black hole n.,vt.
[common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream
of TCP/IP packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously
between its origin and destination sites (that is, without
returning a bounce
message). "I think there's a black hole at
_foovax_!" conveys suspicion that site _foovax_ has
been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see drop on the floor). The
implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting
in itself. Readily verbed as `blackhole': "That router is
blackholing IDP packets." Compare bit
bucket and see RBL.
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black magic n.
[common] A technique that works, though nobody really
understands why. More obscure than voodoo programming, which may be
done by cookbook. Compare also black
art, deep magic, and
magic number (sense 2).
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Black Screen of Death n.
[prob. related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous "Far
Side" cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt
to launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly
blanks the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a
cold boot to recover. This unhappy
phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also Blue Screen of Death,
which has become rather more common.
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Black Thursday n.
February 8th, 1996 - the day of the signing into law of the
CDA, so called by analogy with the
catastrophic "Black Friday" in 1929 that began the Great
Depression.