drop-ins n.
[prob. by analogy with drop-outs] Spurious characters appearing on
a terminal or console as a result of line noise or a system
malfunction of some sort. Esp. used when these are interspersed
with one's own typed input. Compare drop-outs, sense 2.
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drop-outs n.
1. A variety of `power glitch' (see glitch); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical
mains. 2. Missing characters in typed input due to software
malfunction or system saturation (one cause of such behavior
under Unix when a bad connection to a modem swamps the processor
with spurious character interrupts; see screaming tty). 3. Mental glitches;
used as a way of describing those occasions when the mind just
seems to shut down for a couple of beats. See glitch, fried.