NUKE (nook) v. 1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given
   directory or storage volume. "On UNIX, rm -r /usr will nuke
   everything in the usr filesystem." Never used for accidental
   deletion. Oppose BLOW AWAY. 2. Syn. for DYKE, applied to smaller
   things such as features or code sections.

NUXI PROBLEM, THE (nuk'see pro'blm, dh@) n. This refers to the
   problem of transferring data between machines with differing
   byte-order. The string "UNIX" might look like "NUXI" on a machine
   with a different "byte sex". See also, BIG-ENDIAN, LITTLE-ENDIAN,
   SWAB, and BYTESEXUAL.

                       = O =

OBSCURE (ob'skyoor) adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal
   meaning, to imply a total lack of comprehensibility. "The reason
   for that last crash is obscure."  "FIND's command syntax is
   obscure."  MODERATELY OBSCURE implies that it could be figured out
   but probably isn't worth the trouble. OBSCURE IN THE EXTREME is a
   preferred emphatic form.

OBFUSCATED C CONTEST (ob'fus-cay-ted see kon'test) n. Annual contest
   run since 1984 over THE NETWORK by Landon Curt Noll & friends. The
   overall winner is he who produces the most unreadable, creative and
   bizarre working C program; various other prizes are awarded at the
   judges' whim. Given C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor
   facilities, this given contestants a lot of maneuvering room. THe
   winning programs often manage to be simultaneously a) funny, b)
   breathtaking works of art, and c) Horrible Examples of how *not* to
   code in C.

OCTAL FORTY (ok'tl for'tee) n. Hackish way of saying "I'm drawing a
   blank" (octal 40 is the ASCII space charater). See WALL.

OFF THE TROLLEY (of dh@ tro'lee) adj.  Describes the behavior of a
   program which malfunctions but doesn't actually CRASH or get halted
   by the operating system. See GLITCH, BUG, DEEP SPACE.

OFFLINE (of'lien) adv.  Not now or not here.  Example: "Let's take
   this discussion offline."

ONE BELL SYSTEM (IT WORKS) This was the output from the old Unix V6
   "1" command.  The "1" command also contained a random number
   generator which gave it a one in ten chance of recursively
   executing itself.

ONE-LINER WARS (wuhn-lie'nr worz) n. Popular game among hackers who
   code in the language APL. The objective is to see who can code the
   most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators
   chosen from APL's exceedingly HAIRY primitive set. [This is not
   *quite* as silly as it sounds; I myself have coded one-line LIFE
   programs and once uttered a one-liner that performed lexical
   analysis of its input string followed by a dictionary lookup for
   good measure -- ESR]

OOBLICK (oo'blik) n. A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from cornstarch
   and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches for 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.

OPEN (oh'p@n) n. Abbreviation for "open (or left) parenthesis", used
   when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity.  To read aloud the LISP
   form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open def-fun foo,
   open eks close, open, plus ekx one, close close."  See CLOSE.

OPEN SWITCH (oh'p@n swich) [IBM] n. An unresolved issue.

OPERATING SYSTEM (ah'per-ay-ting sis'tm) n. (Often abbreviated "OS")
   The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which
   schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default
   interface to the user between applications. The facilities the
   operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert
   an extremely strong influence on programming style and the
   technical culture that grows up around a machine. Hacker folklore
   has been shaped primarily by the UNIX, ITS, TOPS-10,
   TOPS-20/TWENEX, VMS, CP/M, MS/DOS, and MULTICS operating systems
   (most critically by ITS and UNIX). Each of these has its own entry,
   which see.

ORANGE BOOK, THE (oh'rnj buk, dh@) n. The U.S. Government's standards
   document (Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard
   5200.28-STD, December, 1985) characterizing secure computing
   architectures, defining levels A1 (least secure) through C3. Stock
   UNIXes are roughly C2. See SILVER BOOK, WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK.

ORIENTAL FOOD (oh-ree-en'tl food) n. Hackers display an intense
   tropism towards Oriental cuisine, especially Chinese, and
   especially of the spicier varieties such as Szechuan and Hunan.
   This phenomenon (which has also been observed in subcultures which
   overlap heavily with hackerdom, most notably science-fiction
   fandom) has never been satisfactorily explained, but is
   sufficiently intense that one can assume the target of a hackish
   dinner expedition to be the best local Chinese place and be right
   at least 3 times out of 4. See also CHINESE RAVS, GREAT-WALL,
   STIR-FRIED RANDOM.

ORTHOGONAL (or-tho'guh-nl) [from mathematics] n. Mutually
   independent; well-separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used to
   describe sets of primitives or capabilities which, like a vector
   basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system
   and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent. For
   example, in architectures such as the MC68000 where all or nearly
   all registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect
   to any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. Or,
   in logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but
   the set `and', `or' and `not' is not (because any one of these can
   be expressed in terms of the other two via De Morgan's Laws).

OS (oh ess) 1. [Operating System] n. Acronym heavily used in email,
   occasionally in speech. 2. obs. n. On ITS, an output spy.

OS/2 (oh ess too) n. The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel-286
   and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it
   right the second time, either. Cited here because mentioning it is
   always good for a cheap laugh among hackers - the design was so bad
   that three years after introduction you could still count the major
   APPs shipping for it on the fingers of two hands. See VAPORWARE,
   MONSTROSITY, CRETINOUS, SECOND-SYSTEM SYNDROME.

OVERRUN SCREW (oh'v@r-ruhn scroo) [C programming] n. A variety of
   FANDANGO ON CORE produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C
   has no checks for this).  This is relatively benign and easy to
   spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to
   SMASH THE STACK. The term OVERRUN SCREW is used esp. of scribbles
   beyond the end of arrays allocated with malloc(3); this typically
   trashes the allocation header for the next block in the ARENA,
   producing massive lossage within malloc and (frequently) a core
   dump on the next operation to use stdio or malloc(3) itself. See
   also MEMORY LEAK, ALIASING SCREW, PRECEDENCE SCREW, FANDANGO ON
   CORE.

                       = P =

PAGE IN (payj in) [MIT] v. To become aware of one's surroundings again
   after having paged out (see PAGE OUT).  Usually confined to the
   sarcastic comment, "So-and-so pages in. Film at 11." See FILM AT
   11.

PAGE OUT (payj owt) [MIT] v. 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.

PANIC (pa'nik) [UNIX] v. An action taken by a process or the entire
   operating system when an unrecoverable error is discovered.  The
   action usually consists of: (1) displaying localized information on
   the controlling terminal, (2) saving, or preparing for saving, a
   memory image of the process or operating system, and (3)
   terminating the process or rebooting the system.

PARAM (p@-ram') n. Speeech-only shorthand for "parameter". Compare
   ARG, VAR.

PARITY ERRORS (per'@-tee er'@rz) pl.n. Those little lapses of
   attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness, usually brought
   on by having spent all night and most of the next day hacking.  "I
   need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot of parity
   errors."

PARSE (pars) [from linguistic terminology] v. 1. To determine the
   syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the
   standard English meaning).  Example: "That was the one I saw you."
   "I can't parse that."  2. More generally, to understand or
   comprehend.  "It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then
   aos the zotz."  "I can't parse that."  3. Of fish, to have to
   remove the bones yourself (usually at a Chinese restaurant).  "I
   object to parsing fish" means "I don't want to get a whole fish,
   but a sliced one is okay."  A "parsed fish" has been deboned.
   There is some controversy over whether "unparsed" should mean
   "bony", or also mean "deboned".

PATCH (pach) 1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually
   as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature.  A
   patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be
   incorporated permanently into the program.  2. v. To insert a patch
   into a piece of code. 3. [in the UNIX world] n. a set of
   differences between two versions of code generated with diff(1) and
   intended to be mechanically applied using patch(1); often used as a
   way of distributing permanent C code upgrades and fixes over
   USENET.

PD (pee-dee) adj. Common abbreviation for "public domain", applied to
   software distributed over USENET and from Internet archive sites.
   Much of this software is not in fact "public domain" in the legal
   sense but travels under various copyrights granting reproduction
   and use rights to anyone who can SNARF a copy. See COPYLEFT.

PDL (pid'l or pud'l) [acronym for Push Down List] n. 1. A LIFO queue
   (stack); more loosely, any priority queue; even more loosely, any
   queue.  A person's pdl is the set of things he has to do in the
   future.  One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having
   risen to the top of the pdl.  "I'm afraid I've got real work to do,
   so this'll have to be pushed way down on my pdl." All these
   usages are also frequently found with STACK (q.v) itself as the
   subject noun.  See PUSH and POP.  2. Dave Lebling (PDL@DM).

PDP-10 [Programmable Digital Processor model 10] n. The machine that
   made timesharing real. Looms large in hacker folklore due to early
   adoption in the mid-70s by many university computing facilities and
   research labs including the MIT AI lab, Stanford and CMU. Some
   aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field
   instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The '10 was
   eventually eclipsed by the PDP-11 and VAX machines and dropped from
   DEC's line in the early '80s, and to have cut one's teeth on one is
   considered something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among
   hackers. See TOPS-10, ITS, Appendix B.

PERCENT-S (per-sent' es) [From "%s", the formatting sequence in C's
   printf() library function used to indicate that an arbitrary string
   may be inserted] n. An unspecified person or object.  "I was just
   talking to some percent-s in administration." Compare RANDOM.

PERF (perf) n. See CHAD (sense #1).

PESSIMAL (pes'i-ml) [Latin-based antonym for "optimal"] adj.
   Maximally bad.  "This is a pessimal situation."

PESSIMIZING COMPILER (pes'i-miez-ing kuhm-pie'lr) [antonym of
   `optimizing compiler'] n. A compiler that produces object code that
   is worse than the straightforward or obvious translation.

PHASE (fayz) 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with
   respect to the standard 24-hour cycle.  This is a useful concept
   among people who often work at night according to no fixed
   schedule.  It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as
   six hours/day on a regular basis.  "What's your phase?" "I've been
   getting in about 8 PM lately, but I'm going to work around to the
   day schedule by Friday."  A person who is roughly 12 hours out of
   phase is sometimes said to be in "night mode".  (The term "day
   mode" is also used, but less frequently.)  2. CHANGE PHASE THE HARD
   WAY: To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a
   different phase.  3. CHANGE PHASE THE EASY WAY: To stay asleep etc.

PHASE OF THE MOON (fayz uhv dh@ moon) n. Used humorously as a random
   parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies
   unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems
   to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine.
   "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode,
   having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon."

PIG, RUN LIKE A (pig, ruhn liek uh) adj. To run very slowly on given
   hardware, said of software. Distinct from HOG, q.v.

PING (ping) [from TCP/IP terminology] n.,v. 1. Slang term for a small
   network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the
   presence and aliveness of another one.  Occasionally used as a
   phone greeting. See ACK. 2.  To verify the presence of. 3. To get
   the attention of.  From the Unix command by the same name (an
   acronym of "Packet INternet Groper) that sends an ICMP ECHO packet
   to another host.

PIPELINE (piep'lien) [UNIX, orig. by Doug McIlroy; now also used under
   MS-DOS and elsewhere] n. A chain of FILTER programs connected
   "head-to-tail", that is so that the output of one becomes the input
   of the next.  Under UNIX, user utilities can often be implemented
   or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines and
   temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much
   less effort than writing C every time, and the capability is
   considered one of UNIX's major WINNING features.

PLAYPEN (play'pen) [IBM] n. A room where programmers work. Compare
   SALT MINES.

PLUGH (ploogh) [from the ADVENT game] v. A `magic word' sometimes used
  as a metasyntactic variable in the style of FOO. See XYZZY.

PM (pee em) 1. [from "preventive maintenence"] v. to bring down a
   machine for inspection or test purposes. 2. n. Abbrev. for
   "Presentation Manager", an ELEPHANTINE OS/2 GUI.

P.O.D. (pee-oh-dee) Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code
   section). Usage: pedantic and rare.

POINTER ARITHMETIC (poyn'tr @-rith'm-@-tik') [C programmers] n. The
   use of increment and decrement operations on address pointers to
   traverse arrays or structure fields. See also BUMP.

POLL (pohl) v.,n. 1. The action of checking the status of an input
   line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external
   event has been registered. 2. To ask.  "I'll poll everyone and see
   where they want to go for lunch."

POLYGON PUSHER (pol'@-gon pu'shr) n. A chip designer who spends
   most of his/her time at the physical layout level (which requires
   drawing *lots* of multi-colored polygons).

POM (pee-oh-em) n. Phase of the moon (q.v.).  Usage: usually used in
   the phrase "POM dependent" which means FLAKEY (q.v.).

POP (pop) [based on the stack operation that removes the top of a stack,
and
   the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack]
   dialect: POPJ (pop-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure return
   instruction.  v. To return from a digression.  By verb doubling,
   "Popj, popj" means roughly, "Now let's see, where were we?"
   See RTI.

PRECEDENCE SCREW (pre's@-dens scroo) [C programmers] n. Coding error
   in an expression to to unexpected grouping of arithmetic or logical
   operators by the compiler. Used esp. of certain common coding
   errors in C due to the nonintuitively low precedence levels of &, |
   and ^. Can always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. See
   ALIASING SCREW, MEMORY LEAK, SMASH THE STACK, FANDANGO ON CORE,
   OVERRUN SCREW.

PRIME TIME (priem tiem) [from TV programming] n. Normal high-usage
   hours on a timesharing system, the `day shift'. Avoidance of prime
   time is a major reason for NIGHT MODE hacking.

PRIORITY INTERRUPT (prie-or'i-tee in'ter-ruhpt) [from the hardware
   term] n. Describes any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right
   out of hack mode.  Classically used to describe being dragged away
   by an SO for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane
   interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity.

PROPELLER HEAD (proh-pel'r hed) n. Used by hackers, this is syn. with
   COMPUTER GEEK. Non-hackers sometimes use it to describe all techies.

PROTOCOL (proh'tuh-kol) n. See DO PROTOCOL.

PROWLER (prow'lr) [UNIX] n. A DEMON that is run periodically
   (typically once a week) to seek out and erase core files, truncate
   administrative logfiles, nuke lost+found directories, and otherwise
   clean up the cruft that tends to pile up in the corners of a file
   system.

PSEUDOPRIME (soo'doh-priem) n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive
   occupied points) with one point missing.

PUNT (punt) [from the punch line of an old joke: "Drop back 15 yards
   and punt"] v. To give up, typically without any intention of
   retrying.

PURPLE BOOK, THE (per'pl buk) n. The System V Interface Definition.
   The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade
   of off-lavender. See WHITE BOOK, SILVER BOOK, ORANGE BOOK.

PUSH (push) [based on the stack operation that puts the current
   information on a stack, and the fact that procedure call addresses
   are saved on the stack] dialect: PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the
   PDP-10 procedure call instruction.  v. To enter upon a digression,
   to save the current discussion for later.

                       = Q =

QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS (kwahn'tm boh'goh-die-nam'iks) n. Theory
   promulgated by ESR (one of the authors) which characterizes the
   universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car
   salesmen, TV evangelists, and SUITs in general), bogon sinks (such
   as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields.  Bogon
   absorption, of course, causes human beings to behave mindlessly and
   machines to fail (and may cause them to emit secondary bogons as
   well); however, the precise mechanics of the bogon-computron
   interaction are not yet understood and remain to be elucidated.
   Quantum bogodynamics is most frequently invoked to explain the
   sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of
   suits; the latter emit bogons which the former absorb. See BOGON,
   COMPUTRON, SUIT.

QUES (kwess) 1. n. The question mark character ("?").  2. interj.
   What?  Also QUES QUES?  See WALL.

QUX (kwuhx) The fourth of the standard metasyntactic variables, after
   BAZ and before the QUU*X series. See FOO, BAR, BAZ, QUUX.

QUUX (kwooks) [invented by Steele] Mythically, from the Latin
   semi-deponent verb QUUXO, QUUXARE, QUUXANDUM IRI; noun form
   variously QUUX (plural QUUCES, Anglicized to QUUXES) and QUUXU
   (genitive plural is QUUXUUM, four U's in seven letters).] 1.
   Originally, a meta-word like FOO and FOOBAR.  Invented by Guy
   Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and naive and
   not yet interacting with the real computing community. Many people
   invent such words; this one seems simply to have been lucky enough
   to have spread a little.  2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very
   little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of
   it.  3. n.  Refers to one of three people who went to Boston Latin
   School and eventually to MIT:
        THE GREAT QUUX:  Guy L. Steele Jr.
        THE LESSER QUUX:  David J. Littleboy
        THE MEDIOCRE QUUX:  Alan P. Swide
   (This taxonomy is said to be similarly applied to three Frankston
   brothers at MIT.)  QUUX, without qualification, usually refers to
   The Great Quux, who is somewhat infamous for light verse and for
   the "Crunchly" cartoons.  4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a
   QUUX.  5. n. The Micro Quux (Sam Lewis).

                       = R =

RANDOM (ran'dm) adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical
   definition); weird.  "The system's been behaving pretty randomly."
   2. Assorted; undistinguished.  "Who was at the conference?"  "Just
   a bunch of random business types."  3.  Frivolous; unproductive;
   undirected (pejorative).  "He's just a random loser."  4.
   Incoherent or inelegant; not well organized.  "The program has a
   random set of misfeatures."  "That's a random name for that
   function."  "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."  5.
   Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent
   reason.  For example, a program that handles file name defaulting
   in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could
   easily have been coded using only three ac's, but randomly uses
   seven for assorted non-overlapping purposes, so that no one else
   can invoke it without first saving four extra ac's.  6. In no
   particular order, though deterministic.  "The I/O channels are in a
   pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly." n. 7. A
   random hacker; used particularly of high school students who soak
   up computer time and generally get in the way.  8. (occasional MIT
   usage) One who lives at Random Hall.  J. RANDOM is often prefixed
   to a noun to make a "name" out of it (by comparison to common names
   such as "J. Fred Muggs").  The most common uses are "J. Random
   Loser" and "J. Random Nurd" ("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to
   gun down other people?"), but it can be used just as an elaborate
   version of RANDOM in any sense.  See also SOME RANDOM X.

RANDOM NUMBERS (ran'd@m nuhm'brz) n. When one wishes to specify a
   large but random number of things, and the context is inappropriate
   for `N' (q.v.), certain numbers are preferred by hacker tradition
   (that is, easily recognized as placeholders). These include

   17  Long described at MIT as "the least random number". Also see 23.
   23  A sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 & 5).
   42  The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
   69  From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture.
   666 The Number of the Beast.

   For further enlightenment, consult the _Principia_Discordia_,
   _The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_To_The_Galaxy_, any porn movie, and the
   Christian Bible's _Book_Of_Revelations_. See also DISCORDIANISM.

RANDOMNESS (ran'dm-nes) n. An unexplainable misfeature; gratuitous
   inelegance.  Also, a HACK or CROCK which depends on a complex
   combination of coincidences (or rather, the combination upon which
   the crock depends).  "This hack can output characters 40-57 by
   putting the character in the accumulator field of an XCT and then
   extracting 6 bits -- the low two bits of the XCT opcode are the
   right thing."  "What randomness!"

RAPE (rayp) v. To (metaphorically) screw someone or something,
   violently.  Usage: often used in describing file-system damage.
   "So-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk I/O and
   ended up raping the master directory."

RARE (reir) [UNIX] adj. CBREAK mode (character-by-character with
   interrupts enabled). Distinguished from `raw' and `cooked', but
   unlike them this term is strictly a creature of folklore, not
   found in the manuals. Usage: rare.

RASTER BURN (ras'tr bern) n. Eyestrain brought on by too many hours
   of looking at low-res, poorly tuned or glare-ridden monitors, esp.
   graphics monitors. See TERMINAL ILLNESS.

RAVE (rayv) [WPI] v. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.
   2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
   little.  3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to
   correct the difficulty.  4. To purposely annoy another person
   verbally.  5. To evangelize.  See FLAME.  Also used to describe a
   less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting.

RAVE ON! (rayv on) imp. Sarcastic invitation to continue a RAVE,
   often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes
   this is unlikely.

READ-ONLY USER (reed'ohn-lee yoo'zr) n. Describes a LUSER who uses
   computers almost exclusively for reading USENET, bulletin boards
   and email, as opposed to writing code or purveying useful
   information. See TWINK.

REAL SOON NOW (reel soon now) [orig. from SF's fanzine community] adj.
   1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real
   soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.
   2. When the gods/fates/other time commitments permit the speaker to
   get to it.  Often abbreviated RSN.

REAL TIME (reel tiem) adv. Doing something while people are watching
   or waiting.  "I asked her how to find the caller's pc on the stack
   and she came up with an algorithm in real time."

REAL USER (reel yoo'zr) n. 1. A commercial user.  One who is paying
   "real" money for his computer usage.  2. A non-hacker. Someone
   using the system for an explicit purpose (research project, course,
   etc.).  See USER.

REAL WORLD, THE (reel werld, dh@) n. 1. In programming, those
   institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence
   as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc.  2. To programmers, the location
   of non-programmers and activities not related to programming.  3. A
   universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which
   a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.  4. The location of
   the status quo.  5. Anywhere outside a university.  "Poor fellow,
   he's left MIT and gone into the real world."  Used pejoratively by
   those not in residence there.  In conversation, talking of someone
   who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
   deceased person. See also FEAR AND LOATHING and UNINTERESTING.

REINCARNATION, CYCLE OF (ree-in-kar-nay'shn) n. Term used to refer to
   a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family
   is migrated out to special purpose peripheral hardware for speed,
   then the peripheral evolves towards more computing power as it does
   its job, then somebody notices that it's inefficient to support two
   asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function
   back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again.
   Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics
   processor design, and at least one or two in communications and
   floating-point processors.

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS (reg'yoo-lr ek-spre-shns) [UNIX] The UNIX
   conventions for filename and regular-expression wildcarding have
   become sufficiently pervasive than many hackers use some of them in
   written English, especially in email or news on technical topics.
   Those commonly encountered include:

        *       wildcard for any string (see UN*X, U*IX).
        ?       wildcard for any character (generally only read this
                way in the middle of a word.
        []      set-of-characters braces.

   Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity).
   "That got posted to talk.politics.*" (all the talk.politics subgroups
   on USENET). Other examples are given under the entry for `X'. The
   * wildcard has a name of its own; it's a `Kleene star'.

RELIGIOUS ISSUES (ree-lij'-@s is'yoos) n. Questions which seemingly
   cannot be raised without touching off a FLAME WAR, such as "What is
   the best editor/language operating system/architecture". See also
   THEOLOGY.

RELIGIOUS WAR (ree-lij'@s wor)[from USENET, but may predate it] n.
   FLAME WARS over RELIGIOUS ISSUES.

REPLICATOR (rep'l:-kay-t:r) any construct that acts to produce copies
   of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see MEME), a
   program (see WORM, WABBIT and VIRUS), or a robot.

RETROCOMPUTING (ret'-roh-k@m-pyoo'ting) n. Refers to emulations
   of way-behind-the state-of-the-art hardware or software, or
   implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such
   implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies
   of more `serious' designs. Perhaps the most widely distributed
   retrocomputing utility was the pnch(6) program on V7 and other
   early UNIX versions, which would accept up to 80 characters of
   text argument and display the corresponding pattern in Hollerith
   card code. Other well-known retrocomputing hacks have included
   the language INTERCAL, a jcl-emulating shell for UNIX, and the
   card-punch-emulating editor named 029.

RFC (ahr ef see) n. Request For Comment. One of a long-established
   series of numbered Internet standards widely followed by commercial
   and PD software 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.

RICE BOX (ries boks) [from ham radio slang] n. Any Asian-made
   commodity computer, esp. an 8086, 80286, 80386 or 80486-based
   machine built to IBM PC-compatible ISA or EISA-bus standards.

RIGHT THING, THE (riet thing, dh@) n. That which is "obviously" the
   correct or appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc.  Use of this
   term often implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree.
   "Never let your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!"
   "What's the right thing for LISP to do when it reads `(.)'?"
   Antonym: THE WRONG THING (q.v.).

ROACH (rohch) [Bell Labs] v. To destroy, esp. of a data structure.
   Hardware gets TOASTed, software gets roached.

ROBUST (roh'buhst) adj. Said of a system which has demonstrated an
   ability to recover gracefully from the whole range of exception
   conditions in a given environment. One step below BULLETPROOF.
   Compare SMART, oppose BRITTLE.

ROGUE (rohg) [UNIX] n. Graphic Dungeons-And-Dragons-like game written
   under BSD UNIX and subsequently ported to other UNIX systems. The
   original BSD curses(3) screen-handling package was hacked together
   by Ken Arnold to support ROGUE, and has since become one of UNIX's
   most important and heavily used application libraries. See HACK.

ROOM-TEMPERATURE IQ (room tem'prat-yoor ie-kyoo) [IBM] 80 or below.
   Used in describing expected the intelligence range of the LUSER. As
   in "Well, but how's this interface gonna play with the
   room-temperature IQ crowd?" See DROOL-PROOF PAPER.

RTFM (ahr-tee-ef-em) [UNIX] Abbrev. for "Read The F**king Manual".
   Used by GURUs to brush off questions they consider trivial or
   annoying. Compare DON'T DO THAT, THEN.

RTI (ahr-tee-ie) interj. The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt'
   instruction on Intel microprocessors. Equivalent to "Now, where was
   I?" or used to end a conversational digression. See POP, POPJ.

RUDE (rood) [WPI] adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written.  2.
   Functionally poor, e.g. a program which is very difficult to use
   because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. See
   CUSPY.

                       = S =

SACRED (say'kr@d) adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a
   metaphorical extension of the standard meaning). "Accumulator 7 is
   sacred to the UUO handler."  Often means that anyone may look at
   the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is
   sacred to.

SADISTICS (s@'dis'tiks) n. University slang for statistics and
   probability theory, often used by hackers.

SAGA (saga) [WPI] n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N
   random broken people.

SAIL (sayl) n. Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab. An
   important site in the early development of LISP (with the MIT AI
   LAB, CMU and the UNIX community) one of the major founts of hacker
   culture traditions. The SAIL machines were shut down in late May
   1990, scant weeks after the MIT AI lab's ITS cluster went down
   for the last time.

SALT MINES (sahlt miens) n. Dense quarters housing large numbers of
   programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope
   of seeing the end of the tunnel in x number of years. Noted for
   their absence of sunshine. Compare PLAYPEN.

SANDBENDER (sand'ben-dr) [IBM] n. A person involved with silicon
   lithography and the physical design of chips. Compare IRONMONGER,
   POLYGON PUSHER.

SCIENCE-FICTION FANDOM (si'@ns fik'shn fan'dm) n. Another voluntary
   subculture having a very heavy overlap with hackerdom; almost all
   hackers read SF and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and many go to
   "cons" (SF conventions) or are involved in fandom-connected
   activities like the Society for Creative Anachronism. Some hacker
   slang originated in SF fandom; see DEFENESTRATION, GREAT-WALL,
   CYBERPUNK, H INFIX, HA HA ONLY SERIOUS, IMHO, MUNDANE, NEEP-NEEP,
   REAL SOON NOW, SNOG. Additionally, the jargon terms CYBERSPACE,
   GO FLATLINE, ICE, VIRUS, and WORM originated in SF itself.

SCRATCH (skrach) [from "scratchpad"] adj. A device or recording medium
   attached to a machine for testing purposes; one which can be
   SCRIBBLED on without loss. Usually in the combining forms SCRATCH
   MEMORY, SCRATCH DISK, SCRATCH TAPE, SCRATCH VOLUME. See SCRATCH
   MONKEY.

SCRATCH MONKEY (skrach muhn'kee) n. As in, "Before testing or
   reconfiguring, always mount a". Used in memory of Mabel, the
   Swimming Wonder Monkey who expired when a computer vendor PM'd a
   machine which was regulating the gas mixture that the monkey was
   breathing at the time. See Appendix A. A mantram used to advise
   caution when dealing with irreplacable data or devices. See
   SCRATCH.

SCREW (scroo) [MIT] n. A LOSE, usually in software. Especially used
   for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or misfeature.

SCREWAGE (scroo'@j) n. Like LOSSAGE (q.v.) but connotes that the
   failure is do to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple
   inadequacy or mere bug.

SCROG (skrog) [Bell Labs] v. To damage, trash or corrupt a data
   structure. as in "the cblock got scrogged".  Also reported as
   SKROG, and ascribed to "The Wizard of Id" comix. Equivalent to
   SCRIBBLE or MANGLE, q.v.

SCROZZLE (skro'zl) v. Verb used when a self-modifying code segment
   runs incorrectly and corrupts the running program, or vital data.
   "The damn compiler scrozzled itself again!"

SCRIBBLE (skri'bl) n. To modify a data structure in a random and
   unintentionally destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's disk-compactor
   program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node table." "It was
   working fine until one of the allocation routines scribbled on low
   core."  Synonymous with TRASH; compare MUNG, which conveys a bit
   more intention, and MANGLE, which is more violent and final.

SEARCH-AND-DESTROY MODE (serch-@nd-d@s-troy' mohd) n. Hackerism for
   the search-and-replace facility in an editor, so called because an
   incautiously chosen match pattern can cause INFINITE damage.

SECOND-SYSTEM SYNDROME (sek'@nd sis'tm sin'drohm) n. When designing
   the successor to a relatively small, elegant and successful system,
   there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's success and
   perpetrate an ELEPHANTINE feature-laden monstrosity. The term
   `second-system syndrome' was first used for this affliction in
   describing how the success of CTSS led to the debacle that was
   MULTICS.

SEGGIE (seg'ee) [UNIX] n. Reported from Britain as a shorthand for
   `segment violation', an attempted access to a protected memory area
   usually resulting in a CORE DUMP.

SELF-REFERENCE (self ref'@-rens) n. See SELF-REFERENCE.

SELVAGE (selv'@j) n. See CHAD (sense #1).

SEMI (se'mee) 1. n. Abbreviation for "semicolon", when speaking.
   "Commands to GRIND are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the
   prefix is ";;*", not 1/4 of a star.  2. Prefix with words such as
   "immediately", as a qualifier.  "When is the system coming up?"
   "Semi-immediately."

SERVER (ser'vr) n. A kind of DAEMON which performs a service for the
   requester, which often runs on a computer other than the one on
   which the server runs. A particularly common term on the Internet,
   which is rife with "name servers" "domain servers" "news servers"
   "finger servers" and the like.

SEX (seks) [Sun User's Group & elsewhere] n. 1.  Software EXchange. A
   technique invented by the blue-green algae hundereds 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. 2. The rather Freudian mnemonic often used for Sign Extend,
   a machine instruction found in many architectures.

SHAREWARE (sheir'weir) n. FREEWARE for which the author requests some
   payment, usually in the accompanying documentation files or in an
   announcement made by the software itself. Such payment may or may
   not buy additional support or functionality. See GUILTWARE,
   CRIPPLEWARE.

SHELFWARE (shelf'weir) n. Software purchased on a whim (by an
   individual user) or in accordance with policy (by a corporation or
   government) but not actually required for any particular use.
   Therefore, it often ends up on some shelf.

SHELL (shel) [from UNIX, now used elsewhere] n. 1. On an operating
   system with a well-defined KERNEL (q.v.), the SHELL is the loadable
   command interpreter program used to pass commands to the kernel. A
   single kernel may support several shells with different interface
   styles.  2. More generally, any interface program which mediates
   access to a special resource or SERVER for convenience, efficiency
   or security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually A SHELL
   AROUND whatever.

SHIFT LEFT (RIGHT) LOGICAL (shift left (riet) lah'ji-kl) [from any of
   various machines' instruction sets] 1. v. To move oneself to the
   left (right).  To move out of the way.  2. imper. Get out of that
   (my) seat!  Usage: often used without the "logical", or as "left
   shift" instead of "shift left".  Sometimes heard as LSH (lish),
   from the PDP-10 instruction set.

SHRIEK (shreek) See EXCL.  Occasional CMU usage, also in common use
   among mathematicians, especially category theorists.

SIG (sig) or SIG BLOCK (sig blahk) [UNIX; often written ".sig" there]
   n. Short for "signature", used specifically to refer to the
   electronic signature block which most UNIX mail- and news-posting
   software will allow you to automatically append to outgoing mail
   and news. The composition of one's sig can be quite an art form,
   including an ASCII logo or one's choice of witty sayings; but many
   consider large sigs a waste of bandwidth, and it has been observed
   that the size of one's sig block is usually inversely proportional
   to one's longevity and level of prestige on THE NETWORK.

SILICON (sil'i-kon) n. Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based
   computer systems (compare IRON). Contrasted with software.

SILLY WALK (si'lee wahk) [from Monty Python] v. a ridiculous procedure
   required to accomplish a task. Like GROVEL, but more RANDOM and
   humorous. "I had to silly-walk through half the /usr directories to
   find the maps file."

SILO (sie'loh) n. The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line
   card. So called from DEC terminology used on DH and DZ line cards
   for the VAX and PDP-11.

SILVER BOOK, THE (sil'vr buk) n. Jensen & Wirth's infamous
   _Pascal_User_Manual_ and_Report_, so called because of the silver
   cover of the widely-distributed Springer-Verlag second edition of
   1978. See WHITE BOOK, PURPLE BOOK, ORANGE BOOK.

16-INCH ROTARY DEBUGGER (piz'uh) [Commodore] n.  Essential equipment
   for those late night or early morning debugging sessions. Mainly
   used as sustenance for the hacker.  Comes in many decorator colours
   such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage.

SLEEP (sleep) [from the UNIX sleep(3)] On a timesharing system, a
   process which relinquishes its claim on the scheduler until some
   given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses is said to `go
   to sleep'.

SLOP (slop) n. 1. A one-sided fudge factor (q.v.).  Often introduced
   to avoid the possibility of a fencepost error (q.v.).  2. (used by
   compiler freaks) The ratio of code generated by a compiler to
   hand-compiled code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you
   lose because you didn't do it yourself.

SLOPSUCKER (slop'suhkr) n. a lowest-priority task that must wait
   around until everything else has "had its fill" of machine
   resources.  Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the
   task allowed to "suck up the slop." Also called a HUNGRY PUPPY. One
   common variety of slopsucker hunts for large prime numbers. Compare
   BACKGROUND.

SLUGGY (sluh'gee) adj. Hackish variant of `sluggish'. Used only of
   people, esp.  someone just waking up after a long GRONK-OUT.

SLURP (slerp) v. To read a large data file entirely into core before
   working on it.  "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does
   an FFT."

SMART (smart) adj. Said of a program that does the RIGHT THING (q.v.)
   in a wide variety of complicated circumstances.  There is a
   difference between calling a program smart and calling it
   intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent
   programs (yet).  Compare ROBUST (smart programs can be BRITTLE).

SMASH THE STACK (smash dh@ stak) [C programming] n. On many C
   implementations it is possible to corrupt the execution stack by
   writing past the end of an array declared auto in a routine. Code
   that does this is said to `smash the stack', and can cause return
   from the routine to jump to a random text address. This can produce
   some of the most insidious data-dependent bugs known to mankind.
   Variants include `trash the stack', `SCRIBBLE ON the stack',
   `MANGLE the stack'; `*MUNG the stack' is not used as this is never
   done intentionally.  See ALIASING SCREW, FANDANGO ON CORE, MEMORY
   LEAK, PRECEDENCE SCREW, OVERRUN SCREW.

SMILEY (smie'lee) n. See EMOTICON.

SMOKE TEST (smohk test) n. 1. A rudimentary form of testing applied to
   electronic equipment following repair or reconfiguration in which
   AC power is applied and during which the tester checks for sparks,
   smoke, or other dramatic signs of fundamental failure. 2. By
   extension, the first run of a piece of software after construction
   or a critical change. See MAGIC SMOKE.

SMOKING CLOVER (smoh'king kloh'vr) n. A DISPLAY HACK originally due
   to Bill Gosper.  Many convergent lines are drawn on a color monitor
   in AOS mode (so that every pixel struck has its color incremented).
   The color map is then rotated.  The lines all have one endpoint in
   the middle of the screen; the other endpoints are spaced one pixel
   apart around the perimeter of a large square.  This results in a
   striking, rainbow-hued, shimmering four-leaf clover. Gosper joked
   about keeping it hidden from the FDA lest it be banned.

SMOP (smop) [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. A piece of
   code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly
   greater than its complexity.  Usage: used to refer to a program
   that could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble.

SNAIL-MAIL (snayl-mayl) n. Paper mail, as opposed to electronic. See
   EMAIL.

SNARF (snarf) v. 1. To grab, esp. a large document or file for the
   purpose of using it either with or without the author's permission.
   See BLT.  Variant: SNARF (IT) DOWN.  (At MIT on ITS, DDT has a
   command called :SNARF which grabs a job from another (inferior)
   DDT.) 2. [in the UNIX community] to fetch a file or set of files
   across a network.  See also BLAST.

SNARF & BARF (snarf-n-barf) n. The act of grabbing a region of text
   using a WIMP (q.v.) environment (Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) and
   then "stuffing" the contents of that region into another region or
   into the same region, to avoid re-typing a command line.

SNEAKERNET (snee'ker-net) n. Term used (generally with ironic intent)
   for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape,
   disks, or some other media from one machine to another. "Never
   underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape,
   or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs"

SNIFF (snif) v.,n. Synonym for POLL.

SNOG (snog) [from old-time science-fiction fandom] v.i. Equivalent to
   mainstream "make out" describing sexual activity, especially
   exploratory. Most often encountered as participle SNOGGING. "Oh,
   they're off snogging somewhere."

S.O. (ess-oh) n. Acronym for Significant Other, almost invariably
   written abbreviated and pronounced "ess-oh" by hackers. In fact the
   form without periods "SO" is most common. Used to refer to one's
   primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not married.
   See MOTAS, MOTOS, MOTSS.

SOFTWARE ROT (soft'weir raht) n. Hypothetical disease the existence
   of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs
   or features will stop working after sufficient time has passed,
   even if "nothing has changed".  Also known as BIT DECAY, BIT ROT.
   Occasionally this turns out to be a real problem due to media
   failure.

SOFTWARILY (soft-weir'i-lee) adv. In a way pertaining to software.
   "The system is softwarily unreliable."  The adjective "softwary" is
   NOT used.  See HARDWARILY.

SOME RANDOM X (suhm randm eks) adj. Used to indicate a member of
   class X, with the implication that the particular X is
   interchangeable with most other Xs in whatever context was being
   discussed. "I think some random cracker tripped over the gust
   timeout last night"

SORCEROR'S APPRENTICE MODE (sor'ser'ers @-pren'tis mohd) n. A bug in
   a protocol where, under some circumstances, the receipt of a
   message causes more than one message to be sent, each of which,
   when received, triggers the same bug. Used esp. of such behavior
   caused by BOUNCE MESSAGE loops in EMAIL software. Compare BROADCAST
   STORM.

SPACEWAR (spays'wohr) n. A space-combat simulation game first
   implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1960-61. SPACEWAR aficionados
   formed the core of the early hacker culture at MIT. Ten years later
   a descendent of the game motivated Ken Thompson to invent UNIX
   (q.v.). Ten years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of
   the first video games; descendants are still feeping in video
   arcades everywhere.

SPAGHETTI CODE (sp@-get'ee kohd) n. Describes code with a complex and
   tangled control structure, esp. one using many GOTOs, exceptions or
   other `unstructured' branching constructs. Pejorative.

SPAGHETTI INHERITANCE (sp@-get'ee in-her'i-t@ns) n. [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.

SPIFFY (spi'fee) adj. 1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever or
   exceptionally well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffy X
   version of EMPIRE yet?" 2. Said sarcastically of programs which are
   perceived to have little more than a flashy interface going for
   them. Which meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of
   voice and context.

SPIN (spin) v. Equivalent to BUZZ (q.v.). More common among C and UNIX
   programmers.

SPLAT (splat) n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others)
   for the ASCII star ("*") character.  2. [MIT] Name used by some
   people for the ASCII pound-sign ("#") character.  3. [Stanford]
   Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII
   circle-x character.  (This character is also called "circle-x",
   "blobby", and "frob", among other names.)  4. [Stanford] Name for
   the semi-mythical extended ASCII circle-plus character. 5.
   Canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the the
   local interpretation of splat is.  Usage: nobody really agrees what
   character "splat" is, but the term is common.

SPOOGE (spooj) 1. n. inexplicable or arcane code, or random and
   probably incorrect output from a computer program 2. v. to generate
   code or output as in definition 1.

STACK (stak) n. See PDL. The STACK usage is probably more common
   outside universities.

STATE (stayt) n. Condition, situation.  "What's the state of NEWIO?"
   "It's winning away."  "What's your state?"  "I'm about to gronk
   out."  As a special case, "What's the state of the world?" (or,
   more silly, "State-of-world-P?") means "What's new?" or "What's
   going on?"

STIR-FRIED RANDOM (ster-fried ran'dm) alt. STIR-FRIED MUMBLE
   (ster-fried mum'bl) n. Term used for frequent best dish of those
   hackers who can cook. Conists of random fresh veggies and meat
   wokked with random spices. Tasty and economical.  See RANDOM,
   GREAT-WALL, CHINESE RAVS, ORIENTAL FOOD.

STOMP ON (stomp on) v.  To inadvertently overwrite something
   important, usually automatically.  Example: "All the work I did
   this weekend got stomped on last night by the nightly-server
   script." Compare SCRIBBLE, MANGLE, TRASH, SCROG, ROACH.

STOPPAGE (sto'p@j) n. Extreme lossage (see LOSSAGE) resulting in
   something (usually vital) becoming completely unusable.

STUNNING (stuhn'ning) adj. Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in
   sarcasm. "You want to code *what* in ADA? That's...a stunning
   idea!" See also NON-OPTIMAL SOLUTION.

SUBSHELL (suhb'shel) [UNIX, MS-DOS] n. An OS command interpreter (see
   SHELL) spawned from within a program, such that exit from the
   command interpreter returns one to the parent program in a state
   that allows it to continue execution. Oppose CHAIN.

SUIT (soot) n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable `business clothing' often
   worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with a `tie', a strangulation
   device which partially cuts off the blood supply to the brain. It
   is thought that this explains much about the behavior of suit-
   wearers. 2. A person who habitually wears suits, as distinct from a
   techie or hacker. See LOSER, BURBLE and BRAIN-DAMAGED.

SUPERPROGRAMMER (soo'per-pro'gra-mr) n. See WIZARD, HACKER, GURU.
   Usage: rare.  (Becoming more common among IBM and Yourdon types.)

SUZIE COBOL (soo'zee koh'bol) 1. [IBM, prob. fr. Frank Zappa's
   "little Suzy Creamcheese"] n. A coder straight out of training
   school who knows everything except the benefits of comments in
   plain English.  Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid
   accusations of sexism) `Sammy Cobol' 2. [generalization proposed by
   ESR] Meta-name for any CODE GRINDER, analogous to J. RANDOM HACKER.

SWAB (swob) [From the PDP-11 "byte swap" instruction] 1. v. to solve
   the NUXI PROBLEM by swapping bytes in a file. 2. Also, the program
   in V7 UNIX used to perform this action. See also BIG-ENDIAN,
   LITTLE-ENDIAN, BYTESEXUAL.

SWAPPED (swopt) adj. From the use of secondary storage devices to
   implement virtual memory in computer systems.  Something which is
   SWAPPED IN is available for immediate use in main memory, and
   otherwise is SWAPPED OUT.  Often used metaphorically to refer to
   people's memories ("I read TECO ORDER every few months to keep the
   information swapped in.") or to their own availability ("I'll swap
   you in as soon as I finish looking at this other problem.").
   Compare PAGE IN, PAGE OUT.

SWIZZLE (swi'zl) v. To convert external names or references within a
   data structure into direct pointers when the data structure is
   brought into main memory from external storage; also called POINTER
   SWIZZLING; the converse operation is sometimes termed UNSWIZZLING.

SYNC (sink) [from UNIX] n.,v. 1. To force all pending I/O to the disk.
   2. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or
   agents to a state that would be `safe' if the system were to crash;
   thus, to checkpoint. See FLUSH.

SYNTACTIC SUGAR (sin-tak'tik shu'gr) n. Features added to a language
   or formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, that do not affect
   the expressiveness of the formalism (compare CHROME). Used esp.
   when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the `sugar'
   feature into other constructs already present in the notation.
   Example: the \n, \t, \r, and \b escapes in C strings, which could
   be expressed as octal escapes.

SYSTEM (sis'tem) n. 1. The supervisor program on the computer.  2. Any
   large-scale program.  3. Any method or algorithm.  4. The way
   things are usually done.  Usage: a fairly ambiguous word. "You
   can't beat the system."  SYSTEM HACKER: one who hacks the system
   (in sense 1 only; for sense 2 one mentions the particular program:
   e.g., LISP HACKER)

                       = T =

T (tee) 1. [from LISP terminology for "true"] Yes.  Usage: used in
   reply to a question, particularly one asked using the "-P"
   convention).  See NIL.  2. See TIME T. 3. In transaction-processing
   circles, an abbreviation for the noun "transaction".

TALK MODE n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another via a
   bidirectional character pipe to support on-line dialogue between
   two or more users.  Talk mode has a special set of jargon words,
   used to save typing, which are not used orally:

        BCNU    Be seeing you.
        BTW     By the way...
        BYE?    Are you ready to unlink?  (This is the standard way to
                end a com mode conversation; the other person types
                BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation.)
        CUL     See you later.
        FOO?    A greeting, also meaning R U THERE?  Often used in the
                case of unexpected links, meaning also "Sorry if I
                butted in" (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee).
        FYI     For your information...
        GA      Go ahead (used when two people have tried to type
                simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to
                the other).
        HELLOP  A greeting, also meaning R U THERE?  (An instance
                of the "-P" convention.)
        NIL     No (see the main entry for NIL).
        OBTW    Oh, by the way...
        R U THERE?      Are you there?
        SEC     Wait a second (sometimes written SEC...).
        T       Yes (see the main entry for T).
        TNX     Thanks.
        TNX 1.0E6       Thanks a million (humorous).
        WTH     What the hell
        <double CRLF>  When the typing party has finished, he types
                two CRLFs to signal that he is done; this leaves a
                blank line between individual "speeches" in the
                conversation, making it easier to re-read the
                preceding text.
        <name>: When three or more terminals are linked, each speech
                is preceded by the typist's login name and a colon (or
                a hyphen) to indicate who is typing.  The login name
                often is shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a
                single letter) during a very long conversation.

   Most of the above "sub-jargon" is used at both Stanford and MIT. A
   few other abbrevs have been reported from commercial networks such
   as GEnie and Compuserve where on-line `live' chat including more
   than two people is common and usually involves a more `social'
   context, notably

        <g>     grin
        BRB     be right back
        HHOJ    ha ha only joking
        HHOS    HA HA ONLY SERIOUS
        LOL     laughing out load
        ROTF    rolling on the floor
        AFK     away from keyboard
        b4      before
        CU l8tr see you later
        MORF    Male or Female?
        TTFN    ta-ta for now
        OIC     Oh, I see
        rehi    hello again

   These are not used at universities; conversely, most of the people
   who know these are unfamiliar with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, NIL, and T.

TANKED (tankt) adj. Same as DOWN, used primarily by UNIX hackers. See
   also HOSED. Popularized as a synonym for "drunk" by Steve Dallas in
   the late lamented "Bloom County" comix.

TASTE (tayst) n. [primarily MIT-DMS] The quality in programs which
   tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features,
   hacks, and kluges programmed into it.  Also, TASTY, TASTEFUL,
   TASTEFULNESS.  "This feature comes in N tasty flavors." Although
   TASTEFUL and FLAVORFUL are essentially synonyms, TASTE and FLAVOR
   are not.

TCB (tee see bee) [IBM] Trouble Came Back. Intermittent or difficult-to
   reproduce problem which has failed to respond to neglect. Compare
   HEISENBUG.

TELNET (telnet) v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the
   TELNET program.  TOPS-10 people use the word IMPCOM since that is
   the program name for them.  Sometimes abbreviated to TN. "I
   usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News."

TENSE (tens) adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient.  A tense
   piece of code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but
   sometimes it was just based on a great idea.  A comment in a clever
   display routine by Mike Kazar: "This routine is so tense it will
   bring tears to your eyes.  Much thanks to Craig Everhart and James
   Gosling for inspiring this hack attack."  A tense programmer is one
   who produces tense code.

TERAFLOP CLUB (ter'a-flop kluhb) n. Mythical group of people who
   consume outragous amounts of computer time in order to produce a
   few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray tracing
   techniques.  Cal Tech professor James Kajiya is said to be the
   founding member.

TERMINAK (ter'mi-nak) [Caltech, ca. 1979] n. Any malfunctioning
   computer terminal. A common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM3a
   terminals caused the "L" key to produce the "K" code instead;
   complaints about this tended to look like "Terminak #3 has a bad
   keyboard.  Pkease fix."

TERMINAL ILLNESS (ter'mi-nl il'nes) n. 1. Syn. with RASTER BURN.
   2. The `burn-in' condition your CRT tends to get if you don't
   have a screen saver.

TERPRI (ter'pree) [from the LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP) function to
   start a new line of output] v. To output a CRLF (q.v.).

THANKS IN ADVANCE [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted
   request for information or assistance. Sometimes written
   "advTHANKSance". See "NET.", NETIQUETTE.

THEOLOGY (thee-o'l@-gee) n. 1. Ironically used to refer to RELIGIOUS
   ISSUES.  2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those
   where the resolution is of theoretical interest but 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.  Example: the deep- vs. shallow-binding debate in the
   design of dynamically-scoped LISPS.

THEORY (theer'ee) n. Used in the general sense of idea, plan, story,
   or set of rules.  "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?"
   "What's the theory on dinner tonight?"  ("Chinatown, I guess.")
   "What's the current theory on letting lusers on during the day?"
   "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known
   screw..."

THINKO (thin'ko) [by analogy with `typo'] n. A bubble in the stream of
   consciousness; a momentary, correctable glitch in mental
   processing, especially one involving recall of information learned
   by rote. Compare MOUSO.

THRASH (thrash) v. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing
   anything useful.  Swapping systems which are overloaded waste most
   of their time moving pages into and out of core (rather than
   performing useful computation), and are therefore said to thrash.

TICK (tick) n. 1. Interval of time; basic clock time on the computer.
   Typically 1/60 second.  See JIFFY.  2. In simulations, the discrete
   unit of time that passes "between" iterations of the simulation
   mechanism.  In AI applications, this amount of time is often left
   unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is that caused
   things happen after their causes.  This sort of AI simulation is
   often pejoratively referred to as "tick-tick-tick" simulation,
   especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
   independent chains of causes is handwaved.

TIME T (tiem tee) n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood
   time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet
   on campus at time T or at Louie's at time T+1."  2. SINCE (OR AT)
   TIME T EQUALS MINUS INFINITY: A long time ago; for as long as
   anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was
   first designed.

TIP OF THE ICE-CUBE (tip uhv dh@ ies-kyoob) [IBM] n. The visible part
   of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment
   in situations where "tip of the iceberg" might be appropriate if
   the subject were actually nontrivial.

TIRED IRON (tierd iern) [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional
   but enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by
   new products, presumably with enough improvement in bang-per-buck
   that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a DINOSAUR.

TLA (tee el ay) [Three-Letter-Acronym] n. 1. Self-describing acronym
   for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any
   confusing acronym at all.  Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU,
   MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, TLA, NNTP.  People who like this looser usage
   argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four
   letter words have four letters.

TOAST (tohst) 1. n. any completely inoperable system, esp. one that
   has just crashed;"I think BUACCA is toast." 2. v. to cause a system
   to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual
   rebooting; "Rick just toasted harp again."

TOASTER (tohs'tr) n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for
   an embedded microprocessor controller esp. `toaster oven'; often
   used in comments which imply that a scheme is inappropriate
   technology. "DWIM for an assembler?  That'd be as silly as running
   UNIX on your toaster!" 2.  A very very dumb computer. "You could
   run this program on any dumb toaster". See BITTY BOX, TOASTER, TOY.

TOOL (tool) 1. n. A program primarily used to create other programs,
   such as a compiler or editor or cross-referencing program. Oppose
   APP, OPERATING SYSTEM. 2. [UNIX] An application program with a
   simple, "transparent" (typically text-stream) designed specifically
   to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see FILTER).
   3. [MIT] v.i. To work; to study.  See HACK (def #9).

TOPS-10 (tops-ten) n. DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10
   machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A
   fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix B. See also ITS, TOPS-20,
   TWENEX, VMS, OPERATING SYSTEM.

TOPS-20 (tops-twen'tee) n. See TWENEX.

TOURIST (too'rist) [from MIT's ITS system] n. A guest on the system,
   especially one who generally logs in over a network from a remote
   location for games and other trivial purposes. One step below
   LUSER. TOURISTIC is often used as a pejorative, as in "losing
   touristic scum".

TOY (toy) n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers. 1. NICE
   TOY One which supports the speaker's hacking style adequately. 2.
   JUST A TOY A machine that yields insufficient COMPUTRONS for the
   speaker's preferred uses (this is not condemnatory as is BITTY BOX,
   toys can at least be fun). See also GET A REAL COMPUTER, BITTY BOX.

TOY PROBLEM (toy pro'blm) [AI] n. A deliberately simplified or even
   oversimplified case of a challenging problem used to investigate,
   prototype, or test algorithms for the real problem. Sometimes used
   pejoratively.  See also GEDANKEN.

TRAP (trap) 1. n. A program interrupt, usually used specifically to
   refer to an interrupt caused by some illegal action taking place in
   the user program.  In most cases the system monitor performs some
   action related to the nature of the illegality, then returns
   control to the program.  See UUO.  2. v. 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."

TRASH (trash) v. To destroy the contents of (said of a data
   structure). The most common of the family of near-synonyms
   including MUNG, MANGLE and SCRIBBLE.

TRIVIAL (tri'vi-@l) adj. 1. In explanation, too simple to bother
   detailing. 2. Not worth the speaker's time. 3. Complex, but
   solvable by methods so well-known that anyone not utterly CRETINOUS
   would have thought of them already. Hackers' notions of triviality
   may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See NONTRIVIAL,
   UNINTERESTING.

TROGLODYTE (trog'lo-diet) [Commodore] n. A hacker who never leaves his
   cubicle.  The term `Gnoll' is also reported.

TROGLODYTE MODE (trog'lo-diet mohd) [Rice University] n. Programming
   with the lights turned off, sunglasses on, and the (character)
   terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up for so
   many days straight that your eyes hurt. Loud music blaring from a
   stereo stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. See
   LARVAL STAGE, MODE.

TROJAN HORSE (troh'jn hors) n. A program designed to break security or
   damage a system that is disguised as something else benign, such as
   a directory lister or archiver. See VIRUS, WORM.

TRUE-HACKER (troo-hak'r) [analogy with "trufan" from SF fandom] n.
   One who exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp.
   competence and helpfulness to other hackers. A high complement. "He
   spent six hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR
   4000 last week -- truly the act of a true-hacker." Compare DEMIGOD,
   oppose MUNCHKIN.

TTY (tee-tee-wie [UNIX], titty [ITS]) n. 1. Terminal of the teletype
   variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very
   limited character set, and poor print quality.  Usage: antiquated
   (like the TTYs themselves).  2. [especially UNIX] Any terminal at
   all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal controlling
   a job.

TUBE (t[y]oob) n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of
   TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons and
   Bullwinkle & Rocky and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckle movie.

TUNE (toon) [from automotive or musical usage] v. to optimize a
   program or system for a particular environment. One may `tune for
   time' (fastest execution) `tune for space' (least memory
   utilization) or `tune for configuration' (most efficient use of
   hardware). See BUM, HOT SPOT, HAND-HACK.

TWEAK (tweek) v. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value.
   Also used synonymously with TWIDDLE.  See FROBNICATE and FUDGE
   FACTOR.

TWENEX (twe'nex) n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC.  So named
   because TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the
   PDP-10.  BBN developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN
   EXecutive), and in creating TOPS-20 for the DEC-20 DEC copied TENEX
   and adapted it for the 20.  Usage: DEC people cringe when they hear
   TOPS-20 referred to as "Twenex", but the term seems to be catching
   on nevertheless.  Release 3 of TOPS-20 is sufficiently different
   from release 1 that some (not all) hackers have stopped calling it
   TWENEX, though the written abbreviation "20x" is still used.

TWIDDLE (twid'l) n. 1. tilde (ASCII 176, "~").  Also called
   "squiggle", "sqiggle" (sic--pronounced "skig'gul"), and "twaddle",
   but twiddle is by far the most common term.  2. A small and
   insignificant change to a program.  Usually fixes one bug and
   generates several new ones.  3. v. To change something in a small
   way.  Bits, for example, are often twiddled.  Twiddling a switch or
   knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking
   it; see FROBNICATE.

TWINK (twink) [UCSC] n. Equivalent to READ-ONLY USER.

TWO-PI (too-pie, should be written with math symbols) q. The number of
   years it takes to finish one's thesis.  Occurs in stories in the
   form: "He started on his thesis; two pi years later...".

                       = U =

UNINTERESTING (un-in'ter-est-ing) adj. 1. Said of a problem which,
   while NONTRIVIAL, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient
   resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution
   would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and
   code. True hackers regard uninteresting problems as an intolerable
   waste of time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. See
   WOMBAT.

U*IX, UN*X n. Used to refer to the Unix operating system
   (trademark and/or copyright AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need
   for the ugly (tm) typography.  Also used to refer to any or all
   varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, some lawyers
   now claim (1990) that the requirement for superscript-tm has no
   legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow.

UNWIND THE STACK (un-wiend' thuh stack) v. During the execution of a
   procedural language one is said to `unwind the stack' from a called
   procedure up to a caller when one discards the stack frame and any
   number of frames above it, popping back up to the level of the
   given caller.  In C this is done with longjmp/setjmp; in LISP with
   THROW/CATCH.  This is sometimes necessary when handling exceptional
   conditions.  See also SMASH THE STACK.

UNWIND-PROTECT (un-wiend'pr@-tekt) [MIT, from the name of a LISP
   operator] n. A task you must remember to perform before you leave a
   place or finish a project.  "I have an unwind-protect to call my
   advisor."

UNIX (yoo'nix) [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on MULTICS"] n. A
   popular interactive time-sharing system originally invented in 1969
   by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the MULTICS project, mostly so
   he could play SPACEWAR on a scavenged PDP7. The turning point in
   UNIX's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C
   in 1974, making it the first source-portable operating system.
   Fifteen years and a lot of changes later UNIX is the most widely
   used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world. This
   fact probably represents the single most important victory yet of
   hackerdom over industry opposition. See VERSION 7, BSD UNIX, USG
   UNIX.

UP (uhp) adj. 1. Working, in order.  "The down escalator is up."  2.
   BRING UP: v. To create a working version and start it. "They
   brought up a down system."

UPLOAD [uhp'lohd] v. 1. To transfer code or data over a digital comm
   line from a smaller `client' system to a larger `host' one. Oppose
   DOWNLOAD. 2.  [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and
   algorithms which make up one's mind from one's brain into a
   computer.  Only those who are convinced that such patterns and
   algorithms capture the complete essence of the self view this
   prospect with aplomb.

URCHIN (er'chin) n. See MUNCHKIN.

USENET (yooz'net) n. A distributed bulletin board system supported
   mainly by UNIX machines, international in scope and probably the
   largest non-profit information utility in existence. As of early
   1990 it hosts over 300 topic groups and distributes up to 15
   megabytes of new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and
   FLAMAGE every day. See NEWSGROUP.

USER (yoo'zr) n. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
   One who asks questions.  Identified at MIT with "loser" by the
   spelling "luser".  See REAL USER.  [Note by GLS: I don't agree with
   RF's definition at all.  Basically, there are two classes of people
   who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and users
   (losers).  The users are looked down on by hackers to a mild degree
   because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system
   in all its glory.  (A few users who do are known as real winners.)
   It is true that users ask questions (of necessity).  Very often
   they are annoying or downright stupid.]

USER FRIENDLY (yoo'zr fren'dlee) adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally
   used by hackers in a hostile tone, to describe systems which hold
   the user's hand so obsessively that they make it painful for the
   more experienced and knowledgeable to get any work done. See
   MENUITIS.

USG UNIX (yoo-ess-jee yoo'nix) n. Refers to AT&T UNIX versions after
   VERSION 7, especially System III and System V releases 1, 2 and 3.
   So called because at that time AT&T's support crew was called the
   `Unix Support Group' See BSD, UNIX

                       = V =

VADDING (vad'ing) [permutation of ADV, an abbreviated form of ADVENT
   (q.v.)] n. A leisure-time activity of certain hackers involving the
   covert exploration of the "secret" parts of large buildings --
   basements, roofs, freight elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam
   tunnels and the like. A few go so far as to learn locksmithing in
   order to synthesize vadding keys. The verb is `to vad'. The most
   extreme and dangerous form of vadding is ELEVATOR RODEO, aka
   ELEVATOR SURFING, a sport played by using the escape hatches in
   elevator cars to move between pairs of them as they conjunct within
   the shafts. Kids, don't try this at home!

VANILLA (v@-nil'luh) adj. Ordinary flavor, standard.  See FLAVOR.
   When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is
   flavored with vanilla extract!  For example, "vanilla-flavored
   wonton soup" (or simply "vanilla wonton soup") means ordinary
   wonton soup, as opposed to hot and sour wonton soup.

VAPORWARE (vay-per-weir) n. Products announced far in advance of any
   shipment (which may or may not actually take place***
Read Ref:185

VAX n. (vaks) [allegedly from Virtual Extended Architecture] 1. The
   most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly
   excepting its immediate ancestor the PDP-11. Between its release
   in 1978 and eclipse by KILLER MICROS after about 1986 the VAX was
   probably the favorite hacker machine of them all, esp. after the
   1982 release of 4.2BSD UNIX (see BSD UNIX). Esp. noted for its
   large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set, an asset
   which became a liability after the RISC revolution following about
   1985. 2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here
   because its sales pitch, "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a
   sort of battle-cry of RISC partisans.

VAXEN (vak'sn) [from "oxen", perhaps influenced by "vixen"] n. pl.
   The plural of VAX (a DEC machine). See BOXEN.

VEEBLEFESTER (vee'b@l-fes-tr) [Commodore] n.  Any obnoxious person
   engaged in the alleged professions of marketing or management.
   Antonym of HACKER. Compare SUIT, MARKETROID.

VENUS FLYTRAP (vee'n:s flie'trap) [after the plant] n. See FIREWALL.

VERBIAGE (ver'bee-@j) [IBM] n. Documentation.

VERSION 7 (ver'zh@n se'vn) alt. V7 (vee-se'v@n) n. The 1978
   unsupported release of UNIX (q.v.) ancestral to all current
   commercial versions. Before the release of the POSIX/SVID standards
   V7's features were often treated as a UNIX portability baseline.
   See BSD, USG UNIX, UNIX.

VIRGIN (ver'jn) adj. Unused, in reference to an instantiation of a
   program.  "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes
   again."  Also, by extension, unused buffers and the like within a
   program.

VIRUS (vie'r@s) [from SF] n. A cracker program that propagates itself
   by `infecting' (embedding itself in) other trusted programs,
   especially operating systems. See WORM, TROJAN HORSE.

VMS (vee em ess) n. DEC's proprietary operating system for their VAX
   minicomputer; one of the seven or so environments that looms
   largest in hacker folklore.  Many UNIX fans generously concede that
   VMS would probably be the hacker's favorite commercial OS if UNIX
   didn't exist; though true, this makes VMS fans furious. See also
   TOPS-10, TOPS-20, UNIX.

VIRTUAL (ver'tyoo-uhl) adj. 1. Common alternative to LOGICAL (q.v.),
   but never used with compass directions.  2.  Performing the
   functions of.  Virtual memory acts like real memory but isn't.

VIRTUAL REALITY (ver'tyoo-@l) n. A form of network interaction
   incorporating aspects of role-playing games, interactive theater,
   improvisational comedy and "true confessions" magazines. In a
   "virtual reality" forum (such as USENET's alt.callahans newsgroup
   or the MUD experiments on Internet) interaction between the
   participants is written like a shared novel complete with scenery,
   "foreground characters" which may be personae utterly unlike the
   people who write them, and common "background characters"
   manipulable by all parties. The one iron law is that you may not
   write irreversible changes to a character without the consent of
   the person who "owns" it.  Otherwise anything goes. See BAMF.

VISIONARY (viz-yuhn-eir-ee) n. One who hacks vision (in an AI context,
   such as the processing of visual images).

VULCAN NERVE PINCH (vuhl'kn nerv pinch) n. [From the old Star Trek TV
   series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard combination that
   forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support
   such a feature).

                       = W =

WABBIT (wabb'it) [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "you
   wascal wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on the
   PDP-10s at RPI and elsewhere around 1978. The program would
   reproduce itself twice every time it was run, eventually crashing
   the system.  2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite
   self-replication but is not a VIRUS or WORM. See also COOKIE
   MONSTER.

WALDO (wahl'doh) [probably taken from the story "Waldo", by Heinlein,
   which is where the term was first used to mean a mechanical adjunct
   to a human limb] Used at Harvard, particularly by Tom Cheatham and
   students, instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic variable and
   general nonsense word.  See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX.

WALKING DRIVES (wahk'ing drievz) An occasional failure mode of
   magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were 14" wide
   WASHING MACHINES. Those old DINOSAURS carried terrific angular
   momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings
   and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to
   "walk" across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple
   of millimeters at a time. This could also be induced by certain
   patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the
   disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). It is known
   that some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce
   disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive
   models and held disk-drive races.  This is not a joke!

WALL (wahl) [shortened form of HELLO WALL, apparently from the phrase
   "up against a blank wall"] [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of
   confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone. "Wall??" 2. A
   request for further explication. Compare OCTAL FORTY.

WALL TIME (wahl tiem) n. 1. `Real world' time (what the clock on the
   wall shows) as opposed to the system clock's idea of time. 2. The
   real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of CLOCKS
   required to execute it (on a timesharing system these will differ,
   as no one program gets all the CLOCKS).

WALLPAPER (wahl pay'pr) n. A file containing a listing (e.g.,
   assembly listing) or transcript, esp. a file containing a
   transcript of all or part of a login session.  (The idea was that
   the LPT paper for such listings was essentially good only for
   wallpaper, as evidenced at SAIL where it was used as such to cover
   windows.)  Usage: not often used now, esp. since other systems have
   developed other terms for it (e.g., PHOTO on TWENEX). The term
   possibly originated on ITS, where the commands to begin and end
   transcript files were :WALBEG and :WALEND, with default file
   DSK:WALL PAPER.

WASHING MACHINE (wash'ing m@-sheen') n. Old-style hard disks in
   floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the
   cabinet and the "top-loading" access to the media packs. See
   WALKING DRIVES.

WEDGED (wejd) [from "head wedged up ass"] adj. 1. To be in a locked
   state, incapable of proceeding without help.  (See GRONK.)  Often
   refers to humans suffering misconceptions.  "The swapper is
   wedged."  This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED
   (q.v.).  2. [UNIX] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY
   left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one
   that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.

WEEDS (weeds) n. Refers to development projects or algorithms that
   have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from
   "off in the weeds".  Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for
   microcode is serious weeds..."

WELL BEHAVED (wel-bee-hayvd') adj. Of software: conforming to coding
   guidelines and standards.  Well behaved software uses the operating
   system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and
   drawing graphics. Oppose ILL-BEHAVED.

WETWARE (wet'weir) n. 1. The human brain, as opposed to computer
   hardware or software (as in "Wetware has at most 7 registers"). 2.
   Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a
   computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software.

WHAT (hwuht) n. The question mark character ("?").  See QUES.  Usage:
   rare, used particularly in conjunction with WOW.

WHEEL (hweel) [from Twenex, q.v.] n. A privileged user or WIZARD
   (sense #2).  Now spreading into the UNIX culture. Privilege bits
   are sometimes called WHEEL BITS. The state of being in a privileged
   logon is sometimes called WHEEL MODE.

WHEEL WARS (hweel worz) [Stanford University] A period in LARVAL
   STAGE during which student wheels hack each other by attempting to
   log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, or
   otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users.

WHITE BOOK, THE (hwiet buk) n. Kernighan & Ritchie's
   _The_C_Programming_Language_, esp. the classic and influential
   first edition. Also called simply "K&R". See SILVER BOOK, PURPLE
   BOOK, ORANGE BOOK.

WIBNI [Bell Labs, Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements
   documents/specifications consist entirely of. Compare IWBNI.

WIMP ENVIRONMENT n. [acronymic from Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer] A
  graphical-user-interface based environmend, as described by a hacker
  who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and
  extensibility.

WIN (win) [from MIT jargon] 1. v. To succeed.  A program wins if no
   unexpected conditions arise.  2. BIG WIN: n. Serendipity. Emphatic
   forms: MOBY WIN, SUPER WIN, HYPER-WIN (often used interjectively as
   a reply).  For some reason SUITABLE WIN is also common at MIT,
   usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem.  See
   LOSE.

WINNAGE (win'@j) n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when
   something is winning.  Quite rare.  Usage: also quite rare.

WINNER (win'r) 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program,
   programmer or person.  2. REAL WINNER: Often sarcastic, but also
   used as high praise.

WINNITUDE (win'i-tood) n. The quality of winning (as opposed to
   WINNAGE, which is the result of winning).  "That's really great!
   Boy, what winnitude!"

WIREHEAD (wier'hed) n. 1. A hardware hacker, especially one who
   concentrates on communications hardware.  2. An expert in local
   area networks.  A wirehead can be a network software wizard too,
   but will always have the ability to deal with network hardware,
   down to the smallest component.  Wireheads are known for their
   ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for
   example.

WIZARD (wiz'rd) n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of
   software or hardware works; someone who can find and fix his bugs
   in an emergency.  Rarely used at MIT, where HACKER is the preferred
   term.  2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to
   ordinary people, e.g., a "net wizard" on a TENEX may run programs
   which speak low-level host-imp protocol; an ADVENT wizard at SAIL
   may play Adventure during the day. 3. A UNIX expert. See GURU.

WIZARD MODE (wiz'rd mohd) [from nethack] n. A special access mode of
   a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users
   godlike privileges.  Generally not used for operating systems
   themselves (ROOT MODE or WHEEL MODE would be used instead).

WOMBAT (wom'bat) [Waste Of Money, Brains and Time] adj. Applied to
   problems which are both profoundly UNINTERESTING in themselves and
   unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used
   in fanciful constructions such as WRESTLING WITH A WOMBAT. See also
   CRAWLING HORROR.

WONKY (won'kee) [from Australian slang] adj. Yet another approximate
   synonym for BROKEN. Specifically connotes a malfunction which
   produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse.
   "That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and
   everybody's listings came out in Elvish". Also in WONKED OUT. See
   FUNKY.

WORM (werm) [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's _Shockwave_Rider_, via
   XEROX PARC] n. A cracker program that propagates itself over a
   network, reproducing itself as it goes. See `VIRUS'. Perhaps the
   best known example was RTM's `Internet Worm' in '87, a `benign' one
   that got out of control and shut down hundreds of Suns and VAXen
   nationwide.  See VIRUS, TROJAN HORSE, ICE.

WOW (wow) See EXCL.

WRONG THING, THE (rahng thing, dh@) n. A design, action or decision
   which is clearly incorrect or inappropriate. Often capitalized;
   always emphasized in speech as if capitalized. Antonym: THE RIGHT
   THING (q.v.).

WUGGA WUGGA (wuh'guh wuh'guh) n. Imaginary sound that a computer
   program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task.
   Compare CRUNCHA CHRUNCHA CRUNCHA.

                        = X =

X (eks) Used in various speech and writing contexts in roughly its
   algebraic sense of "unknown within a set defined by context"
   (compare `N'). Thus: the abbreviation 680x0 stands for 68000,
   68010, 68020, 68030 or 68040, and 80x86 stands for 80186, 80286
   80386 or 80486 (note that a UNIX hacker might write these as
   680[01234]0 and 80[1234]86 or 680?00 and 80?86 respectively,
   see REGULAR EXPRESSIONS).

XYZZY (exs-wie-zee-zee-wie) [from the ADVENT game] adj. See PLUGH.

                        = Y =

YOW! (yow) [from Zippy the Pinhead comix] interj. Favored hacker
   expression of humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out what
   happens when you twiddle the foo option on this display hack!"
   Compare GURFLE, MUMBLE FROTZ.

YOYO MODE (yoh'yoh mohd) n. State in which the system is said to be
   when it rapidly alternates several times between being up and being
   down.

YU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH (yoo-shyang hohl fish) n. The character gamma
   (extended SAIL ASCII 11), which with a loop in its tail looks like
   a fish.  Usage: used primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine.
   Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it
   second-hand.

                        = Z =

ZEN (zen) v. To figure out something by meditation, or by a sudden
   flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but
   occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you
   figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it".

ZERO (zee'roh) v. 1. To set to zero.  Usually said of small pieces of
   data, such as bits or words.  2. To erase; to discard all data
   from.  Said of disks and directories, where "zeroing" need not
   involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed.
   See SCRIBBLE.

ZIPPERHEAD (zip'r-hed) [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.

ZOMBIE (zom'bee) [UNIX] n. A process which has been killed but has not
   yet relinquished its process table slot. These show up in ps(1)
   listings occasionally.

ZORK (zork) n. Second of the great early experiments in computer
   fantasy gaming, see ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DMS during
   the late seventies, later distributed with BSD UNIX and
   commercialized as "The Zork Trilogy" by Infocom.

APPENDIX A:
                THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF MABEL THE MONKEY
                        a cautionary tale

   The following, modulo a couple of inserted commas and capitalization
changes for readability, is the exact text of a famous USENET message.
The reader may wish to review the definitions of PM and MOUNT in the
main
text before continuing.

Date: Wed 3 Sep 86 16:46:31-EDT
>From: "Art Evans" <Evans@TL-20B.ARPA>
Subject: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
To: Risks@CSL.SRI.COM

My friend Bud used to be the intercept man at a computer vendor for
calls when an irate customer called.  Seems one day Bud was sitting at
his desk when the phone rang.

    Bud:        Hello.                  Voice:  YOU KILLED MABEL!!
    B:          Excuse me?              V:      YOU KILLED MABEL!!

This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, so he
decided to alter his approach to the customer.

    B:          HOW DID I KILL MABEL?   V:      YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!!

Well, to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate what
had
happened.  The customer was a Biologist at the University of
Blah-de-blah,
and he had one of our computers that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel
(the
monkey) breathed.  Now, Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. The
University
had spent years teaching Mabel to swim, and they were studying the
effects
that different gas mixtures had on her physiology.  It turns out that
the
repair folks had just gotten a new Calibrated Power Supply (used to
calibrate analog equipment), and at their first opportunity decided to
calibrate the D/A converters in that computer.  This changed some of the
gas
mixtures and poor Mabel was asphyxiated.  Well, Bud then called the
branch
manager for the repair folks:

    Manager:    Hello
    B:          This is Bud, I heard you did a PM at the University of
                Blah-de-blah.
    M:          Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I do
                for you?
    B:          Can you swim?

The moral is, of course, that you should always mount a scratch monkey.

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are several morals here related to risks in use of computers.
Examples include, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." However, the
cautious philosophical approach implied by "always mount a scratch
monkey" says a lot that we should keep in mind.

Art Evans
Tartan Labs

APPENDIX B:

       OBSOLESCENT TERMS FROM THE JARGON FILE

   The following terms appeared in the main listing of the original
Jargon File, but have been rendered obsolescent by the passage of
time, the march of technology, the death of the DEC PDP-10, and the
May 1990 shutdown of the ITS machines. They are collected here for
possible historical interest.

AOS (aus (East coast) ay-ahs (West coast)) [based on a PDP-10
   increment instruction] v. To increase the amount of something.
   "Aos the campfire."  Usage: considered silly, and now obsolescent.
   See SOS. Now largely supplanted by BUMP.

BIG BLT, THE (big belt, th:) n., obs. Shuffling operation on the
   PDP-10 under some operating systems that consumes a significant
   amount of computer time. See BLT in the main listing.

BIN (bin) [short for BINARY; used as a second file name on ITS] 1. n.
   BINARY.  2. BIN FILE: A file containing the BIN for a program.
   Usage: used at MIT, which runs on ITS.  The equivalent term at
   Stanford was DMP (pronounced "dump") FILE.  Other names used
   include SAV ("save") FILE (DEC and Tenex), SHR ("share") and LOW
   FILES (DEC), and COM FILES (CP/M), and EXE ("ex'ee") FILE (DEC,
   Twenex, MS-DOS, occasionally UNIX).  Also in this category are the
   input files to the various flavors of linking loaders (LOADER,
   LINK-10, STINK), called REL FILES. See EXE in main text.

COM[M] MODE (kom mohd) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more
   terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all,
   providing a means of conversation among hackers; spelled with one
   or two Ms] Syn. for TALK MODE in main text.

DIABLO (dee-ah'blow) [from the Diablo printer] 1. n. Any letter-
   quality printing device.  2. v. To produce letter-quality output
   from such a device. See LASE in main listing.

DMP (dump)  See BIN.

DPB (duh-pib') [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v., obs. To plop
   something down in the middle.

ENGLISH (ing'lish) n. The source code for a program, which may be in
   any language, as opposed to BINARY.  Usage: obsolete, used mostly
   by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context.  On ITS,
   directory SYSENG was where the "English" for system programs is
   kept, and SYSBIN, the binaries.  SAIL had many such directories,
   but the canonical one is [CSP,SYS].

EXCH (ex'chuh, ekstch) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v., obs. To
   exchange two things, each for the other.

IMPCOM (imp'kahm) See TELNET. This term is now nearly obsolete.

IRP (erp) [from the MIDAS pseudo-op which generates a block of code
   repeatedly, substituting in various places the car and/or cdr of
   the list(s) supplied at the IRP] v. To perform a series of tasks
   repeatedly with a minor substitution each time through. "I guess
   I'll IRP over these homework papers so I can give them some random
   grade for this semester." Usage: rare, now obsolescent.

JFCL (djif'kl or djafik'l) [based on the PDP-10 instruction that acts
   as a fast no-op] v., obs. To cancel or annul something. "Why don't
   you jfcl that out?"

JRST (jerst) [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v., obs. To
   suddenly change subjects.  Usage: rather rare.  "Jack be nimble,
   Jack be quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick."

JSYS (jay'sis), pl. JSI (jay'sigh) [Jump to SYStem] v.,obs. See UUO.

LDB (lid'dib) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To extract from the
   middle.

MOBY (moh'bee) n.  This term entered the world of AI with the Fabritek
   256K moby memory of MIT-AI. Thus, classically, 256K words, the size
   of a PDP-10 moby.  (The maximum address space means the maximum
   normally addressable space, as opposed to the amount of physical
   memory a machine can have.  Thus the MIT PDP-10s each have two
   mobies, usually referred to as the "low moby" (0-777777) and "high
   moby" (1000000-1777777), or as "moby 0" and "moby 1". MIT-AI had
   four mobies of address space: moby 2 was the PDP-6 memory, and moby
   3 the PDP-11 interface.)  In this sense "moby" is often used as a
   generic unit of either address space (18. bits' worth) or of memory
   (about a megabyte, or 9/8 megabyte (if one accounts for difference
   between 32.- and 36.-bit words), or 5/4 megacharacters).

PHANTOM (fan'tm) [Stanford] n. The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON
   (q.v.).  Typical phantoms include the accounting program, the
   news-wire monitor, and the lpt and xgp spoolers. UNIX and most
   other environments call this sort of program a background DEMON or
   DAEMON.

PPN (pip'in) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n.
   1. A combination `project' (directory name) and programmer name,
   used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user.  For
   instance, "FOO,BAR" would be the FOO directory for user BAR.  Since
   the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name is
   usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or
   other special sequence.  (Standard DEC setup is to have two octal
   numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.)  2.
   Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone. "I want
   to send you some mail; what's your ppn?"  Usage: not used at MIT,
   since ITS does not use ppn's.  The equivalent terms would be UNAME
   and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not used except in
   their technical senses.

REL (rel) See BIN in the main listing. Short for `relocatable', used
   on the old TOPS-10 OS.

SAV (sayv)  See BIN.

SHR (sheir)  See BIN.

SOS 1. (ess-oh-ess) n. A losing editor, SON OF STOPGAP.  2. (sahss) v.
   Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set.

STY (pronounced "stie", not spelled out) n. A pseudo-teletype, which
   is a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty
   on the other.  Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline
   from its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to
   another tty, thereby providing a "sub-tty").  This is MIT
   terminology; the SAIL, DEC and UNIX equivalent is PTY (see main
   text).

SUPDUP (soop'doop) v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using
   the SUPDUP program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special
   display protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites. Sometimes
   abbreviated to SD.

TECO (tee'koh) [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] 1. n. A text
   editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody.  If
   all the dialects are included, TECO might well be the single most
   prolific editor in use.  Noted for its powerful pseudo-programming
   features and its incredibly hairy syntax.  2. v. obs. To edit using
   the TECO editor in one of its infinite forms; sometimes used to
   mean "to edit" even when not using TECO!  Usage: rare at SAIL,
   where most people wouldn't touch TECO with a TENEX pole.

   [Historical note, c. 1982: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT
   TECO many years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor.  By
   now, TECO at MIT is highly display-oriented and is actually a
   language for writing editors, rather than an editor. Meanwhile,
   the outside world's various versions of TECO remain almost the same
   as the MIT version of the early 1970s.  DEC recently tried to
   discourage its use, but an underground movement of sorts kept it
   alive. - GLS]

   [Since this note was written I found out that DEC tried to force
   their hackers by administrative decision to use a hacked up and
   generally lobotomized version of SOS instead of TECO, and they
   revolted. - MRC]

   [1990 update: TECO is now pretty much one with the dust of history,
   having been replaced (both functionally and psychologically) almost
   everywhere by GNU EMACS -- ESR]

UUO (yoo-yoo-oh) [short for "Un-Used Operation"] n. A PDP-10 system
   monitor call.  The term "Un-Used Operation" comes from the fact
   that, on PDP-10 systems, monitor calls are implemented as invalid
   or illegal machine instructions, which cause traps to the monitor
   (see TRAP).  The SAIL manual describing the available UUOs has a
   cover picture showing an unidentified underwater object. See YOYO.
   [Note: DEC sales people have since decided that "Un-Used Operation"
   sounds bad, so UUO now stands for "Unimplemented User Operation".]
   Tenex and Twenex systems use the JSYS machine instruction (q.v.),
   which is halfway between a legal machine instruction and a UUO,
   since KA-10 Tenices implement it as a hardware instruction which
   can be used as an ordinary subroutine call (sort of a "pure JSR").

WORMHOLE (werm'hohl) n. A location in a monitor which contains the
   address of a routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to
   substitute a different routine.  The following quote comes from
   "Polymorphic Systems", vol. 2, p. 54:

   "Any type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device
   by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing
   its address in one of the monitor's `wormholes.'*
   ----------
   *The term `wormhole' has been used to describe a hypothetical
   astronomical situation where a black hole connects to the `other
   side' of the universe.  When this happens, information can pass
   through the wormhole, in only one direction, much as `assumptions'
   pass down the monitor's wormholes."

   This term is now obsolescent. Modern operating systems use clusters
   of wormholes extensively (for modularization of I/O handling in
   particular, as in the UNIX device-driver organization) but the
   preferred jargon for these clusters is `device tables', `jump
   tables' or `capability tables'.

XGP (eks-jee) 1. n. Xerox Graphics Printer.  2. v. To print something
   on the XGP.  "You shouldn't XGP such a large file."

YOYO (yoh'yoh) n. DEC service engineers' slang for UUO (q.v.).  Usage:
   rare at Stanford and MIT, has been found at random DEC
   installations.