[1 J^P$L$$
J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$
(where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually
an {alt} or escape (ASCII 0011011) character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted
list from the first list. The first hack at it had a {bug}: GLS
(the author) had accidentally omitted the `@' in front
of `F^B', which as anyone can see is clearly the {Wrong Thing}. It
worked fine the second time. There is no space to describe all the
features of TECO, but it may be of interest that `^P' means
`sort' and `J<.-Z; ... L>' is an idiomatic series of commands
for `do once for every line'.
In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history,
having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by {EMACS}.
Descendants of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted
by DEC can still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty
PDP-11 operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced
MIT versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. See
also {retrocomputing}, {write-only language}.
:tee: n.,vt. [Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission.
"Oh, you're sending him the {bits} to that? Slap on a tee for
me." From the UNIX command `tee(1)', itself named after a
pipe fitting (see {plumbing}). Can also mean `save one for me',
as in "Tee a slice for me!" Also spelled `T'.
:Telerat: /tel'*-rat/ n. Unflattering hackerism for `Teleray', a
line of extremely losing terminals. Compare {AIDX}, {terminak},
{Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor}, {Open DeathTrap},
{ScumOS}, {sun-stools}, {HP-SUX}.
:TELNET: /tel'net/ vt. To communicate with another Internet host
using the {TELNET} protocol (usually using a program of the same
name). TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM, since that was the
program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN /T-N/. "I
usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News."
:ten-finger interface: n. The interface between two networks that
cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the
practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an
operator read from one and type into the other.
:tense: adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece
of code often got that way because it was highly {bum}med, but
sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever
routine by Mike Kazar, once a grad-student hacker at CMU: "This
routine is so tense it will bring tears to your eyes." A tense
programmer is one who produces tense code.
:tenured graduate student: n. One who has been in graduate school
for 10 years (the usual maximum is 5 or 6): a `ten-yeared'
student (get it?). Actually, this term may be used of any grad
student beginning in his seventh year. Students don't really get
tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate
student has probably been around the university longer than any
untenured professor.
:tera-: /te'r*/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.
:teraflop club: /te'r*-flop kluhb/ [FLOP = Floating Point
Operation] n. A mythical association of people who consume
outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a few
simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing
techniques. Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to have been
the founder.
:terminak: /ter'mi-nak`/ [Caltech, ca. 1979] n. Any
malfunctioning computer terminal. A common failure mode of
Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L' key to produce the
`K' code instead; complaints about this tended to look like
"Terminak #3 has a bad keyboard. Pkease fix." See {AIDX},
{Nominal Semidestructor}, {Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS},
{sun-stools}, {Telerat}, {HP-SUX}.
:terminal brain death: n. The extreme form of {terminal illness}
(sense 1). What someone who has obviously been hacking
continuously for far too long is said to be suffering from.
:terminal illness: n. 1. Syn. {raster burn}. 2. The `burn-in'
condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a screen saver.
:terminal junkie: [UK] n. A {wannabee} or early
{larval stage} hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering
the directory tree and writing {noddy} programs just to get
a fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal
jockey', `console junkie', and {console jockey}. The term
`console jockey' seems to imply more expertise than the other
three (possibly because of the exalted status of the {{console}}
relative to an ordinary terminal). See also {twink},
{read-only user}.
:terpri: /ter'pree/ [from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] vi. To
output a {newline}. Now rare as jargon, though still used as
techspeak in Common LISP. It is a contraction of `TERminate PRInt
line', named for the fact that, on some early OSes and hardware, no
characters would be printed until a complete line was formed, so
this operation terminated the line and emitted the output.
:test: n. 1. Real users bashing on a prototype long enough to get
thoroughly acquainted with it, with careful monitoring and followup
of the results. 2. Some bored random user trying a couple of the
simpler features with a developer looking over his or her shoulder,
ready to pounce on mistakes. Judging by the quality of most
software, the second definition is far more prevalent. See also
{demo}.
:TeX: /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful {macro}-based
text formatter written by Donald E. {Knuth}, very popular in the
computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced
UNIX `troff(1)', the other favored formatter, even at many
UNIX installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural)
pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished
together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the
mixed-case `TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only
devices). Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX'
--- such as TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX
programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX programmer), TeXhax,
and TeXnique.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monumental
`Art of Computer Programming' (see {Knuth}, also
{bible}). In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to
solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his
own typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his
sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years. The
language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of `The
Art of Computer Programming' has yet to appear as of mid-1991. The
impact and influence of TeX's design has been such that nobody
minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started as
a bit of tool-building on the way to something else; Knuth's
diversion was simply on a grander scale than most.
TeX{} has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
high-quality software. Knuth used to offer monetary awards to people
who found and reported bugs in it; as the years wore on and the few
remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones even harder to find), the
bribe went up. Though well-written, TeX{} is so large (and so full of
cutting edge technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least
one bug in every Pascal it has been compiled with.
:text: n. 1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code'
portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a
multitasking OS (compare {English}). 2. Textual material in the
mainstream sense; data in ordinary {{ASCII}} or {{EBCDIC}}
representation (see {flat-ASCII}). "Those are text files;
you can review them using the editor." These two contradictory
senses confuse hackers, too.
:thanks in advance: [USENET] Conventional net.politeness ending a
posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written
`advTHANKSance' or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. See
{net.-}, {netiquette}.
:That's not a bug, that's a feature!: The {canonical} first
parry in a debate about a purported bug. The complainant, if
unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then at best a
{misfeature}. See also {feature}.
:the X that can be Y is not the true X: Yet another instance of
hackerdom's peculiar attraction to mystical references --- a common
humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of
things. The template is from the `Tao te Ching': "The
Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao." The implication
is often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the
enlightened. See the {trampoline} entry for an example, and
compare {has the X nature}.
:theology: n. 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to
{religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse
nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical
interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of
a design or system. Used esp. around software issues with a
heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs.
smart-programs dispute in AI.
:theory: n. The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that
is currently being used to inform a behavior. This is a
generalization and abuse of the technical meaning. "What's the
theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner
tonight?" ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory
on letting lusers on during the day?" "The theory behind this
change is to fix the following well-known screw...."
:thinko: /thing'koh/ [by analogy with `typo'] n. A momentary,
correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving
recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of
consciousness. Syn. {braino}; see also {brain fart}.
Compare {mouso}.
:This can't happen: Less clipped variant of {can't happen}.
:This time, for sure!: excl. Ritual affirmation frequently uttered
during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small
obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the
proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of
Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a
rabbit out of my hat!" The {canonical} response is, of course,
"But that trick *never* works!" See {{Humor, Hacker}}.
:thrash: vi. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing
anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded
waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather
than performing useful computation) and are therefore said to
thrash. Someone who keeps changing his mind (esp. about what to
work on next) is said to be thrashing. A person frantically trying
to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on
any single task) may also be described as thrashing. Compare
{multitask}.
:thread: n. [USENET, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of
`topic thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a
single topic. To `follow a thread' is to read a series of USENET
postings sharing a common subject or (more correctly) which are
connected by Reference headers. The better newsreaders present
news in thread order.
:three-finger salute: n. Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
:thud: n. 1. Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see {foo}).
It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of
these was `foo', `bar', `thud', `blat'. 2. Rare term
for the hash character, `#' (ASCII 0100011). See {ASCII} for
other synonyms.
:thumb: n. The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called
because moving it allows you to browse through the contents of a
text window in a way analogous to thumbing through a book.
:thunk: /thuhnk/ n. 1. "A piece of coding which provides an
address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks
in 1961 as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal
definitions in Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called
with an expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler
generates a {thunk} to compute the expression and leave the
address of the result in some standard location. 2. Later
generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its
environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to
what in techspeak is called a `closure'). The process of
unfreezing these thunks is called `forcing'. 3. A
{stubroutine}, in an overlay programming environment, that loads
and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare {trampoline}.
4. People and activities scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It
occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by
a thunk --- I frequently need to be forced to completion." ---
paraphrased from a {plan file}.
Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths
circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is that
it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that
the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator. Yet another
holds that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at
argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the inventors, it
was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of
discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 could be
figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought,
simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had
`already been thought of'; thus it was christened a `thunk',
which is "the past tense of `think' at two in the morning".
:tick: n. 1. A {jiffy} (sense 1). 2. In simulations, the
discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the
simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is
often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is
the ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is often
pejoratively referred to as `tick-tick-tick' simulation,
especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
independent chains of causes is {handwave}d. 3. In the FORTH
language, a single quote character.
:tick-list features: [Acorn Computers] n. Features in software or
hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in
desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). The American equivalent
would be `checklist features', but this jargon sense of the
phrase has not been reported.
:tickle a bug: vt. To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest
through some known series of inputs or operations. "You can
tickle the bug in the Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by
trying to set bright yellow reverse video."
:tiger team: [U.S. military jargon] n. 1. Originally, a team whose
purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures.
These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks,
e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defense
installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have
been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After
a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up
the next morning for a `security review' and finds the sign,
note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger
teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and
security officers (see the {patch} entry for an example).
2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or
special {firefighting} group called in to look at a problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professional {cracker}s, testing the
security of military computer installations by attempting remote
attacks via networks or supposedly `secure' comm channels. Some of
their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the
greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in
commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense.
:time sink: [poss. by analogy with `heat sink' or `current sink'] n.
A project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
:time T: /ti:m T/ n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood
time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1.
"We'll meet on campus at time T or at Louie's at
time T+1" means, in the context of going out for dinner:
"We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we can meet at Louie's
itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto
that was a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been used instead
of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel time from
campus to Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time T is (and
that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at
Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time.
See also {since time T equals minus infinity}.
:times-or-divided-by: [by analogy with `plus-or-minus'] quant.
Term occasionally used when describing the uncertainty associated
with a scheduling estimate, for either humorous or brutally honest
effect. For a software project, the scheduling uncertainty factor
is usually at least 2.
:tinycrud: /ti:'nee-kruhd/ n. 1. A pejorative used by habitues of older
game-oriented {MUD} versions for TinyMUDs and other
user-extensible {MUD} variants; esp. common among users of the
rather violent and competitive AberMUD and MIST systems. These
people justify the slur on the basis of how (allegedly)
inconsistent and lacking in genuine atmosphere the scenarios
generated in user extensible MUDs can be. Other common knocks on
them are that they feature little overall plot, bad game topology,
little competitive interaction, etc. --- not to mention the alleged
horrors of the TinyMUD code itself. This dispute is one of the MUD
world's hardiest perennial {holy wars}. 2. TinyMud-oriented
chat on the USENET group rec.games.mud and elsewhere,
especially {newbie} questions and flamage.
:tip of the ice-cube: [IBM] n. The visible part of something small and
insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where `tip
of the iceberg' might be appropriate if the subject were at all
important.
:tired iron: [IBM] n. Hardware that is perfectly functional but
far enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new
products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck that
the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a {dinosaur}.
:tits on a keyboard: n. Small bumps on certain keycaps to keep
touch-typists registered (usually on the `5' of a numeric
keypad, and on the `F' and `J' of a QWERTY keyboard; but
the Mac, perverse as usual, has them on the `D' and `K'
keys).
:TLA: /T-L-A/ [Three-Letter Acronym] n. 1. Self-describing
abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is
infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP,
SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this
looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as
not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of
`ETLA' (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el
ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term
`SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See
also {YABA}.
The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is
often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a
random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin
"What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in
the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only
17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3
= 17,576.)
:TMRC: /tmerk'/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of
the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 `Dictionary of
the TMRC Language' compiled by Peter Samson included several terms
which became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. {foo}
and {frob}).
By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity
(and has grown in the thirty years since; all the features
described here are still present). The control system alone
featured about 1200 relays. There were {scram switch}es located
at numerous places around the room that could be thwacked if
something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going
full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a
digital clock on the dispatch, board, which was itself something of
a wonder in those bygone days before cheap LEDS and seven-segment
displays (no model railroad can begin to approximate the scale
distances between towns and stations, so model railroad timetables
assume a fast clock so that it seems to take about the right amount
of time for a train to complete its journey). When someone hit a
scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced with the
word `FOO'; at TMRC the scram switches are therefore called `foo
switches'.
Steven Levy, in his book `Hackers' (see the Bibliography in
{appendix C}), gives a stimulating account of those early
years. TMRC's Power and Signals group included most of the early
PDP-1 hackers and the people who later bacame the core of the MIT
AI Lab staff. Thirty years later that connection is still very
much alive, and this lexicon accordingly includes a number of
entries from a recent revision of the TMRC Dictionary.
:TMRCie: /tmerk'ee/, /tuh-merk'ee/ [MIT] n. A denizen of {TMRC}.
:to a first approximation: 1. [techspeak] When one is doing certain
numerical computations, an approximate solution may be computed by
any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a final value.
By using the starting point of a first approximation of the answer,
one can write an algorithm that converges more quickly to the
correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any comment that
indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark
"To a first approximation, I feel good" might indicate that
deeper questioning would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a
nagging cough still remains after an illness).
:to a zeroth approximation: [from `to a first approximation'] A
*really* sloppy approximation; a wild guess. Compare
{social science number}.
:toast: 1. n. Any completely inoperable system or component, esp.
one that has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think the
serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash
accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual
rebooting. "Rick just toasted the {firewall machine} again."
:toaster: n. 1. The archetypal really stupid application for an
embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that
imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see
{elevator controller}). "{DWIM} for an assembler? That'd be
as silly as running UNIX on your toaster!" 2. A very, very dumb
computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster." See
{bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige toaster}.
3. A Macintosh, esp. the Classic Mac. Some hold that this is
implied by sense 2. 4. A peripheral device. "I bought my box
without toasters, but since then I've added two boards and a second
disk drive."
:toeprint: n. A {footprint} of especially small size.
:toggle: vt. To change a {bit} from whatever state it is in to the
other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This comes from
`toggle switches', such as standard light switches, though the
word `toggle' actually refers to the mechanism that keeps the
switch in the position to which it is flipped rather than to the
fact that the switch has two positions. There are four things you
can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or zero) it,
leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would say that
there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one boolean
argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking about
toggling bits.)
:tool: 1. n. A program used primarily to create, manipulate, modify,
or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor or a
cross-referencing program. Oppose {app}, {operating system}.
2. [UNIX] An application program with a simple, `transparent'
(typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used
in programmed combination with other tools (see {filter}).
3. [MIT: general to students there] vi. To work; to study (connotes
tedium). The TMRC Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain
to the grindstone". See {hack}. 4. [MIT] n. A student who
studies too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student humor
magazine rejoices in the name `Tool and Die'.)
:toolsmith: n. The software equivalent of a tool-and-die
specialist; one who specializes in making the {tool}s with which
other programmers create applications. Many hackers consider this
more fun than applications per se; to understand why, see
{uninteresting}. Jon Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer
Science" chapter of his book `More Programming Pearls', quotes Dick
Sites from DEC as saying "I'd rather write programs to write programs
than write programs".
:topic drift: n. Term used on GEnie, USENET and other electronic
fora to describe the tendency of a {thread} to drift away from
the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the Subject
header of the originating message), or the results of that
tendency. Often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has
strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question
about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual
habits of the common marmoset. Now *that's* topic drift!"
:topic group: n. Syn. {forum}.
:TOPS-10:: /tops-ten/ n. DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled {PDP-10}
machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct.
A fountain of hacker folklore; see {appendix A}. See also {{ITS}},
{{TOPS-20}}, {{TWENEX}}, {VMS}, {operating system}. TOPS-10 was
sometimes called BOTS-10 (from `bottoms-ten') as a comment on the
inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.
:TOPS-20:: /tops-twen'tee/ n. See {{TWENEX}}.
:toto: /toh'toh/ n. This is reported to be the default scratch
file name among French-speaking programmers --- in other words, a
francophone {foo}. It is reported that the phonetic mutations
"titi", "tata", and "tutu" canonically follow `toto',
analogously to {bar}, {baz} and {quux} in English.
:tourist: [ITS] n. A guest on the system, especially one who
generally logs in over a network from a remote location for {comm
mode}, email, games, and other trivial purposes. One step below
{luser}. Hackers often spell this {turist}, perhaps by
some sort of tenuous analogy with {luser} (this also expresses the
ITS culture's penchant for six-letterisms). Compare {twink},
{read-only user}.
:tourist information: n. Information in an on-line display that is
not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of
what's going on with the software or hardware behind it. Whether a
given piece of info falls in this category depends partly on what
the user is looking for at any given time. The `bytes free'
information at the bottom of an MS-DOS `dir' display is
tourist information; so (most of the time) is the TIME information
in a UNIX `ps(1)' display.
:touristic: adj. Having the quality of a {tourist}. Often used
as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum'. Often spelled
`turistic' or `turistik', so that phrase might be more properly
rendered `lusing turistic scum'.
:toy: n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers.
1. `nice toy': One that supports the speaker's hacking style
adequately. 2. `just a toy': A machine that yields
insufficient {computron}s for the speaker's preferred uses. This
is not condemnatory, as is {bitty box}; toys can at least be fun.
It is also strongly conditioned by one's expectations; Cray XMP
users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a `toy', and certainly all RISC
boxes and mainframes are toys by their standards. See also {Get
a real computer!}.
:toy language: n. A language useful for instructional purposes or
as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory,
but inadequate for general-purpose programming. {Bad Thing}s
can result when a toy language is promoted as a general purpose
solution for programming (see {bondage-and-discipline
language}); the classic example is {{Pascal}}. Several moderately
well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming Turing
machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense.
See also {MFTL}.
:toy problem: [AI] n. A deliberately oversimplified case of a
challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test
algorithms for a real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See
also {gedanken}, {toy program}.
:toy program: n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a
trivial program (compare {noddy}). 2. One for which the effort
of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle.
See also {noddy}.
:trampoline: n. An incredibly {hairy} technique, found in some
{HLL} and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the
Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable
(and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection
between code sections. These pieces of {live data} are called
`trampolines'. Trampolines are notoriously difficult to understand
in action; in fact, it is said by those who use this term that the
trampoline that doesn't bend your brain is not the true
trampoline. See also {snap}.
:trap: 1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by
some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the
OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.
2. vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the
monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the
trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt'
or `exception' is more common among {HLL} programmers) and
appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of
assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to
computer architects and systems hackers (see {system},
sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable
exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).
:trap door: alt. `trapdoor' n. 1. Syn. {back door} --- a
{Bad Thing}. 2. [techspeak] A `trap-door function' is one
which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the inverse
of. Such functions are {Good Thing}s with important
applications in cryptography, specifically in the construction of
public-key cryptosystems.
:trash: vt. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure).
The most common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung},
{mangle}, and {scribble}.
:trawl: v. To sift through large volumes of data (e.g. USENET
postings or FTP archives) looking for something of interest.
:tree-killer: [Sun] n. 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper.
This should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper'
includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free}
documents. Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers. The negative
loading of this term may reflect the epithet `tree-killer'
applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien's
`Lord of the Rings' trilogy (see also {elvish}, {elder
days}).
:trit: /trit/ [by analogy with `bit'] n. One base-3 digit; the
amount of information conveyed by a selection among one of three
equally likely outcomes (see also {bit}). These arise, for
example, in the context of a {flag} that should actually be able
to assume *three* values --- such as yes, no, or unknown. Trits are
sometimes jokingly called `3-state bits'. A trit may be
semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half', although it is
linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is,
log2(3)
bits).
:trivial: adj. 1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not worth the
speaker's time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known
that anyone not utterly {cretinous} would have thought of them
already. 4. Any problem one has already solved (some claim that
hackish `trivial' usually evaluates to `I've seen it before').
Hackers' notions of triviality may be quite at variance with those
of non-hackers. See {nontrivial}, {uninteresting}.
:troff: /tee'rof/ or /trof/ [UNIX] n. The gray eminence of UNIX
text processing; a formatting and phototypesetting program, written
originally in PDP-11 assembler and then in barely-structured early
C by the late Joseph Ossana, modeled after the earlier ROFF which
was in turn modeled after Multics' RUNOFF. A companion program,
`nroff', formats output for terminals and line printers.
In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified TROFF so that it could drive
phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent TROFF," AT&T CSTR
#97) explains `troff''s durability. After discussing the
program's "obvious deficiencies --- a rebarbative input syntax,
mysterious and undocumented properties in some areas, and a
voracious appetite for computer resources" and noting the ugliness
and extreme hairiness of the code and internals, Kernighan
concludes:
None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating
Ossana's accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a
remarkably robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a
variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses that
were never conceived of in the original design, all with
considerable grace under fire.
The success of TeX and desktop publishing systems have reduced
`troff''s relative importance, but this tribute perfectly
captures the strengths that secured `troff' a place in hacker
folklore; indeed, it could be taken more generally as an indication
of those qualities of good programs which, in the long run, hackers
most admire.
:troglodyte: [Commodore] n. 1. A hacker who never leaves his
cubicle. The term `Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also
reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing
environment. The combination `ITS troglodyte' was flung around
some during the USENET and email wringle-wrangle attending the
2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it
was intended to describe adopted it with pride.
:troglodyte mode: [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights
turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on
white) because you've been up for so many days straight that your
eyes hurt (see {raster burn}). Loud music blaring from a stereo
stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. See {larval
stage}, {hack mode}.
:Trojan horse: [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards]
n. A program designed to break security or damage a system that is
disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister,
archiver, a game, or (in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a
program to find and destroy viruses! See {back door}, {virus},
{worm}.
:tron: [NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie `Tron'] v. To become
inaccessible except via email or `talk(1)', especially when
one is normally available via telephone or in person. Frequently
used in the past tense, as in: "Ran seems to have tronned on us
this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were able to un-tron
yourself". One may also speak of `tron mode'.
:true-hacker: [analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] n. One who
exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence
and helpfulness to other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent
6 hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000
last week --- manifestly the act of a true-hacker." Compare
{demigod}, oppose {munchkin}.
:tty: /T-T-Y/ [UNIX], /tit'ee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it
this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have
sexual undertones] n. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety,
characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited
character set, and poor print quality. Usage: antiquated (like the
TTYs themselves). See also {bit-paired keyboard}.
2. [especially UNIX] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer
to the particular terminal controlling a given job. 3. [UNIX] Any
serial port, whether or not the device connected to it is a
terminal; so called because under UNIX such devices have names of
the form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but
seldom bothersome.
:tube: 1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of
TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky &
Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy
old swashbuckler movie (see {appendix B}). 2. [IBM] To send
a copy of something to someone else's terminal. "Tube me that
note?"
:tube time: n. Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive
than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of
one's environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too
much of my tube time reading mail since I started this revision."
:tunafish: n. In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of
an age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of
`tunefs(8)' in the original {BSD} 4.2 distribution. The
joke was removed in later releases once commercial sites started
using 4.2. Tunefs relates to the `tuning' of file-system
parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few
pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `BUGS' section consisting of
the line "You can tune a file system, but you can't tunafish".
Variants of this can be seen in other BSD versions, though it has
been excised from some versions by humorless management
{droid}s. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1 contains a
comment apparently designed to prevent this: "Take this out and a
Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until the `time_t''s
wrap around."
:tune: [from automotive or musical usage] vt. To optimize a program
or system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical
parameters designed as {hook}s for tuning, e.g., by changing
`#define' lines in C. One may `tune for time' (fastest
execution), `tune for space' (least memory use), or
`tune for configuration' (most efficient use of hardware). See
{bum}, {hot spot}, {hand-hacking}.
:turbo nerd: n. See {computer geek}.
:Turing tar-pit: n. 1. A place where anything is possible but
nothing of interest is practical. Alan Turing helped lay the
foundations of computer science by showing that all machines and
languages capable of expressing a certain very primitive set of
operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of computations
they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that differ
only in speed from those of the most powerful and
elegantly-designed computers. However, no machine or language
exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other
than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be
horribly slow and far too painful to use. A `Turing tar-pit' is
any computer language or other tool which shares this property.
That is, it's theoretically universal --- but in practice, the
harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its
inadequacies suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline
language}. 2. The perennial {holy wars} over whether language A
or B is the "most powerful".
:turist: /too'rist/ n. Var. sp. of {tourist}, q.v. Also in
adjectival form, `turistic'. Poss. influenced by {luser} and
`Turing'.
:tweak: vt. 1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value.
Also used synonymously with {twiddle}. If a program is almost
correct, rather than figure out the precise problem you might
just keep tweaking it until it works. See {frobnicate} and
{fudge factor}; also see {shotgun debugging}. 2. To {tune}
or {bum} a program; preferred usage in the U.K.
:tweeter: [University of Waterloo] n. Syn. {perf}, {chad}
(sense 1). This term (like {woofer}) has been in use at
Waterloo since 1972, but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word
refers to the treble speaker(s) on a hi-fi.
:TWENEX:: /twe'neks/ n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC ---
the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 --- preferred by most
PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that is, by those who were not
{{ITS}} or {{WAITS}} partisans). TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt,
Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating system using special paging
hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of the systems on the
ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX from BBN and
began work to make it their own. The first in-house code name for
the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating System);
when customers started asking questions, the name was changed to
SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any project
called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was
briefly reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when
it was discovered that `krans' meant `funeral wreath' in
Swedish. Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20 as the name of the
operating system, and it was as TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The
hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly dubbed it
{{TWENEX}} (a contraction of `twenty TENEX'), even though by this
point very little of the original TENEX code remained (analogously
to the differences between AT&T V6 UNIX and BSD). DEC people
cringed when they heard "TWENEX", but the term caught on
nevertheless (the written abbreviation `20x' was also used).
TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact, there was a period
in the early 1980s when it commanded as fervent a culture of
partisans as UNIX or ITS --- but DEC's decision to scrap all the
internal rivals to the VAX architecture and its relatively stodgy
VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in
the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20 hackers to convert to
{VMS}, but instead, by the late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20
hackers had migrated to UNIX.
:twiddle: n. 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~'). Also
called `squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic --- pronounced /skig'l/),
and `twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small
and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones. 3. vt. To change something in a small
way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or
knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking
it; see {frobnicate}. To speak of twiddling a bit connotes
aimlessness, and at best doesn't specify what you're doing to the
bit; `toggling a bit' has a more specific meaning (see {bit
twiddling}, {toggle}).
:twilight zone: [IRC] n. Notionally, the area of cyberspace where {IRC}
operators live. An {op} is said to have a "connection to the
twilight zone".
:twink: /twink/ [UCSC] n. Equivalent to {read-only user}.
Also reported on the USENET group soc.motss; may derive from
gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs (compare
mainstream `chick').
:two pi: quant. The number of years it takes to finish one's
thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form: "He started on
his thesis; 2 pi years later..."
:two-to-the-N: quant. An amount much larger than {N} but smaller
than {infinity}. "I have 2-to-the-N things to do before I can
go out for lunch" means you probably won't show up.
:twonkie: /twon'kee/ n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a
variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male
equivalent of `chick'); a useless `feature' added to look sexy
and placate a {marketroid} (compare {Saturday-night
special}). This may also be related to "The Twonky", title menace
of a classic SF short story by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and
C. L. Moore), first published in the September 1942
`Astounding Science Fiction' and subsequently much
anthologized.
= U =
=====
:UBD: /U-B-D/ [abbreviation for `User Brain Damage'] An
abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to
utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare {pilot error};
oppose {PBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.
:UN*X: n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of
AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly
{(TM)} typography.
Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating
systems. Ironically, lawyers now say (1990) that the requirement
for the TM-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage
is entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a
psychological connection to practice in certain religions
(especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never
written out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or `G--d' is used. See also
{glob}.
:undefined external reference: excl. [UNIX] A message from UNIX's
linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling references
in an argument or discussion.
:under the hood: prep. [hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the
underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or
idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious
from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the
listener to {grok} it. "Let's now look under the hood to see
how ...." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is much
simpler than the appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we
are just fork/execing the shell." 3. Inside a chassis, as in
"Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!"
:undocumented feature: n. See {feature}.
:uninteresting: adj. 1. Said of a problem that, although
{nontrivial}, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient
resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution
would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and
code.
Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of
time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. *Real*
hackers (see {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems
enough to make them interesting and solve them --- thus solving the
original problem as a special case (and, it must be admitted,
occasionally turning a molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into
a tectonic plate). See {WOMBAT}, {SMOP}; compare {toy
problem}, oppose {interesting}.
:UNIX:: /yoo'niks/ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on
Multics"] n. (also `Unix') An interactive time-sharing system
originally invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left
the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his
scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered
a co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history
came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during
1972--1974, making it the first source-portable OS. UNIX
subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of
many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and
developer-friendly environment. In 1991, UNIX is the most widely
used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world. Many
people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom
over industry opposition (but see {UNIX weenie} and {UNIX
conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). See {Version 7},
{BSD}, {USG UNIX}.
:UNIX brain damage: n. Something that has to be done to break a
network program (typically a mailer) on a non-UNIX system so that
it will interoperate with UNIX systems. The hack may qualify as
`UNIX brain damage' if the program conforms to published standards
and the UNIX program in question does not. UNIX brain damage
happens because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to
change their ways to match non-conforming behavior than it is to
change all the hundreds of thousands of UNIX systems out there.
An example of UNIX brain damage is a {kluge} in a mail server to
recognize bare line feed (the UNIX newline) as an equivalent form
to the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return
followed by a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened
{jock} weep.
:UNIX conspiracy: [ITS] n. According to a conspiracy theory long
popular among {{ITS}} and {{TOPS-20}} fans, UNIX's growth is the
result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose
intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent
upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's
control. This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating
system that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also
relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing
upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a substantial impetus
in 1984 by the paper referenced in the {back door} entry.
In this view, UNIX was designed to be one of the first computer
viruses (see {virus}) --- but a virus spread to computers indirectly
by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks and
networks. Adherents of this `UNIX virus' theory like to cite the
fact that the well-known quotation "UNIX is snake oil" was
uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began
actively promoting its own family of UNIX workstations. (Olsen now
claims to have been misquoted.)
:UNIX weenie: [ITS] n. 1. A derogatory play on `UNIX wizard', common
among hackers who use UNIX by necessity but would prefer
alternatives. The implication is that although the person in question
may consider mastery of UNIX arcana to be a wizardly skill, the
only real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and the bad
taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity that is
alleged to infest many UNIX programs. "This shell script tries to
parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. It must have been
written by a real UNIX weenie." 2. A derogatory term for anyone
who engages in uncritical praise of UNIX. Often appearing in the
context "stupid UNIX weenie". See {Weenix}, {UNIX
conspiracy}. See also {weenie}.
:unixism: n. A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the
protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low
process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory UNIX systems.
Common {unixism}s include: gratuitous use of `fork(2)'; the
assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of
UNIX libraries such as `stdio(3)' are supported elsewhere;
reliance on {obscure} side-effects of system calls (use of
`sleep(2)' with a 0 argument to clue the scheduler that
you're willing to give up your time-slice, for example); the
assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed; and the assumption
that fragmentation problems won't arise from never `free()'ing
memory. Compare {vaxocentrism}; see also {New Jersey}.
:unleaded: adj. Said of decaffeinated coffee, diet coke, and other
imitation {programming fluid}s. "Do you want regular or
unleaded?". Appears to be widespread among programmers associated
with the oil industry in Texas (and probably elsewhere). Usage:
silly, and probably unintelligable to the next generation of
hackers.
:unroll: v. To repeat the body of a loop several times in succession.
This optimization technique reduces the number of times the
loop-termination test has to be executed. But it only works if
the number of iterations desired is a multiple of the number of
repetitions of the body. Something has to be done to take care
of any leftover iterations --- such as {Duff's device}.
:unswizzle: v. See {swizzle}.
:unwind the stack: vi. 1. [techspeak] During the execution of a
procedural language, one is said to `unwind the stack' from a
called procedure up to a caller when one discards the stack frame
and any number of frames above it, popping back up to the level of
the given caller. In C this is done with
`longjmp'/`setjmp', in LISP with `throw/catch'.
See also {smash the stack}. 2. People can unwind the stack as
well, by quickly dealing with a bunch of problems: "Oh heck, let's
do lunch. Just a second while I unwind my stack."
:unwind-protect: [MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] n. A task you
must remember to perform before you leave a place or finish a
project. "I have an unwind-protect to call my advisor."
:up: adj. 1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up."
Oppose {down}. 2. `bring up': vt. To create a working
version and start it. "They brought up a down system."
3. `come up' vi. To become ready for production use.
:upload: /uhp'lohd/ v. 1. [techspeak] To transfer programs or data
over a digital communications link from a smaller or peripheral
`client' system to a larger or central `host' one. A transfer in
the other direction is, of course, called a {download} (but see
the note about ground-to-space comm under that entry).
2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and algorithms
that make up one's mind from one's brain into a computer. Only
those who are convinced that such patterns and algorithms capture
the complete essence of the self view this prospect with
gusto.
:upthread: adv. Earlier in the discussion (see {thread}), i.e.,
`above'. "As Joe pointed out upthread, ..." See also
{followup}.
:urchin: n. See {munchkin}.
:USENET: /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ [from `Users' Network'] n.
A distributed {bboard} (bulletin board) system supported mainly
by UNIX machines. Originally implemented in 1979-1980 by Steve
Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke
University, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope
and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility
in existence. As of early 1991, it hosts well over
700 {newsgroup}s and an average of 16 megabytes (the equivalent
of several thousand paper pages) of new technical articles, news,
discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day.
:user: n. 1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer, using
it as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a
computer. See {real user}. 2. A programmer who will believe
anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions. [GLS
observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask
questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep.
Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently
because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the
documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See {luser}.
3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully,
without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports
bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them.
The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes
of people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers)
and {luser}s. The users are looked down on by hackers to some
extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the
system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as
`real winners'.) The term is a relative one: a skilled hacker
may be a user with respect to some program he himself does not
hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who
uses LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who
uses LISP, whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap
between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by
context.
:user-friendly: adj. Programmer-hostile. Generally used by hackers in
a critical tone, to describe systems that hold the user's hand so
obsessively that they make it painful for the more experienced and
knowledgeable to get any work done. See {menuitis}, {drool-proof
paper}, {Macintrash}, {user-obsequious}.
:user-obsequious: adj. Emphatic form of {user-friendly}. Connotes
a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly simple-minded
that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any fool can use and
only a fool will want to use it." See {WIMP environment},
{Macintrash}.
:USG UNIX: /U-S-G yoo'niks/ n. Refers to AT&T UNIX
commercial versions after {Version 7}, especially System III and
System V releases 1, 2, and 3. So called because during most of
the life-span of those versions AT&T's support crew was called the
`UNIX Support Group'. See {BSD}, {{UNIX}}.
:UTSL: // [UNIX] n. On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a
pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in `Star
Wars') --- analogous to {RTFM} but more polite. This is a
common way of suggesting that someone would be best off reading the
source code that supports whatever feature is causing confusion,
rather than making yet another futile pass through the manuals or
broadcasting questions that haven't attracted {wizard}s to
answer them. In theory, this is appropriately directed only at
associates of some outfit with a UNIX source license; in practice,
bootlegs of UNIX source code (made precisely for reference
purposes) are so ubiquitous that one may utter this at almost
anyone on the network without concern. In the near future
(this written in 1991) source licenses may become even less
important; after the recent release of the Mach 3.0 microkernel,
given the continuing efforts of the {GNU} project, and with the
4.4BSD release on the horizon, complete free source code for
UNIX-clone toolsets and kernels should soon be widely available.
:UUCPNET: n. The store-and-forward network consisting of all the
world's connected UNIX machines (and others running some clone of
the UUCP (UNIX-to-UNIX CoPy) software). Any machine reachable only
via a {bang path} is on UUCPNET. See {network address}.
= V =
=====
:vadding: /vad'ing/ [from VAD, a permutation of ADV (i.e.,
{ADVENT}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'s continual
search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] n. A leisure-time activity
of certain hackers involving the covert exploration of the
`secret' parts of large buildings --- basements, roofs, freight
elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and the like. A
few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to synthesize
vadding keys. The verb is `to vad' (compare {phreaking}; see
also {hack}, sense 9). This term dates from the late 1970s,
before which such activity was simply called `hacking'; the older
usage is still prevalent at MIT.
The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is `elevator
rodeo', a.k.a. `elevator surfing', a sport played by wrasslin'
down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of
string, and then exploiting this mastery in various stimulating
ways (such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and
the ever-popular drop experiments). Kids, don't try this at home!
See also {hobbit} (sense 2).
:vanilla: [from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.] adj.
Ordinary {flavor}, standard. When used of food, very often does
not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For
example, `vanilla wonton soup' means ordinary wonton soup, as
opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware and
software, as in "Vanilla Version 7 UNIX can't run on a
vanilla 11/34." Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for
instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from
a 74LS00, etc. This word differs from {canonical} in that the
latter means `default', whereas vanilla simply means `ordinary'.
For example, when hackers go on a {great-wall}, hot-and-sour
wonton soup is the {canonical} wonton soup to get (because that
is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the
vanilla wonton soup.
:vannevar: /van'*-var/ n. A bogus technological prediction or a
foredoomed engineering concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly
assuming that technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in
isolation from one another when in fact the learning curve tends to
be highly nonlinear, revolutions are common, and competition is the
rule. The prototype was Vannevar Bush's prediction of
`electronic brains' the size of the Empire State Building with a
Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for their tubes and relays,
made at a time when the semiconductor effect had already been
demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have included magnetic-bubble
memory, LISP machines, {videotex}, and a paper from the
late 1970s that computed a purported ultimate limit on areal
density for ICs that was in fact less than the routine densities of
5 years later.
:vaporware: /vay'pr-weir/ n. Products announced far in advance of
any release (which may or may not actually take place).
:var: /veir/ or /var/ n. Short for `variable'. Compare {arg},
{param}.
: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 micro}s 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 alleged sales pitch, "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a
sort of battle-cry of RISC partisans. It is sometimes claimed that
this slogan was *not* actually used by the Vax vacuum-cleaner
people, but was actually that of a rival brand called Electrolux
(as in "Nothing sucks like..."); your editors have not yet
been able to verify either version of the legend. It is also
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.
:VAXectomy: /vak-sek't*-mee/ [by analogy with `vasectomy'] n. A
VAX removal. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are much slower than
newer RISC-based workstations such as the SPARC. Thus, if one knows
one has a replacement coming, VAX removal can be cause for
celebration.
:VAXen: /vak'sn/ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by `vixen'] n.
(alt. `vaxen') The plural canonically used among hackers for the
DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty
vaxen." See {boxen}.
:vaxherd: n. /vaks'herd/ [from `oxherd'] A VAX operator.
:vaxism: /vak'sizm/ n. A piece of code that exhibits
{vaxocentrism} in critical areas. Compare {PC-ism},
{unixism}.
:vaxocentrism: /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ [analogy with
`ethnocentrism'] n. A notional disease said to afflict
C programmers who persist in coding according to certain
assumptions that are valid (esp. under UNIX) on {VAXen} but
false elsewhere. Among these are:
1. The assumption that dereferencing a null pointer is safe because it
is all bits 0, and location 0 is readable and 0. Problem: this may
instead cause an illegal-address trap on non-VAXen, and even on
VAXen under OSes other than BSD UNIX. Usually this is an implicit
assumption of sloppy code (forgetting to check the pointer before
using it), rather than deliberate exploitation of a misfeature.)