crash
1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of
the system (q.v., sense 1), esp. of
magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what happens
when the air gap of a hard disk collapses). "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk
crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping
onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also
be referred to as a `head crash', whereas the term `system crash'
usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or
other software was at fault. 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the
system just crashed?" "Something crashed the OS!" See down. Also used transitively to indicate the
cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both).
"Those idiots playing SPACEWAR
crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the
sack after a long hacking
run; see gronk out.
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crash and burn vi.,n.
A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the
car-chase scene in the movie "Bullitt" and many subsequent
imitators (compare die
horribly). Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer
and lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash
and burn generators. The construction `crash-and-burn machine' is
reported for a computer used exclusively for alpha or beta testing, or reproducing bugs (i.e., not for
development). The implication is that it wouldn't be such a
disaster if that machine crashed, since only the testers would be
inconvenienced.