flaky adj.
(var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent lossage. This use is of course related to the
common slang use of the word to describe a person as eccentric,
crazy, or just unreliable. A system that is flaky is working,
sort of -- enough that you are tempted to try to use it -- but
fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what
you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers dodgy or wonky.
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flamage /flay'm*j/ n.
[very common] Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal
postings to Usenet or other
electronic fora. Often in the phrase
`the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the
content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. See flame, also dahmum.
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flame
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole'] 1. vi. To
post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To
speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting
subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of
senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or
people. 4. n. An instance of flaming. When a discussion
degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the
participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that
flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
The term may have been independently invented at several
different places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College
and RPI (among many other places) from as far back as 1969, and
from the University of Virginia in the early 1960s.
It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older
than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard
hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the
most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus
and Cressida", Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof
of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then
observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase
seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the
wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle
English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects
that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.
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flame bait n.
[common] A posting intended to trigger a flame war, or one that invites flames in
reply. See also troll.