app /ap/ n.
Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems
program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves
run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes
compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though
a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is
often a self-contained environment for performing some
well-defined task such as `word processing'; hackers tend to
prefer more general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose tool, operating
system.
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arena n.
[common; Unix] The area of memory attached to a process by
brk(2) and sbrk(2) and used by
malloc(3) as dynamic storage. So named from a
malloc: corrupt arena message emitted when some
early versions detected an impossible value in the free block
list. See overrun screw,
aliasing bug, memory leak, memory smash, smash the stack.
Node:arg, Next:ARMM, Previous:arena, Up:= A
=
arg /arg/ n.
Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as
to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The
sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take
either 1 or 2 args." Compare param,
parm, var.
Node:ARMM, Next:armor-plated, Previous:arg, Up:= A
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ARMM n.
[acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet
cancelbot created by Dick Depew
of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel
posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's
recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own
automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this
stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of
Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March
31, 1993 and proceeded to spam
_news.admin.policy_ with a recursive explosion of over 200
messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which mechanically
added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its
parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header
took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got
longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people
paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described
the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing
the term despew), and it has since
been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the
combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a
network. Compare Great Worm;
sorcerer's
apprentice mode. See also software laser, network meltdown.