nonlinear adj.
[scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and
unpredictable fashion; unstable. When used to describe the
behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine
or program is being forced to run far outside of design
specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable
inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the
computation far off from its expected course. 2. When describing
the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a flame. "When you talk to Bob, don't mention the
drug problem or he'll go nonlinear for hours." In this context,
`go nonlinear' connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion
connotes linearity).
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nontrivial adj.
Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often
used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite
difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving
P=NP is nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is `decidedly
nontrivial'. See trivial, uninteresting, interesting.
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not ready for prime time adj.
Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use
only. Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing
will be made more solid Real Soon
Now. This term comes from the ensemble name of the
original cast of "Saturday Night Live", the "Not Ready for Prime
Time Players". It has extra flavor for hackers because of the
special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time. Compare beta.
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notwork /not'werk/ n.
A network, when it is acting flaky
or is down. Compare nyetwork. Said at IBM to have originally
referred to a particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET
corporate network ca. 1988; but there are independent reports of
the term from elsewhere.
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NP- /N-P/ pref.
Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or
quality of difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it
should be' This is generalized from the computer-science terms
`NP-hard' and `NP-complete'; NP-complete problems all seem to be
very hard, but so far no one has found a proof that they are. NP
is the set of Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that
can be completed by a nondeterministic Turing machine in an
amount of time that is a polynomial function of the size of the
input; a solution for one NP-complete problem would solve all the
others. "Coding a BitBlt implementation to perform correctly in
every case is NP-annoying."
Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is
misleading; there are plenty of easy problems in class NP.
NP-complete problems are hard not because they are in class NP,
but because they are the hardest problems in class NP.