DO :1 <- #0$#256_The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992

any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this

is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look

foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to

turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less

devastating for the programmer having been correct.

INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even

more unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used

by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language

has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently

enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an

alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ...

appreciation of the language on USENET.

:interesting: adj. In hacker parlance, this word has strong

connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers

relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out

of the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times".

Oppose {trivial}, {uninteresting}.

:Internet address:: n. 1. [techspeak] An absolute network address of

the form foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a

{sitename}, and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including

periods itself. Contrast with {bang path}; see also {network,

the} and {network address}. All Internet machines and most UUCP

sites can now resolve these addresses, thanks to a large amount of

behind-the-scenes magic and PD software written since 1980 or so.

See also {bang path}, {domainist}. 2. More loosely, any

network address reachable through Internet; this includes {bang

path} addresses and some internal corporate and government

networks.

Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the

four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed

by a selection of geographical domains:

com

commercial organizations

edu

educational institutions

gov

U.S. government civilian sites

mil

U.S. military sites

Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in

the U.S. or Canada.

sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains

sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see {kremvax}).

sites in the United Kingdom

Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty

states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal

abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for

academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other

top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.

:interrupt: 1. [techspeak] n. On a computer, an event that

interrupts normal processing and temporarily diverts

flow-of-control through an "interrupt handler" routine. See also

{trap}. 2. interj. A request for attention from a hacker.

Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt --- have you seen Joe

recently?" See {priority interrupt}. 3. Under MS-DOS, the

term `interrupt' is nearly synonymous with `system call', because

the OS and BIOS routines are both called using the INT instruction

(see {{interrupt list, the}}) and because programmers so often have

to bypass the OS (going directly to a BIOS interrupt) to get

reasonable performance.

:interrupt list, the:: [MS-DOS] n. The list of all known software

interrupt calls (both documented and undocumented) for IBM PCs and

compatibles, maintained and made available for free redistribution

by Ralf Brown <ralf@cs.cmu.edu>. As of early 1991, it had grown to

approximately a megabyte in length.

:interrupts locked out: adj. When someone is ignoring you. In a

restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's

attention, a hacker might well observe "She must have interrupts

locked out". The synonym `interrupts disabled' is also common.

Variations abound; "to have one's interrupt mask bit set" and

"interrupts masked out" is also heard. See also {spl}.

:IRC: /I-R-C/ [Internet Relay Chat] n. A world-wide "party

line" network that allows one to converse with others in real

time. IRC is structured as a network of Internet servers, each of

which accepts connections from client programs, one per user. The

IRC community and the {USENET} and {MUD} communities overlap

to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have

discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some USENET jargon

has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as

{emoticon}s. There is also a vigorous native jargon,

represented in this lexicon by entries marked `[IRC]'. See also

{talk mode}.

:iron: n. Hardware, especially older and larger hardware of

{mainframe} class with big metal cabinets housing relatively

low-density electronics (but the term is also used of modern

supercomputers). Often in the phrase {big iron}. Oppose

{silicon}. See also {dinosaur}.

:Iron Age: n. In the history of computing, 1961--1971 --- the

formative era of commercial {mainframe} technology, when {big

iron} {dinosaur}s ruled the earth. These began with the delivery

of the first PDP-1, coincided with the dominance of ferrite

{core}, and ended with the introduction of the first commercial

microprocessor (the Intel 4004) in 1971. See also {Stone Age};

compare {elder days}.

:iron box: [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap

a {cracker} logging in over remote connections long enough to be

traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the cracker's

movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' files designed to keep

him interested and logged on. See also {back door},

{firewall machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's

account in `{The Cuckoo's Egg}' of how he made and used

one (see the Bibliography in appendix C). Compare {padded

cell}.

:ironmonger: [IBM] n. Derogatory. A hardware specialist. Compare

{sandbender}, {polygon pusher}.

:ITS:: /I-T-S/ n. 1. Incompatible Time-sharing System, an

influential but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for

PDP-6s and PDP-10s at MIT and long used at the MIT AI Lab. Much

AI-hacker jargon derives from ITS folklore, and to have been `an

ITS hacker' qualifies one instantly as an old-timer of the most

venerable sort. ITS pioneered many important innovations,

including transparent file sharing between machines and

terminal-independent I/O. After about 1982, most actual work was

shifted to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run

essentially as a hobby and service to the hacker community. The

shutdown of the lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end

of an era and sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide (see

{high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is

maintaining one `live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next

to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still

alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use

(however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). See

{appendix A}. 2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection

worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and

ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage

somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by

assembly-language hand-hacking that supported only monocase

6-character filenames in one directory per account remains superior

to today's state of commercial art (their venom against UNIX is

particularly intense). See also {holy wars},

{Weenix}.

:IWBNI: // [abbreviation] `It Would Be Nice If'. Compare {WIBNI}.

:IYFEG: // [USENET] Abbreviation for `Insert Your Favorite Ethnic

Group'. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net

to avoid offending anyone. See {JEDR}.

= J =

=====

:J. Random: /J rand'm/ n. [generalized from {J. Random Hacker}]

Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; any old. `J. Random' is often

prefixed to a noun to make a name out of it. It means roughly

`some particular' or `any specific one'. "Would you let

J. Random Loser marry your daughter?" The most common uses are

`J. Random Hacker', `J. Random Loser', and `J. Random Nerd'

("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to {gun} down other

people?"), but it can be used simply as an elaborate version of

{random} in any sense.

:J. Random Hacker: [MIT] /J rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure

like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See

{random}, {Suzie COBOL}. This may originally have been

inspired by `J. Fred Muggs', a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a

household word back in the early days of {TMRC}, and was

probably influenced by `J. Presper Eckert' (one of the co-inventors

of the digital computer).

:jack in: v. To log on to a machine or connect to a network or

{BBS}, esp. for purposes of entering a {virtual reality}

simulation such as a {MUD} or {IRC} (leaving is "jacking

out"). This term derives from {cyberpunk} SF, in which it was

used for the act of plugging an electrode set into neural sockets

in order to interface the brain directly to a virtual reality.

It's primarily used by MUD & IRC fans and younger hackers on BBS

systems.

:jaggies: /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an

edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is

rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).

:JCL: /J-C-L/ n. 1. IBM's supremely {rude} Job Control

Language. JCL is the script language used to control the execution

of programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very {fascist}

syntax, and some versions will, for example, {barf} if two

spaces appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted

with JCL simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the

file names. Someone who actually understands and generates unique

JCL is regarded with the mixed respect one gives to someone who

memorizes the phone book. It is reported that hackers at IBM

itself sometimes sing "Who's the breeder of the crud that mangles

you and me? I-B-M, J-C-L, M-o-u-s-e" to the tune of the

"Mickey Mouse Club" theme to express their opinion of the

beast. 2. A comparative for any very {rude} software that a

hacker is expected to use. "That's as bad as JCL." As with

{COBOL}, JCL is often used as an archetype of ugliness even by

those who haven't experienced it. See also {IBM}, {fear and

loathing}.

:JEDR: // n. Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in

the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use `JEDR'

instead of {IYFEG} or `<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public

attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials

JEDR after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The

practice was {retcon}ned by the expanding these initials as

`Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race'.) After much sound and fury JEDR

faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise. JEDR's only

permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit

`sensitivity' arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more

recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and

near-universal rejection.

:JFCL: /jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/ vt., obs. (alt.

`jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that

out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the

PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag set and

then CLear the flag"; this does something useful, but is a very

fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one

of the jargon-1 co-authors, had JFCL on the license plate of his

BMW for years. Usage: rare except among old-time PDP-10

hackers.

:jiffy: n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the

computer (see {tick}). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in

the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently

1/100 sec has become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies"

means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once

for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second.

2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond

{wall time} interval. Even more confusingly, physicists

semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to mean the time required for light to

travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to one

*nanosecond*. 3. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to

forever. "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and

possibly never. This is a bit contrary to the more widespread use

of the word. Oppose {nano}. See also {Real Soon Now}.

:job security: n. When some piece of code is written in a

particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time

or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the

programmer was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by

making himself indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke

seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some

code together and one points at a section and says "job security",

the other one may just nod.

:jock: n. 1. A programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat

brute-force programs. See {brute force}. 2. When modified by

another noun, describes a specialist in some particular computing

area. The compounds `compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be

the best-established examples of this.

:joe code: /joh' kohd`/ n. 1. Code that is overly {tense} and

unmaintainable. "{Perl} may be a handy program, but if you look

at the source, it's complete joe code." 2. Badly written,

possibly buggy code.

Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a

particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed

that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe code'

was intended in sense 1.

:jolix: n. /johl'liks/ n.,adj. 386BSD, the freeware port of the

BSD Net/2 release to the Intel i386 architecture by Bill Jolitz and

friends. Used to differentiate from BSDI's port based on the same

source tape, which is called BSD/386. See {BSD}.

:JR[LN]: /J-R-L/, /J-R-N/ n. The names JRL and JRN were

sometimes used as example names when discussing a kind of user ID

used under {{TOPS-10}} and {WAITS}; they were understood to be

the initials of (fictitious) programmers named `J. Random Loser'

and `J. Random Nerd' (see {J. Random}). For example, if one

said "To log in, type log one comma jay are en" (that is,

"log 1,JRN"), the listener would have understood that he should

use his own computer ID in place of `JRN'.

:JRST: /jerst/ [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v.,obs. To

suddenly change subjects, with no intention of returning to the

previous topic. Usage: rather rare except among PDP-10 diehards,

and considered silly. See also {AOS}.

:juggling eggs: vi. Keeping a lot of {state} in your head while

modifying a program. "Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs",

means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being

scrambled. In the classic first-contact SF novel `The Mote in

God's Eye', by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes

a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in

variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See

also {hack mode}.

:jump off into never-never land: [from J. M. Barrie's `Peter

Pan'] v. Same as {branch to Fishkill}, but more common in

technical cultures associated with non-IBM computers that use the

term `jump' rather than `branch'. Compare {hyperspace}.

:jupiter: [IRC] vt. To kill an {IRC} {robot} or user, and

then take its place by adopting its {nick} so that it cannot

reconnect. Named after a particular IRC user who did this to

NickServ, the robot in charge of preventing people from

inadvertently using a nick claimed by another user.

= K =

=====

:K: /K/ [from {kilo-}] n. A kilobyte. This is used both as a

spoken word and a written suffix (like {meg} and {gig} for

megabyte and gigabyte). See {{quantifiers}}.

:K&R: [Kernighan and Ritchie] n. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's

book `The C Programming Language', esp. the classic and influential

first edition (Prentice-Hall 1978; ISBN 0-113-110163-3). Syn.

{White Book}, {Old Testament}. See also {New Testament}.

:K-line: [IRC] v. To ban a particular person from an {IRC}

server, usually for grossly bad {netiquette}. Comes from the

`K' code used to accomplish this in IRC's configuration file.

:kahuna: /k*-hoo'nuh/ [IBM: from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n.

Synonym for {wizard}, {guru}.

:kamikaze packet: n. The `official' jargon for what is more commonly

called a {Christmas tree packet}. RFC-1025, `TCP and IP Bake Off'

says:

10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze"

packet (AKA nastygram, christmas tree packet, lamp test

segment, et al.). That is, correctly handle a segment with the

maximum combination of features at once (e.g., a SYN URG PUSH

FIN segment with options and data).

See also {fear and loathing}

:like nailing jelly to a tree: adj. Used to describe a task thought

to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from

poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain.

"Trying to display the `prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs

that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree,

because nobody's sure what `prettiest' means algorithmically."

:line 666: [from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notational

line of source at which a program fails for obscure reasons,

implying either that *somebody* is out to get it (when you are

the programmer), or that it richly deserves to be so gotten (when

you are not). "It works when I trace through it, but seems to

crash on line 666 when I run it." "What happens is that whenever

a large batch comes through, mmdf dies on the Line of the Beast.

Probably some twit hardcoded a buffer size."

:line eater, the: [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete

versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ

bytes of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the

text of the article start with a space or tab. This bug was

quickly personified as a mythical creature called the `line

eater', and postings often included a dummy line of `line eater

food'. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or

tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there

*was* a space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat

the food *and* the beginning of the text it was supposed to be

protecting. The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater'

continued for some time after the bug had been {nailed to the

wall}, and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself is

still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to be lurking in some

mail-to-netnews gateways. 2. See {NSA line eater}.

: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}.

:line starve: [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the

wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this). On a display

terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the screen.

"To print `X squared', you just output `X', line starve, `2', line

feed." (The line starve causes the `2' to appear on the line

above the `X', and the line feed gets back to the original line.)

2. n. A character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal to

perform this action. ASCII 0011010, also called SUB or control-Z,

was one common line-starve character in the days before

microcomputers and the X3.64 terminal standard. Unlike `line

feed', `line starve' is *not* standard {{ASCII}}

terminology. Even among hackers it is considered a bit silly.

3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c (used in System V echo, as well

as nroff/troff) that suppresses a {newline} or other

character(s) that would normally be emitted.

:link farm: [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to

files in a master directory tree of files. Link farms save space

when (for example) one is maintaining several nearly identical

copies of the same source tree, e.g., when the only difference is

architecture-dependent object files. "Let's freeze the source and

then rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms." Link farms

may also be used to get around restrictions on the number of

`-I' (include-file directory) arguments on older

C preprocessors. However, they can also get completely out of

hand, becoming the filesystem equivalent of {spaghetti code}.

:link-dead: [MUD] adj. Said of a {MUD} character who has frozen in

place because of a dropped Internet connection.

:lint: [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named for the bits of fluff it

picks from programs] 1. vt. To examine a program closely for style,

language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if

via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the UNIX

utility `lint(1)' is used. This term used to be restricted to

use of `lint(1)' itself, but (judging by references on USENET)

it has become a shorthand for {desk check} at some non-UNIX

shops, even in languages other than C. Also as v. {delint}.

2. n. Excess verbiage in a document, as in "this draft has too

much lint".

:lion food: [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension,

administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two

lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their

chances but agreed to meet after 2 months. When they finally

meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says:

"How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out

a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since

then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass." The

fat one replies: "Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and ate a

manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"

:Lions Book: n. `Source Code and Commentary on UNIX level 6',

by John Lions. The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire

source listing of the UNIX Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary

on the source discussing the algorithms. These were circulated

internally at the University of New South Wales beginning 1976--77,

and were for years after the *only* detailed kernel

documentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs. Because

Western Electric wished to maintain trade secret status on the

kernel, the Lions book was never formally published and was only

supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source licensees. In

spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good many of the

early UNIX hackers.

:LISP: [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from

`Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] n. The name of AI's

mother tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length

lists and trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the

interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Invented by John

McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is actually older than any

other {HLL} still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has

undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; modern

variants are quite different in detail from the original LISP 1.5.

The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s, LISP now

shares the throne with {C}. See {languages of choice}.

All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return

values; this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs,

gave rise to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar

Wilde quote) that "LISP programmers know the value of everything

and the cost of nothing".

One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example

that most newer languages, such as {COBOL} and {Ada}, are full

of unnecessary {crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already

been done once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer

languages.

:literature, the: n. Computer-science journals and other

publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the

speaker believes is {trivial}. Thus, one might answer an

annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." Oppose

{Knuth}, which has no connotation of triviality.

:little-endian: adj. Describes a computer architecture in which,

within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have

lower significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). The

PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel microprocessors and

a lot of communications and networking hardware are little-endian.

See {big-endian}, {middle-endian}, {NUXI problem}. The term

is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than

bytes; most often these are bits within a byte.

:live data: n. 1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes

over program flow when triggered by some un-obvious operation, such

as viewing it. One use of such hacks is to break security. For

example, some smart terminals have commands that allow one to

download strings to program keys; this can be used to write live

data that, when listed to the terminal, infects it with a

security-breaking {virus} that is triggered the next time a

hapless user strikes that key. For another, there are some

well-known bugs in {vi} that allow certain texts to send

arbitrary commands back to the machine when they are simply viewed.

2. In C code, data that includes pointers to function {hook}s

(executable code). 3. An object, such as a {trampoline}, that is

constructed on the fly by a program and intended to be executed as

code. 4. Actual real-world data, as opposed to `test data'.

For example, "I think I have the record deletion module

finished." "Have you tried it out on live data?" It usually

carries the connotation that live data is more fragile and must not

be corrupted, else bad things will happen. So a possible alternate

response to the above claim might be: "Well, make sure it works

perfectly before we throw live data at it." The implication here

is that record deletion is something pretty significant, and a

haywire record-deletion module running amok on live data would

cause great harm and probably require restoring from backups.

:Live Free Or Die!: imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which

appears on that state's automobile license plates. 2. A slogan

associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX aficionados saw

themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground tilting against the

windmills of industry. The "free" referred specifically to

freedom from the {fascist} design philosophies and crufty

misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. Armando

Stettner, one of the early UNIX developers, used to give out fake

license plates bearing this motto under a large UNIX, all in New

Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued

collector's items.

:livelock: /li:v'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage

of a task is unable to finish because its clients perpetually

create more work for it to do after they have been serviced but

before it can clear its queue. Differs from {deadlock} in that

the process is not blocked or waiting for anything, but has a

virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up.

:liveware: /li:v'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for {wetware}. Less

common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in

my salad..."

:lobotomy: n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management

training is said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term

is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter

doubtless intend it as a joke. 2. The act of removing the

processor from a microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it.

Some very cheap {clone} systems are sold in `lobotomized' form

--- everything but the brain.

:locked and loaded: [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with

magazine inserted and prepared for firing] adj. Said of a removable

disk volume properly prepared for use --- that is, locked into the

drive and with the heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads

are `loaded' whenever the power is up, this description is never

used of {{Winchester}} drives (which are named after a rifle).

:locked up: adj. Syn. for {hung}, {wedged}.

:logic bomb: n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or

OS that causes it to perform some destructive or

security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are

met. Compare {back door}.

:logical: [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a

physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name]

adj. Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL)

who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the

replacement would for a while be known as the `logical' Les

Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the replacement.)

Compare {virtual}.

At Stanford, `logical' compass directions denote a coordinate

system in which `logical north' is toward San Francisco,

`logical west' is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical

north varies between physical (true) north near San Francisco and

physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that,

by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-and-south.)

In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco

restaurant, get onto {El Camino Bignum} going logical north."

Using the word `logical' helps to prevent the recipient from

worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost

directly in front of him. The concept is reinforced by North

American highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently

labeled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar

situation exists at MIT: Route 128 (famous for the electronics

industry that has grown up along it) is a 3-quarters circle

surrounding Boston at a radius of 10 miles, terminating near the

coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the

two directions along this highway as `clockwise' and

`counterclockwise', but the road signs all say "north" and

"south", respectively. A hacker might describe these directions

as `logical north' and `logical south', to indicate that they

are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual

denotation for those words. (If you went logical south along the

entire length of route 128, you would start out going northwest,

curve around to the south, and finish headed due east, including

one infamous stretch of pavement which is simultaneously route 128

south and Interstate 93 north, and is signed as such!)

:loop through: vt. To process each element of a list of things.

"Hold on, I've got to loop through my paper mail." Derives from

the computer-language notion of an iterative loop; compare `cdr

down' (under {cdr}), which is less common among C and UNIX

programmers. ITS hackers used to say `IRP over' after an

obscure pseudo-op in the MIDAS PDP-10 assembler.

:loose bytes: n. Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or

{shim}s many compilers insert between members of a record or

structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed by the

machine architecture.

:lord high fixer: [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's

`lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows

the most about some aspect of a system. See {wizard}.

:lose: [MIT] vi. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters

an exceptional condition or fails to work in the expected manner.

2. To be exceptionally unesthetic or crocky. 3. Of people, to

be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). See

also {deserves to lose}. 4. n. Refers to something that is

{losing}, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" and "What

a lose!"

:lose lose: interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable

situation. "I accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose,

lose."

:loser: n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or

person. Someone who habitually loses. (Even winners can lose

occasionally.) Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows

not. Emphatic forms are `real loser', `total loser', and

`complete loser' (but not *`moby loser', which would be a

contradiction in terms). See {luser}.

:losing: adj. Said of anything that is or causes a {lose} or

{lossage}.

:loss: n. Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which

something is losing. Emphatic forms include `moby loss', and

`total loss', `complete loss'. Common interjections are

"What a loss!" and "What a moby loss!" Note that `moby loss'

is OK even though *`moby loser' is not used; applied to an abstract

noun, moby is simply a magnifier, whereas when applied to a person

it implies substance and has positive connotations. Compare

{lossage}.

:lossage: /los'*j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This

is a mass or collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What

lossage!" are nearly synonymous. The former is slightly more

particular to the speaker's present circumstances; the latter

implies a continuing {lose} of which the speaker is currently a

victim. Thus (for example) a temporary hardware failure is a loss,

but bugs in an important tool (like a compiler) are serious

lossage.

:lost in the noise: adj. Syn. {lost in the underflow}. This term

is from signal processing, where signals of very small amplitude

cannot be separated from low-intensity noise in the system. Though

popular among hackers, it is not confined to hackerdom; physicists,

engineers, astronomers, and statisticians all use it.

:lost in the underflow: adj. Too small to be worth considering;

more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or

measurement. This is a reference to `floating underflow', a

condition that can occur when a floating-point arithmetic processor

tries to handle quantities smaller than its limit of magnitude. It

is also a pun on `undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that

sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers).

"Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the

path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the

underflow." See also {overflow bit}.

:lots of MIPS but no I/O: adj. Used to describe a person who is

technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human

beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has

lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on input-output (in

1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000, is a notorious recent

example).

:low-bandwidth: [from communication theory] adj. Used to indicate a

talk that, although not {content-free}, was not terribly

informative. "That was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you

expect for an audience of {suit}s!" Compare {zero-content},

{bandwidth}, {math-out}.

:LPT: /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ [MIT, via DEC] n. Line

printer, of course. Rare under UNIX, commoner in hackers with

MS-DOS or CP/M background. The printer device is called

`LPT:' on those systems that, like ITS, were strongly

influenced by early DEC conventions.

:lunatic fringe: [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept

release 1 versions of software.

:lurker: n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum;

one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the

group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed

is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used

in `the lurkers', the hypothetical audience for the group's

{flamage}-emitting regulars.

:luser: /loo'zr/ n. A {user}; esp. one who is also a

{loser}. ({luser} and {loser} are pronounced

identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under

ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed

Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some

status information, including how many people were already using

the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone

thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print

"14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some

of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their

faces every time they used the computer. For a while several

hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the

back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was

even money whether it would say "users" or "losers". Finally,

someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck. Later one

of the ITS machines supported `luser' as a request-for-help

command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece;

the usage lives on, however, and the term `luser' is often seen

in program comments.

= M =

=====

:M: [SI] pref. (on units) suff. (on numbers) See {{quantifiers}}.

:macdink: /mak'dink/ [from the Apple Macintosh, which is said to

encourage such behavior] vt. To make many incremental and

unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the

subject of the macdinking would be better off without them.

"When I left at 11 P.M. last night, he was still macdinking the

slides for his presentation." See also {fritterware}.

:machinable: adj. Machine-readable. Having the {softcopy} nature.

:machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for

`millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second'] n. Refers to

artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer

manufacturers. Real applications are lucky to get half the quoted

speed. See {Your mileage may vary}, {benchmark}.

:Macintoy: /mak'in-toy/ n. The Apple Macintosh, considered as a

{toy}. Less pejorative than {Macintrash}.

:Macintrash: /mak'in-trash`/ n. The Apple Macintosh, as described

by a hacker who doesn't appreciate being kept away from the

*real computer* by the interface. The term {maggotbox} has

been reported in regular use in the Research Triangle area of North

Carolina. Compare {Macintoy}. See also {beige toaster},

{WIMP environment}, {point-and-drool interface},

{drool-proof paper}, {user-friendly}.

:macro: /mak'roh/ [techspeak] n. A name (possibly followed by a

formal {arg} list) that is equated to a text or symbolic

expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the

substitution of actual arguments) by a macro expander. This

definition can be found in any technical dictionary; what those

won't tell you is how the hackish connotations of the term have

changed over time.

The term `macro' originated in early assemblers, which encouraged

the use of macros as a structuring and information-hiding device.

During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became ubiquitous, and

sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as {HLL}s, only to fall

from favor as improving compiler technology marginalized assembler

programming (see {languages of choice}). Nowadays the term is

most often used in connection with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one

of several special-purpose languages built around a macro-expansion

facility (such as TeX or UNIX's [nt]roff suite).

Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective

`macros' is now sometimes used for code in any special-purpose

application control language (whether or not the language is

actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities

such as the `keyboard macros' supported in some text editors

(and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard enhancers).

:macro-: pref. Large. Opposite of {micro-}. In the mainstream

and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people)

this competes with the prefix {mega-}, but hackers tend to

restrict the latter to quantification.

:macrology: /mak-rol'*-jee/ n. 1. Set of usually complex or crufty

macros, e.g., as part of a large system written in {LISP},

{TECO}, or (less commonly) assembler. 2. The art and science

involved in comprehending a macrology in sense 1. Sometimes

studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archeology,

ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. See

also {boxology}.

:macrotape: /ma'kroh-tayp/ n. An industry-standard reel of tape, as

opposed to a {microtape}.

:maggotbox: /mag'*t-boks/ n. See {Macintrash}. This is even

more derogatory.

:magic: adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain;

compare {automagically} and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from

magic." "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic

bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an 8-bit

byte in three instructions." 2. Characteristic of something that

works although no one really understands why (this is especially

called {black magic}). 3. [Stanford] A feature not generally

publicized that allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature

formerly in that category but now unveiled. Compare {black

magic}, {wizardly}, {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}.

For more about hackish `magic', see {A Story About `Magic'}

(in {appendix A}).

:magic cookie: [UNIX] n. 1. Something passed between routines or

programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a

capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially used of small

data objects that contain data encoded in a strange or

intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on non-UNIX OSes with a

non-byte-stream model of files, the result of `ftell(3)' may

be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to

`fseek(3)', but not operated on in any meaningful way. The

phrase `it hands you a magic cookie' means it returns a result

whose contents are not defined but which can be passed back to the

same or some other program later. 2. An in-band code for

changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or underlining) or

performing other control functions. Some older terminals would

leave a blank on the screen corresponding to mode-change magic

cookies; this was also called a {glitch}. See also {cookie}.

:magic number: [UNIX/C] n. 1. In source code, some non-obvious

constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program

and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hardcoded}),

rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented

`#define'. Magic numbers in this sense are bad style. 2. A

number that encodes critical information used in an algorithm in

some opaque way. The classic examples of these are the numbers

used in hash or CRC functions, or the coefficients in a linear

congruential generator for pseudo-random numbers. This sense

actually predates and was ancestral to the more common sense 1.

3. Special data located at the beginning of a binary data file to

indicate its type to a utility. Under UNIX, the system and various

applications programs (especially the linker) distinguish between

types of executable file by looking for a magic number. Once upon

a time, these magic numbers were PDP-11 branch instructions that

skipped over header data to the start of executable code; the 0407,

for example, was octal for `branch 16 bytes relative'. Nowadays

only a {wizard} knows the spells to create magic numbers. How do

you choose a fresh magic number of your own? Simple --- you pick

one at random. See? It's magic!

:magic smoke: n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables

them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to

the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its

existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up ---

the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See

{smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.

USENETter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while

hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing

EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened.

One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that

*after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under

the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs --- the die was

glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased

it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know,

it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke

didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of {Murphy's

Law}.

:mailing list: n. (often shortened in context to `list') 1. An

{email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word

is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses.

Some mailing lists are simple `reflectors', redirecting mail sent

to them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans

or programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by

humans are said to be `moderated'. 2. The people who receive

your email when you send it to such an address.

Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,

along with {USENET}. They predate USENET, having originated

with the first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used

for private information-sharing on topics that would be too

specialized for or inappropriate to public USENET groups. Though

some of these maintain purely technical content (such as the

Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list), others (like the

`sf-lovers' list maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are

recreational, and others are purely social. Perhaps the most

infamous of the social lists was the eccentric bandykin

distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids and

tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most

interesting people in hackerdom.

Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike USENET) don't tie up a

significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,

at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail

software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working

groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project

without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in

this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing

list (called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors

of Steele-1983.

:main loop: n. Software tools are often written to perform some

actions repeatedly on whatever input is handed to them, terminating

when there is no more input or they are explicitly told to go away.

In such programs, the loop that gets and processes input is called

the `main loop'. See also {driver}.

:mainframe: n. Term originally referring to the cabinet

containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a

room-filling {Stone Age} batch machine. After the emergence of

smaller `minicomputer' designs in the early 1970s, the

traditional {big iron} machines were described as `mainframe

computers' and eventually just as mainframes. The term carries the

connotation of a machine designed for batch rather than interactive

use, though possibly with an interactive timesharing operating

system retrofitted onto it; it is especially used of machines built

by IBM, Unisys, and the other great {dinosaur}s surviving from

computing's {Stone Age}.

It is common wisdom among hackers that the mainframe architectural

tradition is essentially dead (outside of the tiny market for

{number-crunching} supercomputers (see {cray})), having been

swamped by the recent huge advances in IC technology and low-cost

personal computing. As of 1991, corporate America hasn't quite

figured this out yet, though the wave of failures, takeovers, and

mergers among traditional mainframe makers are certainly straws in

the wind (see {dinosaurs mating}).

:management: n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by

their distance from actual productive work and their chronic

failure to manage (see also {suit}). Spoken derisively, as in

"*Management* decided that ...". 2. Mythically, a vast

bureaucracy responsible for all the world's minor irritations.

Hackers' satirical public notices are often signed `The Mgt'; this

derives from the `Illuminatus' novels (see the Bibliography in

{appendix C}).

:mandelbug: /mon'del-buhg/ [from the Mandelbrot set] n. A bug

whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its

behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. This term

implies that the speaker thinks it is a {Bohr bug}, rather than a

{heisenbug}. See also {schroedinbug}.

:manged: /monjd/ [probably from the French `manger' or Italian

`mangiare', to eat; perhaps influenced by English n. `mange',

`mangy'] adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged,

usually beyond repair. "The disk was manged after the electrical

storm." Compare {mung}.

:mangle: vt. Used similarly to {mung} or {scribble}, but more violent

in its connotations; something that is mangled has been

irreversibly and totally trashed.

:mangler: [DEC] n. A manager. Compare {mango}; see also

{management}. Note that {system mangler} is somewhat different

in connotation.

:mango: /mang'go/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A manager.

Compare {mangler}. See also {devo} and {doco}.

:manularity: [prob. fr. techspeak `granularity' + `manual']

n. A notional measure of the manual labor required for some task,

particularly one of the sort that automation is supposed to

eliminate. "Composing English on paper has much higher manularity

than using a text editor, especially in the revising stage."

Hackers tend to consider manularity a symptom of primitive methods;

in fact, a true hacker confronted with an apparent requirement to

do a computing task {by hand} will usually consider it

motivation enough to build another tool.

:marbles: [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] pl.n. The

minimum needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools

or abstractions. After a bad system crash, you need to determine

if the machine has enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough

marbles to allow a rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild

from scratch. "This compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to

compile {hello, world}."

:marginal: adj. 1. Extremely small. "A marginal increase in

{core} can decrease {GC} time drastically." In everyday

terms, this means that it is a lot easier to clean off your desk if

you have a spare place to put some of the junk while you sort

through it. 2. Of extremely small merit. "This proposed new

feature seems rather marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small

probability of {win}ning. "The power supply was rather marginal

anyway; no wonder it fried."

:Marginal Hacks: n. Margaret Jacks Hall, a building into which the

Stanford AI Lab was moved near the beginning of the 1980s (from the

{D. C. Power Lab}).

:marginally: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally

better than at Small Eating Place." See {epsilon}.

:marketroid: /mar'k*-troyd/ alt. `marketing slime',

`marketing droid', `marketeer' n. A member of a company's

marketing department, esp. one who promises users that the next

version of a product will have features that are not actually

scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement,

and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who

describes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient,

buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory. Compare {droid}.

:Mars: n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream

Gone Wrong. Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10

compatible computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group);

the multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25M, and the

never-built superprocessor SC-40M. These machines were marvels of

engineering design; although not much slower than the unique

{Foonly} F-1, they were physically smaller and consumed less

power than the much slower DEC KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4

machines. They were also completely compatible with the DEC KL10,

and ran all KL10 binaries, including the operating system, with no

modifications at about 2--3 times faster than a KL10.

When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems Concepts

should have made a bundle selling their machine into shops with a

lot of software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their spring

1984 announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the

PDP-10 world. TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of

1984, and TOPS-20 by early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers

running Systems Concepts were much better at designing machines

than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed itself

to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually

improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates

continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously;

they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and

failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other

hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the

KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first

SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made

the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or

UNIX boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being

purchased by CompuServe.

This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for hackers:

if you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to learn Real World

moves.

:martian: n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source

address of the test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means

that it will come back at you labeled with a source address that

is clearly not of this earth. "The domain server is getting lots

of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a martian filter?"

:massage: vt. Vague term used to describe `smooth' transformations of

a data set into a different form, esp. transformations that do

not lose information. Connotes less pain than {munch} or {crunch}.

"He wrote a program that massages X bitmap files into GIF

format." Compare {slurp}.

:math-out: [poss. from `white-out' (the blizzard variety)] n. A

paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other

formal notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device

for concealing the fact that it is actually {content-free}. See

also {numbers}, {social science number}.

:Matrix: [FidoNet] n. 1. What the Opus BBS software and sysops call

{FidoNet}. 2. Fanciful term for a {cyberspace} expected to

emerge from current networking experiments (see {network, the}).

3. The totality of present-day computer networks.

:maximum Maytag mode: What a {washing machine} or, by extension,

any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that it's

shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced load. If prolonged

for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming {walking

drives}.

:Mbogo, Dr. Fred: /*m-boh'goh, dok'tr fred/ [Stanford] n. The

archetypal man you don't want to see about a problem, esp. an

incompetent professional; a shyster. "Do you know a good eye

doctor?" "Sure, try Mbogo Eye Care and Professional Dry

Cleaning." The name comes from synergy between {bogus} and the

original Dr. Mbogo, a witch doctor who was Gomez Addams' physician

on the old "Addams Family" TV show. See also

{fred}.

:meatware: n. Synonym for {wetware}. Less common.

:meeces: /mees'*z/ [TMRC] n. Occasional furry visitors who are

not {urchin}s. [That is, mice. This may no longer be in live

use; it clearly derives from the refrain of the early-1960s cartoon

character Mr. Jinx: "I hate meeces to *pieces*!" --- ESR]

:meg: /meg/ n. See {{quantifiers}}.

:mega-: /me'g*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:megapenny: /meg'*-pen`ee/ n. $10,000 (1 cent * 10^6).

Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and

performance figures.

:MEGO: /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/ [`My Eyes Glaze Over', often `Mine Eyes

Glazeth (sic) Over', attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn]

Also `MEGO factor'. 1. n. A {handwave} intended to confuse the

listener and hopefully induce agreement because the listener does

not want to admit to not understanding what is going on. MEGO is

usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a

high proportion of {TLA}s. 2. excl. An appropriate response to

MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers this term often refers not to

behavior that causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing

reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of

technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.

:meltdown, network: n. See {network meltdown}.

:meme: /meem/ [coined on analogy with `gene' by Richard

Dawkins] n. An idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with

the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them

much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase `meme complex'

denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an

organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an

(epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex;

each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often

misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes

acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool-

and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of

adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of

hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably

obvious reasons.

:meme plague: n. The spread of a successful but pernicious

{meme}, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into giving

their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's

religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given

point by the historical fact that `joiner' ideologies like

Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have

exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by

collapses to small reservoir populations.

:memetics: /me-met'iks/ [from {meme}] The study of memes. As of

mid-1991, this is still an extremely informal and speculative

endeavor, though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor

have been made by H. Keith Henson and others. Memetics is a

popular topic for speculation among hackers, who like to see

themselves as the architects of the new information ecologies in

which memes live and replicate.