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