domainist /doh-mayn'ist/ adj.
1. [Usenet, by pointed analogy with "sexist", "racist", etc.]
Someone who judges people by the domain of their email addresses;
esp. someone who dismisses anyone who posts from a public
internet provider. "What do you expect from an article posted
from _aol.com_?" 2. Said of an Internet address (as opposed to a
bang path) because the part to
the right of the @ specifies a nested series of
`domains'; for example, esr@snark.thyrsus.com
specifies the machine called _snark_ in the subdomain called
_thyrsus_ within the top-level domain called _com_. See
also big-endian, sense 2.
The meaning of this term has drifted. At one time sense 2 was
primary. In elder days it was also used of a site, mailer, or
routing program which knew how to handle domainist addresses; or
of a person (esp. a site admin) who preferred domain addressing,
supported a domainist mailer, or proselytized for domainist
addressing and disdained bang
paths. These senses are now (1996) obsolete, as
effectively all sites have converted.
Node:Don't do that then!,
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Don't do that then! imp.
[from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a
trivial complaint] Stock response to a user complaint. "When I
type control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty
seconds." "Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't do that!").
Compare RTFM.
Here's a classic example of "Don't do that then!" from Neil
Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line". A friend of
his built a network with a load of Macs and a few high-powered
database servers. He found that from time to time the whole
network would lock up for no apparent reason. The problem was
eventually tracked down to MacOS's cooperative multitasking: when
a user held down the mouse button for too long, the network stack
wouldn't get a chance to run...