SO /S-O/ n.
1. (also `S.O.') Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost
invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /S-O/ by hackers.
Used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to
whom one is not married. See MOTAS,
MOTOS, MOTSS. 2. [techspeak] The Shift Out control
character in ASCII (Control-N, 0001110).
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social engineering n.
Term used among crackers and
samurai for cracking techniques
that rely on weaknesses in wetware
rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing
passwords or other information that compromises a target system's
security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the
required information and posing as a field service tech or a
fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the tiger team story in the patch entry.
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social science number n. //
[IBM] A statistic that is content-free, or nearly so. A measure
derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a
dubious and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science
number in hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be
considerably worse. As a rule, management loves them. See also numbers, math-out, pretty pictures.
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sock puppet n.
[Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and
talking to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet
parlance, a pseudo through which the
puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original message to give
the appearance that a number of people support the views held in
the original message.