line noise n.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in
a communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection.
Line noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or
crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms, cosmic rays, or (notionally) birds
crapping on the phone wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or
elsewhere that looks like the results of line noise in sense 1.
3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source
but employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in
senses 1 or 2. Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical
example is TECO; it is often claimed
that "TECO's input syntax is indistinguishable from line noise."
Other non-WYSIWYG editors, such as
Multics qed and Unix ed, in the hands
of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately
obfuscated languages such as INTERCAL.