adger /aj'r/ vt.
[UCLA mutant of nadger, poss.
also from the middle name of an infamous tenured graduate student]
To make a bonehead move with consequences that could have been
foreseen with even slight mental effort. E.g., "He started
removing files and promptly adgered the whole project". Compare
dumbass attack.
Node:admin, Next:ADVENT, Previous:adger, Up:= A
=
admin /ad-min'/ n.
Short for `administrator'; very commonly used in speech or
on-line to refer to the systems person in charge on a computer.
Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and `site admin'
(emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact for email
and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news). Compare
postmaster, sysop, system
mangler.
Node:ADVENT, Next:AFAIK, Previous:admin, Up:= A
=
ADVENT /ad'vent/ n.
The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by
Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the
mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and
expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in
1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of INTERCAL.) Now better known as Adventure or
Colossal Cave Adventure, but the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only
six-letter filenames. See also vadding, Zork, and
Infocom.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since
expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag
lines that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green
fierce snake bars the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X).
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You
are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different." The
`magic words' xyzzy and plugh also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually has a
`Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2'
that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a
secondary entrance.
ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z.
Node:AFAIK, Next:AFJ, Previous:ADVENT, Up:= A
=
AFAIK // n.
[Usenet] Abbrev. for "As Far As I Know".
Node:AFJ, Next:AFK, Previous:AFAIK, Up:= A
=
AFJ // n.
Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate
April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet
and Internet; see kremvax for an
example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the only seasonal
holiday consistently marked by customary observances on Internet
and other hacker networks.
Node:AFK, Next:AI,
Previous:AFJ, Up:= A =