[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic "The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress".] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often
invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an
unpleasantly heavyweight
technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of software, or
at the signal-to-noise
ratio of unmoderated Usenet newsgroups. "What? Don't tell
me I have to implement a database back end to get my address book
program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you know." This phrase owes
some of its popularity to the high concentration of
science-fiction fans and political libertarians in hackerdom (see
Appendix B for
discussion).