drum adj, n.
Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic
media that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under BSD
Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called
/dev/drum; this has led to considerable humor and
not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations' getting
foisted on newbies. See also "The Story of Mel" in
Appendix A.
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drunk mouse syndrome n.
(also `mouse on drugs') A malady exhibited by the mouse
pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the
mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not
in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be
corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again.
Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse
pad 90 degrees.
At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier
cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball
on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in
cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation
left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft,
so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse
was declared `alcoholic' and sent to the clinic to be dried out
in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
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syndrome, Up:= D =
dub dub dub
[common] Spoken-only shorthand for the "www" (double-u
double-u double-u) in many web host names. Nothing to do with the
style of reggae music called `dub'.