bit bucket

[very common]

1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have gone to the bit bucket. On {Unix}, often used for {/dev/null}. Sometimes amplified as the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky.
2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed according to {Finagle's Law}; important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network.
3. The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses: "Flames about this article to the bit bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to overflow one's mailbox with flames.
4. Excuse for all mail that has not been sent. "I mailed you those figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket." Compare {black hole}.

   This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them "out of the bit box". See also {chad box}.

   Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the "parity preservation law", the number of 1 bits that go to the bit bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in bits filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can empty a full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.

   The source for all these meanings, is, historically, the fact that the {chad box} on a paper-tape punch was sometimes called a bit bucket.

   [75-10-04.png]

   A literal {bit bucket}.

   (The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 76-02-14. The previous one is 75-10-04.)

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