[net.sources] JARGON in ditroff format, 3 of 4

colonel@ellie.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (05/16/86)

.QU "A SAIL hacker."
(Definitions 1 to 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
6. A malicious or inquisitive
meddler who tries to discover information by poking around.  Hence
.QU "password hacker,"
.QU "network hacker."
.DF HACKISH
adj. Being or involving a hack.  HACKISHNESS n.
.DF HAIR
n. The complications which make something hairy.
.QU "Decoding TECO commands requires a certain amount of hair."
Often seen in the
phrase INFINITE HAIR, which connotes extreme complexity.
.DF HAIRY
adj. 1. Overly complicated.
.QU "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
2. Incomprehensible.
.QU "DWIM is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
incomprehensible.  Hard to explain except in context:
.QU "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about."
.DF HAKMEM
n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972).
A collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by
many people at MIT and elsewhere.
.DF HANDWAVE
1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener;
to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic.
2. n. The act of handwaving.
.QU "Boy, what a handwave!"
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up,
palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at
the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the
handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms still while rotating
the hands at the wrist to make them flutter.  In context, the
gestures alone can suffice as a remark.
.DF HARDWARILY
adv. In a way pertaining to hardware.
.QU "The system is hardwarily unreliable."
The adjective
.QU hardwary
is NOT used.  See SOFTWARILY.
.DF "HELLO WALL"
See WALL.
.DF HIRSUTE
Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for HAIRY.
.DF HOOK
n. An extraneous piece of software or hardware included in order
to simplify later additions or debug options.  For instance, a
program might execute a location that is normally a JFCL, but by
changing the JFCL to a PUSHJ one can insert a debugging routine at
that point.
.DF "HUMONGOUS, HUMUNGOUS"
See HUNGUS.
.DF HUNGUS
(hung\*(fmghis) [perhaps related to current slang
.QU humongous;
which one came first (if either) is unclear] adj. Large, unwieldy,
usually unmanageable.
.QU "TCP is a hungus piece of code."
.QU "This is a hungus set of modifications."
.DF IMPCOM
See TELNET.
.DF INFINITE
adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme.  Used
very loosely as in:
.QU "This program produces infinite garbage."
.DF IRP
(erp) [from the MIDAS pseudo-op which generates a block of code
repeatedly, substituting in various places the car and/or cdr of
the list(s) supplied at the IRP] v. To perform a series of tasks
repeatedly with a minor substitution each time through.
\*QI guess I'll IRP over these homework papers so I can give them some
random grade for this semester.\*U
.DF JFCL
(djif\*(fmkl or dja-fik\*(fml) [based on the PDP-10 instruction that acts
as a fast no-op] v. To cancel or annul something.
.QU "Why don't you jfcl that out?"
[The license plate on Geoff Goodfellow's BMW is JFCL.]
.DF JIFFY
n. 1. Interval of CPU time, commonly 1/60 second or 1 millisecond.
2. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever.
.QU "I'll do it in a jiffy"
means certainly not now and possibly never.
.DF JOCK
n. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute
force programs.  The term is particularly well-suited for systems programmers.
.DF "J. RANDOM"
See RANDOM.
.DF JRST
(jerst) [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v. To suddenly
change subjects.  Usage: rather rare.
.QU "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick."
.DF JSYS
(jay\*(fmsis), pl. JSI (jay\*(fmsigh) [Jump to SYStem] See UUO.
.DF KLUGE
(kloodj) alt. KLUDGE [from the German
.QU kluge,
clever] n. 1. A Rube Goldberg device in hardware or software.
2. A clever
programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an
efficient, if not clear, manner.  Often used to repair bugs.  Often
verges on being a crock.  3. Something that works for the wrong
reason.  4. v. To insert a kluge into a program.
\*QI've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there's
probably a better way.\*U Also KLUGE UP.  5. KLUGE AROUND: To avoid by
inserting a kluge.  6. (WPI) A feature which is implemented in a RUDE manner.
.DF LDB
(lid\*(fmdib) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To extract from the middle.
.DF LIFE
n. A cellular-automaton game invented by John Horton Conway, and
first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American,
October 1970).
.DF "LINE FEED"
(standard ASCII terminology) 1. v. To feed the paper through
a terminal by one line (in order to print on the next line).  2. n. The
.QU character
that causes the terminal to perform this action.
.DF "LINE STARVE"
(MIT) Inverse of LINE FEED.
.DF LOGICAL
[from the technical term
.QU "logical device,"
wherein a physical
device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj. Understood to have
a meaning not necessarily corresponding to reality.  E.g., if a
person who has long held a certain post (e.g., Les Earnest at SAIL)
left and was replaced, the replacement would for a while be known
as the
.QU "logical Les Earnest."
The word VIRTUAL is also used.  At SAIL,
.QU logical
compass directions denote a coordinate system in which
.QU "logical north"
is toward San Francisco,
.QU "logical west"
is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between
physical (true) north near SF and physical west near San Jose.
(The best rule of thumb here is that El Camino Real by definition
always runs logical north-and-south.)
.DF LOSE
[from MIT jargon] v. 1. To fail.  A program loses when it
encounters an exceptional condition.  2. To be exceptionally
unaesthetic.  3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as
opposed to ignorant).  4. DESERVE TO LOSE: v. Said of someone who
willfully does the wrong thing; humorously, if one uses a feature
known to be marginal.  What is meant is that one deserves the
consequences of one's losing actions.
.QU "Boy, anyone who tries to use MULTICS deserves to lose!"
LOSE LOSE: a reply or comment on a situation.
.DF LOSER
n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or
person.  Especially
.QU "real loser."
.DF LOSS
n. Something which loses.
WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection.
.DF LOSSAGE
n. The result of a bug or malfunction.
.DF LPT
(lip\*(fmit) n. Line printer, of course.
.DF LUSER
See USER.
.DF MACROTAPE
n. An industry standard reel of tape, as opposed to a MICROTAPE.
.DF MAGIC
adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain.
(Arthur C. Clarke once said that magic was as-yet-not-understood science.)
.QU "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits."
\*QThis routine magically computes the parity of an eight-bit
byte in three instructions.\*U
2. (Stanford) A feature not generally
publicized which allows something otherwise impossible, or a
feature formerly in that category but now unveiled.  Example: The
keyboard commands which override the screen-hiding features.
.DF MARGINAL
adj. 1. Extremely small.
.QU "A marginal increase in core can decrease GC time drastically."
See EPSILON.  2. Of extremely small merit.
.QU "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me."
3. Of extremely small probability of winning.
.QU "The power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it crapped out."
4. MARGINALLY: adv. Slightly.
.QU "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small Eating Place."
.DF MICROTAPE
n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a
MACROTAPE.  This was the official DEC term for the stuff until
someone consed up the word
.QU DECtape.
.DF MISFEATURE
n. A feature which eventually screws someone, possibly
because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved.
It is not the same as a bug because fixing it involves a gross
philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.
Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was
made whose parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the
judgment of the implementors).
\*QWell, yeah, it's kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to
six characters, but we're stuck with it for now.\*U
.DF MOBY
[seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago.
Entered the world of AI with the Fabritek 256K moby memory of MIT-AI.
Derived from Melville's
.I "Moby Dick"
(some say from
.QU "Moby Pickle" ).]
1. adj. Large, immense, or complex.
.QU "A moby frob."
2. n. The maximum address space of a machine, hence 3. n. 256K words,
the size of a PDP-10 moby.  (The maximum address space means the
maximum normally addressable space, as opposed to the amount of
physical memory a machine can have.  Thus the MIT PDP-10s each have
two mobies, usually referred to as the
.QU "low moby"
(0\-777777) and
.QU "high moby"
(1000000\-1777777), or as
.QU "moby 0"
and
.QU "moby 1."
MIT-AI has four mobies of address space: moby 2 is the PDP-6 memory, and
moby 3 the PDP-11 interface.)  In this sense
.QU moby
is often used
as a generic unit of either address space (18. bits' worth) or of
memory (about a megabyte, or 9/8 megabyte (if one accounts for
difference between 32- and 36-bit words), or 5/4 megacharacters).
4. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually
used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a
competent hacker.
.QU "So, moby Knight, how's the CONS machine doing?"
5. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in
.QU "moby sixes,"
.QU "moby ones,"
etc.
MOBY FOO, MOBY WIN, MOBY LOSS: standard emphatic forms.
FOBY MOO: a spoonerism due to Greenblatt.
.DF MODE
n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state.
.QU "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode."
Usage: in its jargon sense, MODE is most often said of people, though it is
sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects.
.QU "If you're on a TTY, E will switch to non-display mode."
In particular, see DAY MODE, NIGHT MODE, and YOYO MODE; also COM MODE,
TALK MODE, and GABRIEL MODE.
.DF MODULO
prep. Except for.  From mathematical terminology: one can
consider saying that 4=22
.QU "except for the 9's"
(4=22 mod 9).
.QU "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug."
.DF MOON
n. 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
hackers.  See PHASE OF THE MOON.  2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
.DF MUMBLAGE
n. The topic of one's mumbling (see MUMBLE).
.QU "All that mumblage"
is used like
.QU "all that stuff"
when it is not quite clear what it is or how it works, or like
.QU "all that crap"
when
.QU mumble
is being used as an implicit replacement for obscenities.
.DF MUMBLE
interj. 1. Said when the correct response is either too
complicated to enunciate or the speaker has not thought it out.
Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance
to get into a big long discussion.
.QU "Well, mumble."
2. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement.
.QU "I think we should buy it."
.QU Mumble!
Common variant: MUMBLE FROTZ.
3. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like FOO.
.DF MUNCH
(often confused with
.QU mung,
q.v.) v. To transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring
large amounts of computation.  To trace down a data structure.  Related
to CRUNCH (q.v.), but connotes less pain.
.DF "MUNCHING SQUARES"
n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1, which
employs a trivial computation (involving XOR'ing of x-y display
coordinates \- see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an impressive
display of moving, growing, and shrinking squares.  The hack
usually has a parameter (usually taken from toggle switches) which
when well-chosen can produce amazing effects.  Some of these,
discovered recently on the LISP machine, have been christened
MUNCHING TRIANGLES, MUNCHING W'S, and MUNCHING MAZES.
.DF MUNG
(variant: MUNGE) [recursive acronym for Mung Until No Good] v. 1.
To make changes to a file, often large-scale, usually irrevocable.
Occasionally accidental.  See BLT.  2. To destroy, usually
accidentally, occasionally maliciously.  The system only mungs
things maliciously.
.DF N
adj. 1. Some large and indeterminate number of objects;
.QU "There were N bugs in that crock!"
Also used in its original sense of a
variable name.  2. An arbitrarily large (and perhaps infinite)
number.  3. A variable whose value is specified by the current context.
.QU "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for N\-1."
4. NTH: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N.
.QU "Now for the Nth and last time... ."
In the specific context
.QU "Nth-year grad student,"
N is generally assumed to be at least 4, and is usually 5 or more.
See also 69.
.DF "NIGHT MODE"
See PHASE (of people).
.DF NIL
[from LISP terminology for
.QU false ]
No.  Usage: used in reply to a question,
particularly one asked using the
.QU -P
convention.  See T.
.DF OBSCURE
adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply a
total lack of comprehensibility.
.QU "The reason for that last crash is obscure."
.QU "FIND's command syntax is obscure."
MODERATELY OBSCURE implies that it could be figured out but probably isn't
worth the trouble.
.DF OPEN
n. Abbreviation for
.QU "open (or left) parenthesis,"
used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity.  To read aloud the LISP form
(DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say:
.QU "Open def-fun foo, open eks close, open, plus eks one, close close."
See CLOSE.
.DF PARSE
[from linguistic terminology] v. 1. To determine the syntactic
structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard
English meaning).  Example:
.QU "That was the one I saw you."
.QU "I can't parse that."
2. More generally, to understand or comprehend.
.QU "It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz."
.QU "I can't parse that."
3. Of fish, to have to remove the
bones yourself (usually at a Chinese restaurant).
.QU "I object to parsing fish"
means
.QU "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay."
A
.QU "parsed fish"
has been deboned.  There is some
controversy over whether
.QU unparsed
should mean
.QU bony,
or also mean
.QU deboned.
.DF PATCH
1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a
quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature.  A patch
may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated
permanently into the program.  2. v. To insert a patch into a piece
of code.
.DF PDL
(piddle or puddle) [acronym for Push Down List] n. 1. A LIFO queue
(stack); more loosely, any priority queue; even more loosely, any
queue.  A person's pdl is the set of things he has to do in the
future.  One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having
risen to the top of the pdl.
\*QI'm afraid I've got real work to do,
so this'll have to be pushed way down on my pdl.\*U
See PUSH and POP.  2. Dave Lebling (PDL@DM).
.DF PESSIMAL
[Latin-based antonym for
.QU optimal ]
adj. Maximally bad.
.QU "This is a pessimal situation."
.DF "PESSIMIZING COMPILER"
n. A compiler that produces object code that is
worse than the straightforward or obvious translation.
.DF PHANTOM
n. (Stanford) The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON (q.v.).  Typical
phantoms include the accounting program, the news-wire monitor, and
the lpt and xgp spoolers.
.DF PHASE
(of people) 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule
with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle.  This is a useful
concept among people who often work at night according to no fixed
schedule.  It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as
six hours/day on a regular basis.
.QU "What's your phase?"
\*QI've been getting in about 8 PM lately, but I'm going to work around
to the day schedule by Friday.\*U
A person who is roughly 12 hours out of
phase is sometimes said to be in
.QU "night mode."
(The term
.QU "day mode"
is also used, but less frequently.)  2. CHANGE PHASE THE HARD
WAY: To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a
different phase.  3. CHANGE PHASE THE EASY WAY: To stay asleep etc.
.DF "PHASE OF THE MOON"
n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which
something is said to depend.  Sometimes implies unreliability of
whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on
conditions nobody has been able to determine.
\*QThis feature
depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo
switch set, and on the phase of the moon.\*U
.DF PLUGH
[from the Adventure game] v. See XYZZY.
.DF POM
n. Phase of the moon (q.v.).  Usage: usually used in the phrase
.QU "POM dependent"
which means flakey (q.v.).
.DF POP
[based on the stack operation that removes the top of a stack, and
the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack]
dialect: POPJ (pop-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure return
instruction.  v. To return from a digression.  By verb doubling,
.QU "Popj, popj"
means roughly,
.QU "Now let's see, where were we?"
.DF PPN
(pip\*(fmin) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n.
1. A combination
.QU project
(directory name) and programmer name,
used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user.  For
instance,
.QU FOO,BAR
would be the FOO directory for user BAR.  Since
the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name is
usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or
other special sequence.  (Standard DEC setup is to have two octal
numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.)  2.
Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone.
.QU "I want to send you some mail; what's your ppn?"
Usage: not used at MIT, since ITS does not use ppn's.  The equivalent
terms would be UNAME and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not
used except in their technical senses.
.DF PROTOCOL
See DO PROTOCOL.
.DF PSEUDOPRIME
n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points)
with one point missing.
.DF PTY
(pity) n. Pseudo TTY, a simulated TTY used to run a job under the
supervision of another job.
PTYJOB (pity-job) n. The job being run on the PTY.  Also a common
general-purpose program for creating and using PTYs.
This is DEC and SAIL terminology; the MIT equivalent is STY.
.DF PUNT
[from the punch line of an old joke:
.QU "Drop back 15 yards and punt" ]
v. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying.
.DF PUSH
[based on the stack operation that puts the current information
on a stack, and the fact that procedure call addresses are saved on
the stack] dialect: PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure
call instruction.  v. To enter upon a digression, to save the
current discussion for later.
.DF QUES
(kwess) 1. n. The question mark character
.QU ? ). (
2. interj.  What?  Also QUES QUES?  See WALL.
.DF QUUX
[invented by Steele.  Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent
verb QUUXO, QUUXARE, QUUXANDUM IRI; noun form variously QUUX
(plural QUUCES, Anglicized to QUUXES) and QUUXU (genitive plural is
QUUXUUM, four U's in seven letters).] 1. Originally, a meta-word
like FOO and FOOBAR.  Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this
purpose when he was young and naive and not yet interacting with
the real computing community.  Many people invent such words; this
one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a little.
2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very little disgust, and is
uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it.  3. n. Refers to
one of four people who went to Boston Latin School and eventually
to MIT:
.DS
THE GREAT QUUX:  Guy L. Steele, Jr.
THE LESSER QUUX:  David J. Littleboy
THE MEDIOCRE QUUX:  Alan P. Swide
THE MICRO QUUX:  Sam Lewis
.DE
(This taxonomy is said to be similarly applied to three Frankston
brothers at MIT.)  QUUX, without qualification, usually refers to
The Great Quux, who is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the
.QU Crunchly
cartoons.  4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a QUUX. 
.DF RANDOM
adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.
.QU "The system's been behaving pretty randomly."
2. Assorted; undistinguished.
.QU "Who was at the conference?"
.QU "Just a bunch of random business types."
3. Frivolous; unproductive; undirected (pejorative).
.QU "He's just a random loser."
4. Incoherent or inelegant; not well organized.
.QU "The program has a random set of misfeatures."
.QU "That's a random name for that function."
.QU "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly."
5. Gratuitously wrong,
i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason.  For example, a
program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless
way, or a routine that could easily have been coded using only
three ac's, but randomly uses seven for assorted non-overlapping
purposes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving
four extra ac's.  6. In no particular order, though deterministic.
\*QThe I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is
chosen randomly.\*U
n. 7. A random hacker; used particularly of high
school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way.
8. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall.
J. RANDOM is often prefixed to a noun to make a
.QU name
out of it (by comparison to common names such as
.QU "J. Fred Muggs" ).
The most common uses are
.QU "J. Random Loser"
and
.QU "J. Random Nurd"
.QU "Should J. Random Loser be allowed to gun down other people?" ), (
but it can be used just as an elaborate version of RANDOM in any sense.
[See also the note at the end of the entry for HACK.]
.DF RANDOMNESS
n. An unexplainable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.  Also, a hack or
crock which depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or
rather, the combination upon which the crock depends).
\*QThis hack can output characters 40-57 by
putting the character in the accumulator field of an XCT and
then extracting 6 bits \*(em the low two bits of the XCT opcode
are the right thing.\*U
.QU "What randomness!"
.DF RAPE
v. To (metaphorically) screw someone or something, violently.
Usage: often used in describing file-system damage.  \*QSo-and-so was
running a program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping
the master directory.\*U
.DF RAVE
(WPI) v. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.  2. To
speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
little.  3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to
correct the difficulty.  4. To purposely annoy another person
verbally.  5. To evangelize.  See FLAME.  Also used to describe
a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting.
.DF "REAL USER"
n. 1. A commercial user.  One who is paying
.QU real
money for his computer usage.  2. A non-hacker.  Someone using the system for
an explicit purpose (research project, course, etc.).  See USER.
.DF "REAL WORLD, THE"
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: csdsicher@sunyabva