet, particularly rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan] Abbrev. of `tangent', as in "off on a tangent", and synonym for {OT}. A number of hacker-humor synonyms are used for TAN in some newsgroups. Instances such as BEIGE, OFF-WHITE, BROWNISH-GRAY, and LIGHT BROWN have been observed. It is generally understood on newsgroups with this convention that any color descriptor is a TAN synonym if (a) used as the first word(s) of the topic of a Usenet post, (b) written in ALL CAPS, and (c) followed immediately by a colon. Usage: "OFF-WHITE: 2000 Presidential candidates" on an SF newsgroup.

Turing tar-pit

2009-05-19T20:31:00.000+01:00

Turing tar-pit

A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer science by showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a certain very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that differ only in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly designed computers. However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. A Turing tar-pit is any computer language or other tool that shares this property. That is, it's theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}.
The perennial {holy wars} over whether language A or B is the "most powerful".

Version 7

2009-05-19T19:31:00.001+01:00

Version 7

The first widely distributed version of {Unix}, released unsupported by Bell Labs in 1978. The term is used adjectivally to describe Unix features and programs that date from that release, and are thus guaranteed to be present and portable in all Unix versions (this was the standard gauge of portability before the POSIX and IEEE 1003 standards). Note that this usage does not derive from the release being the "seventh version of {Unix}"; research {Unix} at Bell Labs has traditionally been numbered according to the edition of the associated documentation. Indeed, only the widely-distributed Sixth and Seventh Editions are widely known as V[67]; the OS that might today be known as `V10' is instead known in full as "Tenth Edition Research Unix" or just "Tenth Edition" for short. For this reason, "V7" is often read by cognoscenti as "Seventh Edition". See {BSD}, {Unix}. Some old-timers impatient with commercialization and kernel bloat still maintain that V7 was the Last True Unix.

XXX

2009-05-19T18:31:00.001+01:00

XXX

A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some hackers liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating. Compare {FIXME}.

adware

2009-05-19T17:31:00.001+01:00

adware

Software which is free to download and use but includes pop-up banner ads somewhere. See also {-ware}.

asbestos

2009-05-19T16:31:00.000+01:00

asbestos

[common] Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect one from {flame}s; also in other highly {flame}-suggestive usages. See, for example, {asbestos longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}.

banana problem

2009-05-19T15:31:00.001+01:00

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banana problem

[from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell 'banana', but I don't know when to stop"]. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say there is a banana problem of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under HAKMEM, which describes a banana problem in a {Dissociated Press} implementation. Also, see {one-banana problem} for a superficially similar but unrelated usage.

bboard

2009-05-19T14:31:00.001+01:00

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bboard

[contraction of `bulletin board']

Any electronic bulletin board; esp. used of {BBS} systems running on personal micros, less frequently of a Usenet {newsgroup} (in fact, use of this term for a newsgroup generally marks one either as a {newbie} fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet).
At CMU and other colleges with similar facilities, refers to campus-wide electronic bulletin boards.
The term physical bboard is sometimes used to refer to an old-fashioned, non-electronic cork-and-thumbtack memo board. At CMU, it refers to a particular one outside the CS Lounge.
In either of senses 1 or 2, the term is usually prefixed by the name of the intended board (`the Moonlight Casino bboard' or `market bboard'); however, if the context is clear, the better-read bboards may be referred to by name alone, as in (at CMU) "Don't post for-sale ads on general".

bit twiddling

2009-05-19T13:31:00.000+01:00

bit twiddling

[very common]

(pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see {tune}) in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code becomes incomprehensible.
Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless goal.
Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back to a known state.

blog

2009-05-19T12:31:00.000+01:00

blog

[common] Short for weblog, an on-line web-zine or diary (usually with facilities for reader comments and discussion threads) made accessible through the World Wide Web. This term is widespread and readily forms derivatives, of which the best known may be {blogosphere}.

bogotify

2009-05-19T11:31:00.001+01:00

bogotify:

To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional autobogotiphobia defined as `the fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.

brain fart

2009-05-19T10:31:00.000+01:00

brain fart

The actual result of a {braino}, as opposed to the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g., typing dir on a Unix box after a session with DOS.

bubble sort

2009-05-19T09:31:00.000+01:00

bubble sort

Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble upward' in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. (However, it's been shown by repeated experiment that below about 5000 records bubble-sort is OK anyway.) The canonical example of a really bad algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity.

calculator

2009-05-19T08:31:00.000+01:00

calculator

Syn. for {bitty box}.

channel hopping

2009-05-19T07:31:00.000+01:00

channel hopping

[common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on {IRC}, or a GEnie chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to another at a party. This term may derive from the TV watcher's idiom, channel surfing.

clock

2009-05-19T06:31:00.001+01:00

clock

n.,v.

[techspeak] The master oscillator that steps a CPU or other digital circuit through its paces. This has nothing to do with the time of day, although the software counter that keeps track of the latter may be derived from the former.
vt. To run a CPU or other digital circuit at a particular rate. "If you clock it at 1000MHz, it gets warm.". See {overclock}.
vt. To force a digital circuit from one state to the next by applying a single clock pulse. "The data must be stable 10ns before you clock the latch."

compact

2009-05-19T05:31:00.000+01:00

compact

Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans of {Classic C} maintain that ANSI C is no longer compact).

cookie file

2009-05-19T04:31:00.000+01:00

cookie file

A collection of {fortune cookie}s in a format that facilitates retrieval by a fortune program. There are several different cookie files in public distribution, and site admins often assemble their own from various sources including this lexicon.

cracker

2009-05-19T03:31:00.000+01:00

cracker

One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of {hacker} (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish worm in this sense around 1981--82 on Usenet was largely a failure.

Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in Middle English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" -- Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white trash".

While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past {larval stage} is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work done).

Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the {mundane} reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life. An easy way for outsiders to spot the difference is that crackers use grandiose screen names that conceal their identities. Hackers never do this; they only rarely use noms de guerre at all, and when they do it is for display rather than concealment.

Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty {losing}. Some other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on {cracking} and {phreaking}. See also {samurai}, {dark-side hacker}, and {hacker ethic}. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see {warez d00dz}.

cruftsmanship

2009-05-19T02:31:00.000+01:00

cruftsmanship

[from {cruft}] The antithesis of craftsmanship.

dark-side hacker

2009-05-19T01:31:00.000+01:00

dark-side hacker

A criminal or malicious hacker; a {cracker}. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Oppose {samurai}.

delta

2009-05-19T00:31:00.000+01:00

delta

[techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program size?" "About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his program, but increased its size by only 30 percent.)
[Unix] A {diff}, especially a {diff} stored under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision Control System).
n. A small quantity, but not as small as {epsilon}. The jargon usage of {delta} and {epsilon} stems from the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the differential calculus). The term {delta} is often used, once {epsilon} has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than {epsilon} but still very small. "The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common constructions include within delta of --, within epsilon of --: that is, `close to' and `even closer to'.

dike

2009-05-18T23:31:00.000+01:00

dike

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 to mean `diagonal cutters', a kind of wire cutter. 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.

dogwash

2009-05-18T22:31:00.000+01:00

dogwash

[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".]

n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work.
v. To engage in such a project. Many games and much {freeware} get written this way.

dub dub dub

2009-05-18T21:31:00.000+01:00

dub dub dub

[common] Spoken-only shorthand for the "www" (double-u double-u double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the style of reggae music called `dub'.

enhancement

2009-05-18T20:31:00.000+01:00

enhancement

Common {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.

fall through

2009-05-18T19:31:00.000+01:00

fall through

(n. fallthrough, var.: fall-through)

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.
To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of code.
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 the above 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. See also {Duff's device}.

fence

2009-05-18T18:31:00.002+01:00

fence

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}.
An extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure in order to allow some normal test on the array's contents also to function as a termination test. For example, a highly optimized routine for finding a value in an array might artificially place a copy of the value to be searched for after the last slot of the array, thus allowing the main search loop to search for the value without having to check at each pass whether the end of the array had been reached.
[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".

fix

2009-05-18T17:31:00.000+01:00

fix

What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored.

flush

2009-05-18T16:31:00.000+01:00

flush

[common] To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed."
[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!
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."
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 could 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 found the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.
[crunchly-5678.png]
Crunchly gets {flush}ed.
(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-05-01. The previous cartoon was 76-02-20:2.)

four-color glossies

2009-05-18T15:31:00.000+01:00

four-color glossies

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 solving a problem.
[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.

fuck me harder

2009-05-18T14:31:00.000+01:00

fuck me harder

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]

gensym

2009-05-18T13:31:00.000+01:00

gensym

[from MacLISP for generated symbol]

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.
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.
A freshly generated data structure with a gensymmed name. Gensymmed names are useful for storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).

golden

2009-05-18T12:31:00.000+01:00

golden

[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}. One may also "go gold", which is the act of releasing a golden version. The gold color of many CDROMs is a coincidence; this term was well established a decade before CDROM distribution become common in the mid-1990s.

grilf

2009-05-18T11:31:00.000+01:00

grilf

Girlfriend. Like {newsfroup} and {filk}, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to have originated sometime in 1990 on {Usenet}. [A friend tells me there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel Watchers Of The Dark, in which alien species after species goes insane and begins to chant "Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that the word means "Liar!" I hope this has nothing to do with the popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR]

hack on

2009-05-18T10:31:00.000+01:00

hack on

[very common] 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}.

hand-roll

2009-05-18T09:31:00.000+01:00

hand-roll

[from obs. mainstream slang hand-rolled in opposition to ready-made, referring to cigarettes] 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."

hello world

2009-05-18T08:31:00.000+01:00

hello world

The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe.
Any of the minimal programs that emit this message (a representative sample in various languages can be found at http://www.latech.edu/~acm/helloworld/). 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}).
Greeting uttered by a hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello, world! Is the LAN back up yet?"

hop

2009-05-18T07:31:00.000+01:00

hop

n. [common] 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 the old UUCP network and and {FidoNet}), an important inter-machine metric is the number of hops in the shortest path between them, which can be more significant than their geographical separation. See {bang path}.
v. [rare] To log in to a remote machine, esp. via rlogin or telnet. "I'll hop over to foovax to FTP that."

index of X

2009-05-18T06:31:00.000+01:00

index of X

See {coefficient of X}.

jock

2009-05-18T05:31:00.001+01:00

jock

A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute-force programs. See {brute-force}.
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.

kit

2009-05-18T04:31:00.000+01:00

kit

[Usenet; poss.: fr.: {DEC} slang for a full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] 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.

leech mode

2009-05-18T03:31:00.000+01:00

leech mode

[warez d00dz] "Leech mode" or "leech access" or (simply "leech" as in "You get leech") is the access mode on a FTP site where one can download as many files as one wants, without having to upload. Leech mode is often promised on banner sites, but rarely obtained. See {ratio site}, {banner site}.

lithium lick

2009-05-18T02:31:00.000+01:00

lithium lick

[NeXT] Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten too much attention from their esteemed founder are said to have `lithium lick' when they begin to show signs of Jobsian fervor and repeat the most recent catch phrases in normal conversation -- for example, "It just works, right out of the box!"

lost in the underflow

2009-05-18T01:31:00.000+01:00

lost in the underflow

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." Compare {epsilon}, {epsilon squared}; see also {overflow bit}.

man page

2009-05-18T00:31:00.000+01:00

man page

A page from the Unix Programmer's Manual, documenting one of Unix's many commands, system calls, library subroutines, device driver interfaces, file formats, games, macro packages, or maintenance utilities. By extension, the term "man page" may be used to refer to documentation of any kind, under any system, though it is most likely to be confined to short on-line references.

As mentioned in Chapter 11, Other Lexicon Conventions, there is a standard syntax for referring to man page entries: the phrase "foo(n)" refers to the page for "foo" in chapter n of the manual, where chapter 1 is user commands, chapter 2 is system calls, etc.

The man page format is beloved, or berated, for having the same sort of pithy utility as the rest of Unix. Man pages tend to be written as very compact, concise descriptions which are complete but not forgiving of the lazy or careless reader. Their stylized format does a good job of summarizing the essentials: invocation syntax, options, basic functionality. While such a concise reference is perfect for the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well tools which are favored by the Unix philosophy, it admittedly breaks down when applied to a command which is itself a major subsystem.

megapenny

2009-05-17T23:31:00.000+01:00

megapenny

$10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and performance figures.

milliLampson

2009-05-17T22:31:00.000+01:00

milliLampson

A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the {PDP-11}) is said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.

mouse elbow

2009-05-17T21:31:00.000+01:00

mouse elbow

A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of a {WIMP environment}. Similarly, mouse shoulder; GLS reports that he used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.

naive user

2009-05-17T20:31:00.000+01:00

naive user

A {luser}. Tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. When this is applied to someone who has experience, there is a definite implication of stupidity.

netburp

2009-05-17T19:31:00.000+01:00

netburp

[IRC] When {netlag} gets really bad, and delays between servers exceed a certain threshold, the {IRC} network effectively becomes partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people seem to be signing off at the same time and then signing back on again when things get better. An instance of this is called a netburp (or, sometimes, {netsplit}).

nontrivial

2009-05-17T18:31:00.000+01:00

nontrivial

Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving P=NP is nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is decidedly nontrivial. See {trivial}, {uninteresting}, {interesting}.

ooblick

2009-05-17T17:31:00.000+01:00

ooblick

[from the Dr. Seuss title Bartholomew and the Oobleck; the spelling `oobleck' is still current in the mainstream] A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. Often found near lasers.

Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:

* 1 cup cornstarch * 1 cup baking soda * 3/4 cup water * N drops of food coloring

This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.

Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick recipe is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in small increments so that the various mixed states the cornstarch goes through as it becomes ooblick can be grokked in fullness by many hands. For optional ingredients of this experience, see the Ceremonial Chemicals section of Appendix B.

page out

2009-05-17T16:31:00.000+01:00

page out

[MIT]

To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to daydreaming or preoccupation. "Can you repeat that? I paged out for a minute." See {page in}. Compare {glitch}, {thinko}.
Syn. swap out; see {swap}.

pessimizing compiler

2009-05-17T15:31:00.000+01:00

pessimizing compiler

[antonym of techspeak `optimizing compiler'] A compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.

platinum-iridium

2009-05-17T14:31:00.000+01:00

platinum-iridium

Standard, against which all others of the same category are measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that same vault -- this replaced an earlier definition as 10^-7 times the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the only unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact. But this will have to change; in 2003 it was revealed that the reference kilogram has been shedding mass over time, and is down by 50 micrograms.) "This garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare {golden}.

power cycle

2009-05-17T13:31:00.000+01:00

power cycle

(also, cycle power or just cycle) To power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of {hung} or {gronk}ed state. See also {Big Red Switch}. Compare {Vulcan nerve pinch}, {bounce} (sense 4), and {boot}, and see the Some AI Koans (in Appendix A) about Tom Knight and the novice.

propeller key

2009-05-17T12:31:00.000+01:00

propeller key

[Mac users] See {feature key}.

ques

2009-05-17T11:31:00.000+01:00

ques

n. The question mark character (?, ASCII 0111111).
interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See {wall}.

rave

2009-05-17T10:31:00.000+01:00

rave

[WPI]

To persist in discussing a specific subject.
To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little.
To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty.
To purposely annoy another person verbally.
To evangelize. See {flame}.
Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. `Rave' differs slightly from {flame} in that rave implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat more strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well.

reinvent the wheel

2009-05-17T09:31:00.000+01:00

reinvent the wheel

To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle.

rotary debugger

2009-05-17T08:31:00.000+01:00

rotary debugger

[Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage. See {ANSI standard pizza}.

scary devil monastery

2009-05-17T07:31:00.000+01:00

scary devil monastery

Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated with characters that rather justify the reference.

segfault

2009-05-17T06:31:00.000+01:00

segfault

Syn. {segment}, {segmentation fault}.

shim

2009-05-17T05:31:00.000+01:00

shim

A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the {PDP-11} Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null pointer). See also {loose bytes}.
A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML documents by certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of elements meant to have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision. Hackers who work on the HTML code of such pages afterwards invariably curse these for their crocky dependence on the particular spacing of original image file, the editor that generated them, and the version of the browser used to view them. Worse, they are a poorly designed {kludge} which the advent of Cascading Style Sheets makes wholly unnecessary; Any fool can plainly see that use of borders, layers and positioned elements is the Right Thing (or would be if adequate support for CSS were more common).

slim

2009-05-17T04:31:00.000+01:00

slim

A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).

sneaker

2009-05-17T03:31:00.000+01:00

sneaker

An individual hired to break into places in order to test their security; analogous to {tiger team}. Compare {samurai}.

spaghetti inheritance

2009-05-17T02:31:00.000+01:00

spaghetti inheritance

[encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass graph, often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other classes just for the sake of reusing their code. Coined in a (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with {spaghetti code}.

spod

2009-05-17T01:31:00.000+01:00

spod

[UK]

A lower form of life found on {talker system}s and {MUD}s. The spod has few friends in {RL} and uses talkers instead, finding communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the negative traits of the computer geek without having any interest in computers per se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and considering his access a God-given right, he is a major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "Got any good numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode. 2. An experienced talker user. As with the defiant adoption of the term geek in the mid-1990s by people who would previously have been stigmatized by it, the term "spod" is now used as a mark of distinction by talker users who've accumulated a large amount of login time. Such spods tend to be very knowledgeable about talkers and talker coding, as well as more general hacker activites. An unusually high proportion of spods work in the ISP sector, a profession which allows for lengthy periods of login time and for under-the-desk servers, or "spodhosts", upon which talker systems are hosted. Compare {newbie}, {tourist}, {weenie}, {twink}, {terminal junkie}, {warez d00dz}.
A {backronym} for "Sole Purpose, Obtain a Degree"; according to some self-described spods, this term is used by indifferent students to condemn their harder-working fellows.
[Glasgow University] An otherwise competent hacker who spends way too much time on talker systems.
[obs.] An ordinary person; a {random}. This is the meaning with which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us he has himself accepted sense 1.

stoppage

2009-05-17T00:31:00.000+01:00

stoppage

Extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a {fried} transformer."

surf

2009-05-16T23:31:00.000+01:00

surf

[from the `surf' idiom for rapidly flipping TV channels] To traverse the Internet in search of interesting stuff, used esp. if one is doing so with a World Wide Web browser. It is also common to speak of surfing in to a particular resource.

Hackers adopted this term early, but many have stopped using it since it went completely mainstream around 1995. The passive, couch-potato connotations that go with TV channel surfing were never pleasant, and hearing non-hackers wax enthusiastic about "surfing the net" tends to make hackers feel a bit as though their home is being overrun by ignorami.

tarball

2009-05-16T22:31:00.000+01:00

tarball

[very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the whole project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it seems odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late 1990s.

theology

2009-05-16T21:31:00.000+01:00

theology

Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}.
Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used esp. around software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.