bitblt /bit'blit/ n.
[from BLT, q.v.] 1. [common] Any of
a family of closely related algorithms for moving and copying
rectangles of bits between main and display memory on a
bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either main or display
memory (the requirement to do the Right Thing in the case of overlapping
source and destination rectangles is what makes BitBlt tricky).
2. Synonym for blit or BLT. Both uses are borderline techspeak.
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BITNET /bit'net/ n., obs.
[acronym: Because It's Time NETwork] Everybody's least
favorite piece of the network (see the network) - until AOL happened. The
BITNET hosts were a collection of IBM dinosaurs and VAXen (the
latter with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate using
80-character EBCDIC card images (see
eighty-column mind);
thus, they tend to mangle the headers and text of third-party
traffic from the rest of the ASCII/RFC-822 world with annoying regularity. BITNET was
also notorious as the apparent home of B1FF. By 1995 it had, much to everyone's relief,
been obsolesced and absorbed into the Internet. Unfortunately,
around this time we also got AOL.
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bits pl.n.
1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file
formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare core dump, sense 4. 2.
Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as
contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon
File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See softcopy, source of all good
bits See also bit.