var /veir/ or /var/ n.
Short for `variable'. Compare arg,
param.
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vaston n.
[Durham, UK] The unit of `load average'. A measure of how much
work a computer is doing. A meter displaying this as a function
of time is known as a `vastometer'. First used during a computing
practical in December 1996.
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VAX /vaks/ n.
1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful
minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its
immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and
its eclipse by killer micros
after about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite
machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix
(see BSD). Esp. noted for its large,
assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set -- an asset that
became a liability after the RISC revolution. 2. A major brand of
vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its sales pitch,
"Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a sort of battle-cry of RISC
partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that DEC actually entered
a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax people that allowed
them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for not
challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S.
A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form
was "Nothing sucks like Electrolux". It has apparently become a
classic example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of
not knowing the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of
Electrolux AB, while confirming that the company used this slogan
in the late 1960s, also tells us that their marketing people were
fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to
gain attention.
And gain attention it did - the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people
thought the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several
British hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in
1986-1987, and we have one report from a New Zealander that the
infamous slogan surfaced there in TV ads for the product in
1992.