funky adj.
Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange,
klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so
its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe
interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has bothered
to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. TECO and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's
exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most standards
acquire funkiness as they age. "The new mailer is installed, but
is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no reason,
try resubmitting it." "This UART is pretty funky. The data ready
line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA
mode."
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funny money n.
1. Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage
handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also
called `play money' or `purple money' (in implicit opposition to
real or `green' money). In New Zealand and Germany the odd usage
`paper money' has been recorded; in Germany, the particularly
amusing synonym `transfer ruble' commemmorates the funny money
used for trade between COMECON countries back when the Soviet
Bloc still existed. When your funny money ran out, your account
froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more.
Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made
this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably
too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with
minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to small-scale
black markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension,
phantom money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a
resource-allocation hack within a system. Antonym: `real
money'.