eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) (12/16/90)
---- Cut Here and unpack ---- #!/bin/sh # This is a shell archive (shar 3.10) # made 12/16/1990 02:59 UTC by eric@snark.thyrsus.com # Source directory /usr2/eric/jargon # # existing files WILL be overwritten # # This shar contains: # length mode name # ------ ---------- ------------------------------------------ # 54762 -rw-r--r-- jsplit.ae # touch 2>&1 | fgrep '[-amc]' > /tmp/s3_touch$$ if [ -s /tmp/s3_touch$$ ] then TOUCH=can else TOUCH=cannot fi rm -f /tmp/s3_touch$$ # ============= jsplit.ae ============== sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > jsplit.ae && X cryptic message "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" appears, X indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things X out from the numbers. Generally a GURU event must be followed by a X VULCAN NERVE PINCH. X X {= H =} X XH INFIX [from SF fandom] A method of "marking" common words in the X linguist's sense, i.e. calling attention to the fact that they are X being used in a nonstandard, ironic or humorous way. Orig. in the X fannish catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod" from decades X ago. H-infix marking of "Ghod" and other words spread into the X Sixties counterculture via underground comix, and into early X hackerdom either from the counterculture or SF fandom (all three X overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has X become an expected feature of benchmark names, i.e. Whetstone, X Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc; this is prob. patterning on the X original Whetstone name but influenced by the X fannish/counterculture H infix. X XHA HA ONLY SERIOUS [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, "Ha Ha X Only Kidding"] A phrase that aptly captures the flavor of much X hacker discourse (often seen abbreviated as HHOS). Applied X especially to parodies, absurdities and ironic jokes that are both X intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of X truth, or truths which are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. X The jargon file contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in X both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is X often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to X take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an X outsider or one in LARVAL STAGE. For further enlightenment on this X subject, consult any Zen master. See also HUMOR, HACKER and AI X KOANS. X XHACK 1. n. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed, but X not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very X time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed. X 3. The result of a hack (sense 1 or 2); 3. NEAT HACK: A clever X technique. Also, a brilliant practical joke, where neatness is X correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. X Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display switch circa 1961. 4. X REAL HACK: A crock (occasionally affectionate). vt. 5. With X "together", to throw something together so it will work. 6. To X bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this heat!" 7. To X work on something (typically a program). In specific sense: "What X are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In general sense: "What X do you do around here?" "I hack TECO." (The former is X time-immediate, the latter time-extended.) More generally, "I X hack x" is roughly equivalent to "x is my major interest (or X project)". "I hack solid-state physics." 8. To pull a prank X on. See definition 3 and HACKER (def #6). 9. v.i. To waste time X (as opposed to TOOL). "Watcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." X 10. HACK UP (ON): To hack, but generally implies that the result is X meanings 1-2. 11. [UNIX] A dungeon game similar to ROGUE (q.v.) X but more elaborate, distributed in C source over USENET and very X popular at UNIX sites and on PC-class machines. Recent versions X are called `nethack'. HAPPY HACKING: A farewell. HOW'S HACKING?: X A friendly greeting among hackers. HACK HACK: A somewhat pointless X but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell. For more X on the meaning of HACK, see Appendix A. X XHACK ATTACK n. Nearly synonymous with HACKING RUN (q.v.) though the X latter implies an all-nighter more strongly. X XHACK VALUE n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending X effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the X accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP has features for X reading and printing roman numerals, which was installed purely for X hack value. As a musician once said of jazz, if you don't X understand hack value there is no way it can be explained. X XHACKER [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A X person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and X how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who X prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs X enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just X theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating X HACK VALUE (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. X Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a X particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on X it; example: "A UNIX hacker". (Definitions 1 to 5 are X correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert of X any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. X (deprecated) A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to X discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", X "network hacker". See CRACKER. X XHACK MODE n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More X specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem which X may be achieved when one is hacking. Ability to enter such X concentration at will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is X one of the most important skills learned during LARVAL STAGE. X Sometimes amplified as "deep hack mode". Being yanked out of hack X mode (see PRIORITY INTERRUPT) may be experienced as an almost X physical shock, and the sensation of being in it is more than a X little habituating. The intensity of this experience is probably X by itself sufficient explanation for the existence of hackers, and X explains why many resist being promoted out of positions where they X can do code. X XHACKING RUN [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A hack X session extended long outside `normal' working times, especially X one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to CHANGE PHASE THE HARD X WAY (see PHASE). X XHACKISH /hak'ish/ adj. (also HACKISHNESS n.) 1. Being or involving a X hack. 2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. See X also TRUE-HACKER. It is better to be described as hackish by others X than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves X somewhat of an elite, though one to which new members are gladly X welcome. It is a meritocracy based on ability. There is a certain X self-satisfaction in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you X claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labelled BOGUS). X XHACKISHNESS, HACKITUDE n. The quality of being or involving a hack. X (The word HACKITUDE is considered silly; the standard term is X HACKISHNESS.) X XHAIR n. The complications which make something hairy. "Decoding TECO X commands requires a certain amount of hair." Often seen in the X phrase INFINITE HAIR, which connotes extreme complexity. Also in X HAIRIFEROUS (tending to promote hair growth): "GNU elisp X encourages lusers to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's X pretty hairiferous all right." (or just: "Hair squared!") X XHAIRY adj. 1. Overly complicated. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 2. X Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, X high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. X Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who X says there's nothing to worry about." X XHAKMEM /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary X collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed X by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really X is "HAKMEM", which is an acronym of sorts for "hacks memo".) X Some of them are very useful techniques or powerful theorems, but X most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. A X sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased: X X Item 41 (Gene Salamin) There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less X than 2 to the 18th power. X X Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel) The most *probable* suit distribution in X bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which is the most X *evenly* distributed. This is because the world likes to have X unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be X in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest X disordered energy. X X Problem 81 (Rich Schroeppel) Count the magic squares of order 5 X (that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 X such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same X number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that X differ only by rotation and reflection. X X Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson) 21963283741 is the only X number such that if you represent it on the PDP-10 as both an X integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two X representations are identical. X XHAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and X technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor. X XHAND-HACKING n. 1. The practice of translating HOT SPOTS from an HLL X into custom hand-optimized assembler, as opposed to trying to X coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and X the practice are becoming uncommon. See TUNE, BUM; syn. with v. X CRUFT. 2. More generally, manual construction or patching of data X sets that would normally be ground out by a translation utility and X interpreted by another program, and aren't really designed to be X read or modified by humans. X XHANDWAVE 1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; X to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty X logic. If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or X "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", you can be X sure he is about to handwave. The theory behind this term is that X if you wave your hands at the right moment, the listener may be X sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you have said is X BOGUS. Alternatively, if a listener does object, you might try to X dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand. 2. n. The act of X handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!" The use of this word is X often accompanied by gestures: both hands up, palms forward, X swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the elbows X and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); X alternatively, holding the forearms still while rotating the hands X at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures alone X can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageous X unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this X way, as an accusation more eloquent than words could express that X his logic is faulty X XHANG v. 1. To wait for some event to occur; to hang around until X something happens. "The program displays a menu and then hangs X until you type a character." 2. More commonly, to wait for an X event that will never occur. "The system is hanging because it X can't read from the crashed drive". See WEDGED. X XHANLON'S RAZOR n. A "murphyism" parallel to Occam's Razor that reads X "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained X by stupidity". The derivation of the common title Hanlon's Razor X is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed to William James. X Quoted here because it seems to be a particular favorite of X hackers, often showing up in FORTUNE COOKIE files and the login X banners of BBS systems and commercial networks. This probably X reflects the hacker's daily experience of environments created by X the well-intentioned but shortsighted. X XHARDWARILY /hard-weir'i-lee/ adv. In a way pertaining to hardware. X "The system is hardwarily unreliable." The adjective X "hardwary" is *not* used. See SOFTWARILY. X XHAS THE X NATURE [seems to derive from Zen Buddhist koans of the form X "Does an X have the Buddha-nature?"] adj. Common hacker X construction for `is an X', used for humorous emphasis. "Anyone X who can't even use a program with on-screen help embedded in it X truly has the LOSER nature!" X XHASH COLLISION [from the technical usage] n. When used of people, X signifies a confusion in associative memory or imagination, X especially a persistent one (see THINKO). True story: one of us X (ESR) was once on the phone with a friend about to move out to X Berkeley. When asked what he expected Berkeley to be like, the X friend replied "Well, I have this mental picture of naked women X throwing Molotov cocktails, but I think that's just a collision in X my hash tables." The variant "hash clash" is also reported. X XHCF /aych-see-eff/ n. Mnemonic for "Halt and Catch Fire", any of X several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with X destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on X several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. X The MC6800 microprocessor was the first for which the HCF opcode X became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to X toggle a subset of the bus lines as rapidly as it can; in some X configurations this can actually cause lines to burn up. X XHEARTBEAT n. 1. The master clock signal propagated across an Ethernet; X by extension, the time-baseline synchronization signal at the X physical level of any network. 2. The `natural' oscillation X frequency of a computer's clock crystal, before frequency division X down to the machine's CLOCK RATE. X XHEAVY METAL [Cambridge] n. Syn. with BIG IRON (q.v). X XHEAVY WIZARDRY n. Code or designs which trade on a particularly X intimate knowledge or experience of a particular operating system X or language or complex application interface. Distinguished from X DEEP MAGIC, which trades more on arcane *theoretical* knowledge. X Writing device drivers is heavy wizardry; so is interfacing to X X (sense #2) without a toolkit. Esp. found in comments of the form X "Heavy wizardry begins here...". X XHEISENBUG /hie'sen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle X quantum physics] n. A bug which disappears or alters its behavior X when one attempts to probe or isolate it. Antonym of BOHR BUG X (q.v.). In C, 9 out of 10 heisenbugs result from either FANDANGO ON X CORE phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc X ARENA) or errors which SMASH THE STACK. X XHELEN KELLER MODE n. State of a hardware or software system which is X deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no X output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion X into DEEP SPACE. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success X at learning speech was triumphant.) See also GO FLATLINE. X XHELLO SAILOR! interj. Occasional West Coast equivalent of `Hello, X world!'; seems to have originated at SAIL, later associated with X the game ZORK. See HELLO WORLD. X XHELLO WALL! excl. See WALL. X XHELLO WORLD! interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the X C/UNIX universe. In folklore, the first program a C coder is X supposed to write in a new environment is one that just prints X "Hello, world!" to standard output. Environments that X generate an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or X which require a HAIRY compiler-linker invocation to generate it are X considered to LOSE. 2. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an X entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello, X world! Is the VAX back up yet?" X XHIGH BIT n. 1. See META BIT. Also meaning most significant part of X something other than a data byte, e.g. "Spare me the whole saga, X just give me the high bit." X XHIGH MOBY /hie mohb'ee/ n. The high half of a stock PDP-10's address X space; the other half was of course the LOW MOBY. This usage has X been generalized in a way that has outlasted the PDP-10; for X example, at the 1990 Washington D.C Area Science Fiction Conclave X (DISCLAVE) when a miscommunication resulted in two separate @-SIGN X PARTIES being held in commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last X ITS machines, the one on the upper floor was dubbed the HIGH MOBY X and the other the LOW MOBY. All parties involved grokked this X instantly. See MOBY in main text and Appendix B. X XHIRSUTE adj. Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for HAIRY. X XHLL /aych-el-el/ n. [High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] X Found primarily in email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the X variants `VHLL' and `MLL' are found. VHLL = `Very-High-Level X Language' and is used to describe a BONDAGE-AND-DISCIPLINE LANGUAGE X that the speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often X called VHLLs. `MLL' = `Medium-Level Language' and is sometimes used X half-jokingly to describe C, alluding to its `structured-assembler' X image. See also LANGUAGES OF CHOICE. X XHOG n.,v. Favored term to describe programs or hardware which seem to X eat far more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those X which noticeably degrade general timesharing response. *Not* used X of programs which are simply extremely large or complex or which X are merely painfully slow themselves (see PIG, RUN LIKE A). More X often than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g. "memory hog", X "core hog", "hog the processor", "hog the disk". Example: "A X controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the X bus hog timer expires." X XHOLY WARS [from USENET, but may predate it] n. FLAME WARS over X RELIGIOUS ISSUES. The 1980 paper by Danny Cohen that popularized X the terms BIG-ENDIAN and LITTLE-ENDIAN in connection with the X LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a X Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included: EMACS vs. X VI, <my personal computer> vs. <everyone else's personal computer>, X UNIX vs. VMS, BSD UNIX vs. AT&T UNIX, C vs. Pascal, etc. etc. etc. X The characteristic that distinguishes HOLY WARS from normal X technical disputes is that (regardless of the technical merits of X the case on either side) most participants spend their time trying X to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as X objective technical evaluations. X XHOOK n. An extraneous piece of software or hardware included in order X to simplify later additions or changes by a user. For instance, a X program might execute a location that is normally a JFCL, but by X changing the JFCL to a PUSHJ one can insert a debugging routine at X that point. As another example, a simple program that prints X numbers might always print them in base ten, but a more flexible X version would let a variable determine what base to use; setting X the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in base X five. The variable is a simple hook. An even more flexible X program might examine the variable, and treat a value of 16 or less X as the base to use, but treat any other number as the address of a X user-supplied routine for printing a number. This is a very X powerful hook; one can then write a routine to print numbers as X roman numerals, say, or as Hebrew characters, and plug it into the X program through the hook. Often the difference between a good X program and a superb one is that the latter has useful hooks in X judiciously chosen places. Both may do the original job about X equally well, but the one with the hooks is much more flexible for X future expansion of capabilities. X XHOME BOX n. A hacker's personal machine, especially one he owns. X "Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2BSD, so there!" X XHOSE 1. v. To make non-functional or greatly degraded in performance, X as in "That big ray-tracing program really hoses the system." See X HOSED. 2. n. A narrow channel through which data flows under X pressure. Generally denotes data paths in a system that represent X performance bottlenecks. 3. Cabling, especially thick Ethernet X cable. This is sometimes called "bit hose" or "hosery" (play X on "hosiery"). See also WASHING MACHINES. X XHOSED adj. Same as DOWN. Used primarily by UNIX hackers. Humorous: X also implies a condition thought to be relatively easy to reverse. X Probably a back-formation from the Canadian slang `hoser' X popularized by the Bob and Doug skits on SCTV. See HOSE. X X There is a story that a Cray which had been experiencing periodic X difficulties once CRASHED, and it was announced to have been HOSED. X It was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnection of X some coolant hoses. The problem was connected, and users were then X assured that everything was OK because the system had been rehosed. X [This is an excellent example of hackish wordplay --- ESR]. X XHOT SPOT n. 1. [primarily C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] n. In most X programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time; X if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one X would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level X noise. Such spikes are called "hot spots" and are good candidates X for micro-optimization or HAND-HACKING. The term is especially used X of tight loops and recursions in the code's central algorithm, as X opposed to (say) initial set-up costs or large but infrequent I/O X operations. See TUNE, BUM, HAND-HACKING. 2. The active location X of a cursor on a bit-map display. "Put the mouse's hot spot on X the `ON' widget and click the left button." X XHOUSE WIZARD [prob. from ad-agency lingo, cf. `house freak'] n. A lone X hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D or systems position at X a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have X influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and X still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of UNIX experts. The X term HOUSE GURU is equivalent. X XHP-SUX /aych pee suhx/ n. Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, X Hewlett-Packard's UNIX port. Features some truly unique bogosities X in the filesystem internals and elsewhere that occasionally create X portability problems. HP-UX is often referred to as "hockey-pux" X inside HP, and one outside correspondent claims that the proper X pronunciation is /aych-pee ukkkhhhh/ as though one were spitting. X See also TELERAT, SUN-STOOLS, TERMINAK. X XHUMMA excl. A filler word used on various "chat" and "talk" X programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important X to say something. The word apparently originated (at least with X this definition) on the MECC Timeshare System (MTS) a now-defunct X educational time-sharing system running in Michigan during the X 1970s and early '80s, but was later sighted on early UNIX systems. X XHUMONGOUS /hyoo-mohng'gus/ alt. HUMUNGOUS (hyoo-muhng'gus) See HUNGUS. X XHUMOR, HACKER n. A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor X found among hackers, having the following marked characteristics: X X 1) Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor X having to do with confusion of metalevels (see META). One way to X make a hacker laugh: hold an index card in front of him/her with X "THIS IS GREEN" written on it in bold red ink, or vice-versa X (note, however, that this is only funny the first time). X X 2) Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs such X as standards documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL) and X even entire scientific theories (see QUANTUM BOGODYNAMICS, X COMPUTRON). X X 3) Jokes which involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, X ludicrous or just grossly counter-intuitive premises. X X 4) Fascination with puns and wordplay. X X 5) A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive X currents of intelligence in it, for example: old Warner Brothers X and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, Charlie Chaplin movies, the B-52s, X and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor which combines this trait X with elements of high camp and slapstick is especially favored. X X 6) References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas X in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See HAS THE X NATURE, X DISCORDIANISM, ZEN, HA HA ONLY SERIOUS, AI KOANS. X X See also FILK, COMPUTER; RETROCOMPUTING; and Appendix C. X If you have an itchy feeling that all six of these traits are X really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk X about exactly, you are a) correct and b) responding like a hacker. X These traits are also recognizable (though in a less marked form) X throughout SCIENCE-FICTION FANDOM. X XHUNG [from "hung up"] adj. Equivalent to WEDGED, q.v. but more X common at UNIX/C sites. Not generally used of people. Syn. with X LOCKED UP, WEDGED; compare HOSED. X XHUNGUS /hung'ghis/ [perhaps related to current slang "humongous"; X which one came first (if either) is unclear] adj. Large, unwieldy, X usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This X is a hungus set of modifications." X XHYPERSPACE (hie'per-spays) n. A memory location within a virtual X memory machine that is many, many megabytes (or gigabytes) away X from where the program counter should be pointing, usually X inaccessible because it is not even mapped in. "Another core X dump... looks like the program jumped off to hyperspace somehow." X X {= I =} X XIBM /ie bee em/ Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually; X Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel X Movement; and a near-INFINITE number of even less complimentary X expansions, including "International Business Machines". See TLA. X These abbreviations illustrate the considerable antipathy most X hackers have long felt for the "industry leader" (see FEAR AND X LOATHING). What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC X level isn't so much that they're underpowered and overpriced X (though that counts against them) but that the designs are X incredibly archaic, crufty and ELEPHANTINE and you can't *fix* them X --- source code is locked up tight and programming tools are X expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once you've found X them. With the release of the UNIX-based RIOS family this may have X begun to change --- but then, we thought that when the PC-RT came X out, too. In the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this X lexicon now includes a number of entries marked `IBM'; these derive X from a rampantly unofficial jargon list circulated among IBM's own X beleaguered hacker underground. X XICE [from William Gibson's cyberpunk SF: notionally, "Intrusion X Countermeasure Electronics"] Security software (in Gibson's X original, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to X literally kill the intruder). Also, ICEBREAKER: a program designed X for cracking security on a system. Neither term is in serious use X yet as of 1990, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive and X they may be in the near future. X XILL-BEHAVED adj. 1. [numerical analysis] Said of an algorithm or X computational method that tends to blow up due to accumulated X roundoff error or poor convergence properties. 2. Software which X bypasses the defined OS interfaces to do things (like screen, X keyboard and disk I/O) itself, often in a way that depends on the X hardware of the machine it is running on or which is nonportable or X incompatible with other pieces of software. In the IBM PC/MS-DOS X world, there is a folk theorem (nearly true) to the effect that X (due to gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the OS X interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved. Oppose X WELL-BEHAVED, compare PC-ISM. See MESS-DOS. X XIMHO [from SF fandom via USENET] Written acronym for In My Humble X Opinion. Example: "IMHO, mixed-case C names should be avoided, as X mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect X errors --- and they look too Pascalish anyhow." X XINCANTATION n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that must X be muttered at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of X passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of X tricks that are so poorly documented they must be learned from a X WIZARD. E.g. "This compiler normally locates initialized data in X the data segment, but if you mutter the right incantation they will X be forced into text space". See MUTTER. X XINFINITE adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used X very loosely as in: "This program produces infinite garbage." X "He is an infinite loser." This is an abuse of the word's X mathematical meaning. X XINFINITY n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a X particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, X whatever). 2. MINUS INFINITY The smallest such value. Note that X this is different from TIME T EQUALS MINUS INFINITY, which is X closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity. X XINFANT MORTALITY n. It is common lore among hackers that the chances X of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's X time since power-up (that is until the relatively distant time at X which mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in X components has accumulated enough for the machine to start going X senile). Up to half of all chip-and-wire failures happen within a X new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to X as "infant mortality" problems (or, occasionally, as "sudden X infant death syndrome"). X XINTERCAL /in'tr-kal/ [said by the authors to stand for "Compiler X Language With No Pronounceable Acronym"] n. A computer language X designed by Don Woods and James Lyon in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely X different from all other computer languages in all ways but one; it X is purely a written language, being totally unspeakable. An X excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of X the language clear. In most languages, if you wanted the variable X A to have the value 65536, you would write something like X X LET A = 65536; X X The INTERCAL Reference Manual, however, explains that "It is a X well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose work is X incomprehensible is held in high esteem. For example, if one were X to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536 in a X 32-bit INTERCAL variable is: X X DO :1 <- #0$#256 X X any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this X is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look X foolish in front of his boss, who would of course happened to turn X up, as bosses are wont to do. The effect would be no less X devastating for the programmer having been correct." INTERCAL has X many other peculiar features designed to make it even more X unspeakable. The Woods/Lyons implementation was actually used by X many (well, at least several) people at Princeton. The language X has been recently re-implemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently X enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an X alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ... X appreciation of the language on USENET. X XINTERESTING adj. In hacker parlance, this word is not simply X synonymous with "intriguing", but has strong connotations of X "annoying", or "difficult", or both. Hackers relish a X challenge. Oppose UNININTERESTING. X XINTERNET ADDRESS n. An `absolute' network address of the form X foo@bar.baz, where foo is a user name, bar is a SITENAME (q.v.), X and baz is a `domain' name, possibly including periods itself. X Contrasts with BANG PATH, q.v.; see also NETWORK, THE and NETWORK X ADDRESS. All Internet machines and most UUCP sites can now resolve X these addresses, thanks to a large amount of behind-the-scenes X magic and PD software written since 1980 or so. See also BANG X PATH. X XINTERRUPT interj. 1. On a computer, an event which interrupts normal X processing and temporarily diverts flow-of-control through an X "interrupt handler" routine. See also TRAP. 2. A request for X attention from a hacker. Often explicitly spoken. "Interrupt --- X have you seen Joe recently?". See PRIORITY INTERRUPT. X XINTERRUPTS LOCKED OUT adj. When someone is ignoring you. In a X restaurant, after several fruitless attempts to get the waitress's X attention, a hacker might well observe that "She must have X interrupts locked out." Variations of this abound; "to have one's X interrupt mask bit set" is also heard. X XIRON n. Hardware, especially older/larger hardware of mainframe class X with big metal cabinets housing relatively low-density electronics X (but also used of modern supercomputers). Often in the phrase BIG X IRON. Oppose SILICON. See also DINOSAUR. X XIRON BOX [UNIX/Internet] n. A special environment set up to trap a X CRACKER logging in over remote or network connections long enough X so he can be traced. May include a specially-gimmicked SHELL X restricting the hacker's movements in unobvious ways, and `bait' X files designed to keep him interested and logged on. See also BACK X DOOR, FIREWALL, VENUS FLYTRAP. X XIRONMONGER [IBM] n. A hardware specialist. Derogatory. Compare X SANDBENDER, POLYGON PUSHER. X XITS /ie-tee-ess/ n. Incompatible Time-Sharing System, an influential X but highly idiosyncratic operating system written for PDP-10s at X MIT and long used at the MIT AI lab; much AI-hacker slang derives X from ITS folklore. After about 1982 most actual work was shifted X to newer machines, with the remaining ITS boxes run essentially as X a hobby and service to the hacker community. The shutdown of the X lab's last ITS machine in May 1990 marked the end of an era and X sent old-time hackers into mourning nationwide. The Royal X Institute of Technology in Sweden is maintaing one `live' ITS site X at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still X on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS X in longest continuous use. See Appendix B. X XIWBNI [acronym] It Would Be Nice If. No pronunciation, as this is X never spoken, only written. Compare WIBNI. X XIYFEG [USENET] Abbreviation for "Insert Your Favourite Ethnic X Group". Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes in email to X avoid offending anyone. X X {= J =} X XJ. RANDOM /jay rand'm/ n. [generalized from J. RANDOM HACKER, q.v.] X Arbitrary; ordinary; any one; "any old". "Would you let J. X Random Loser marry your daughter?". See RANDOM. X XJ. RANDOM HACKER /jay rand'm hak'r/ n. A mythical figure like the X Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. See RANDOM, LITTLE X SUZIE COBOL. X XJAGGIES /jag'eez/ n. The `stairstep' effect observable when an edge X (esp. a linear edge of slope far from a multiple of 45 degrees) is X rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display). X XJIFFY n. 1. The width of one tick of the system clock on the computer X (see TICK). Often 1 AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and X 1/50 elsewhere) but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. 2. X Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond X WALL TIME interval. "The swapper runs every six jiffies" means X that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for X every six ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. 3. X Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a X jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit X contrary to the more widespread use of the word. X XJOCK n. 1. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute X force programs. See BRUTE FORCE. 2. When modified by another noun, X describes a specialist in some particular computing area. The X compounds `compiler jock' and `systems jock' seem to be the best X established examples of this. X XJOE CODE /joh kohd/ [said to commemmorate a notoriously bad coder X named Joe at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory] n. Badly written, X possibly buggy source code. "Perl may be a handy program, but if X you look at the source, it's complete joe code." Correspondents X wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a particular Joe and X observed that usage has drifted slightly; they described his code X as "overly TENSE and unmaintainable". X X {= K =} X XKAHUNA /k@-hoo'nuh/ [IBM, from the Hawaiian title for a shaman] n. X Synonym for WIZARD, GURU (q.v.). X XKEN /ken/ n. A flaming user. This noun was in use by the Software X Support group at Symbolics because the two greatest flamers in the X user community were both named Ken. X XKGBVAX /kay-jee-bee-vaks/ n. See KREMVAX X XKILL FILE [USENET] n. Per-user file used by some USENET reading X programs to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) X articles which match some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) X patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Thus to "add X a person (or subject) to one's kill file" is to arrange for that X person to be ignored by your newsreader in future. By extension, X it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in X other media. X XKILLER MICRO [popularized by Eugene Brooks] n. A microprocessor-based X machine that infringes on mini, mainframe or supercomputer X performance turf. Often heard in "No one will survive the attack X of the killer micros!", the battle cry of the downsizers. Used X esp. of RISC architectures. X XKILLER POKE n. A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via X insertion of invalid values in a memory-mapped control register; X used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on MMU-less BITTY X BOXES like the IBM PC and Commodore PET that can overload and trash X analog electronics in the monitor. See also HCF. X XKLUGE /klooj/ alt. KLUDGE /kluhj/ [from the German "klug", clever] X (`klooj' is the original pronunciation, more common in the US; X `kluhj' is reported more common in England). n. 1. A Rube Goldberg X (or Heath Robinson) device in hardware or software. (A long-ago X Datamation article said: "An ill-assorted collection of poorly X matching parts, forming a distressing whole.") 2. n. A clever X programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an X expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often X involves AD-HOCKERY and verges on being a CROCK. 3. Something X that works for the wrong reason. 4. v. To insert a kluge into a X program. "I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, X but there's probably a better way." Also KLUGE UP. 5. KLUGE X AROUND: To avoid by inserting a kluge. 6. [WPI] A feature which X is implemented in a RUDE manner. X XKNIGHTS OF THE LAMBDA CALCULUS n. A semi-mythical organization of X wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers (the name refers to a mathematical X formalism invented by Alonzo Church with which LISP is intimately X connected). There is no enrollment list and the criteria for X induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known to X give out buttons and, in general, the *members* know who they X are... X XKREMVAX /krem-vaks/ [From the then large number of USENET VAXEN with X names of the form "foovax"] n. A fictitious USENET site at the X Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984, in a posting ostensibly from X Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually X forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other sites X mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and KGBVAX, which now seems to X be the one by which it is remembered. This was probably the X funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on USENET X (which has negligible security against them), because the notion X that USENET might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally X absurd at the time. But in fact, the first genuine site in Moscow X (demos.su) joined USENET only 6 years later --- and some readers X needed convincing that it wasn't a hoax. X X [Ed. note: Vadim Antonov (avg), the major poster from demos.su up X to at least the end of 1990, was well acquainted with the kremvax X hoax and referred to it in his own postings --- even to the extent X of twitting a number of credulous netters on alt.folklore.computers X by blandly "admitting" that *he* was a hoax! Mr. Antonov, X BTW, also contributed the Russian-language material for this File X --- ESR] X X {= L =} X XLACE CARD n. obs. A Hollerith card with all holes punched (also called X a WHOOPEE CARD). Card readers jammed when they got to one of X these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to X avoid buckling inside the mechanism. When some practical joker fed X a LACE CARD through the reader you needed to clear the jam with a X card knife --- which you use on the joker first. X XLANGUAGE LAWYER n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software X engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the X numerous syntactic and semantic restrictions (both useful and X esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. X Compare WIZARD. X XLANGUAGES OF CHOICE n. C or LISP. Essentially all hackers know one of X these and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog X are popular in small but influential communities. Assembler used X to be a language of choice, but is generally no longer considered X interesting or appropriate for anything but compiler code X generation and a few time-critical uses in systems programs. X XLARVAL STAGE n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on X coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common X symptoms include: the perpetration of more than one 36-hour HACKING X RUN in a given week, neglect of all other activities including X usual basics like food and sex, and a chronic case of advanced X bleary-eye. Can last from six months to two years, with the X apparent median being around eighteen months. A few so afflicted X never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be X necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely X competent) programmers. A less protracted and intense version of X larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when X learning a new OS or programming language. X XLASE /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer. "OK, X let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls X did the right things." Compare DIABLO in Appendix B. X XLASER CHICKEN n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing X chicken, peanuts, and bell peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. A X few hackers call it "laser chiicken" for two reasons; it can ZAP X you just like a laser, and the pepper-oil sauce has a red color X reminiscent of a laser beam. X XLEAK n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs X that occur when resources are not freed properly after operations X on them are finished, leading to eventual exhaustion as new X allocation requests come in. MEMORY LEAK and FD LEAK have their X own entries; one might also refer, say, to a "window handle leak" X in a window system. X XLEAKY HEAP [Cambridge] n. Syn. MEMORY LEAK (q.v.). X XLERP /lerp/ v.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a X verb or noun for the operation. Ex. Bresenham's algorithm lerps X incrementally between the two endpoints of the line. X XLEXER /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for "lexical analyzer", X the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language. "Some C X lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like =-". X XLIFE n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway, X and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific X American, October 1970). Many hackers pass through a stage of X fascination with it, and hackers at various places contributed X heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably X Bill Gosper at MIT; see GOSPERISM). When a hacker mentions X "life", he is much more likely to mean this game than the X magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the human state of existence. X 2. The opposite of USENET. As in "Get a life!". X XLIKE KICKING DEAD WHALES DOWN THE BEACH adj. A slow and disgusting X process. First popularized by a famous quote about the difficulty X of getting work done under one of IBM's mainframe OSs. "Well, you X *could* write a C compiler in COBOL, but it would be like kicking X dead whales down the beach." X XLINE EATER, THE [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the X netnews software used to cause the first parts of articles to be X discarded under some circumstances. This bug was quickly X personified as a mythical creature called "the line eater", and X postings often included a dummy line of "line eater food". The X practice of "sacrificing to the line eater" continued for some X time after the bug had been NAILED TO THE WALL, and is still X humorously referred to. The bug itself is still (in mid-1990) X occasionally reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews X gateways. 2. The mythical NSA trawling program sometimes assumed X to be reading USENET for the U.S. Government's spooks. Some X netters put loaded phrases like `Uzi' `nuclear materials' X `Palestine' `cocaine' and `assassination' in their SIG BLOCKs in an X attempt to confuse and overload the creature. X XLINE STARVE [MIT] 1. v. To feed the paper through the terminal the X wrong way by one line (most terminals can't do this!). On a X display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the X screen. Example: "To print X squared, you just output X, line X starve, 2, line feed." (The line starve causes the 2 to appear on X the line above the X, and the line feed gets back to the original X line.) 2. n. A "character" (or character sequence) that causes a X terminal to perform this action. Unlike "line feed", "line X starve" is *not* standard ASCII terminology. Even among hackers X it is considered a bit silly. 3. [proposed] A sequence like \c X (used in System V echo, as well as nroff/troff) which suppresses a X line feed that would normally implicitly be emitted. X XLINK FARM [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to files X in another, master directory tree of files. Link farms save space X when maintaining several nearly identical copies of the same source X tree, e.g. when the only difference is architecture-dependent X object files. Example use: `Let's freeze the source and then X rebuild the FROBOZZ-3 and FROBOZZ-4 link farms.' Link farms may X also be used to get around restrictions on the number of -I X arguments on older C preprocessors. X XLINT [from UNIX's lint(1), named perhaps for the bits of fluff it X picks from programs] v. To examine a program closely for style, X language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via X use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the UNIX utility X lint(1) is used. This term used to be restricted to use of lint(1) X itself but (judging by references on USENET) has become a shorthand X for `desk-check' at some non-UNIX shops, even in some languages X other than C. See also DELINT. X XLION FOOD [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (by extension, X administrative drones in general). From an old joke about two lions X who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase their chances but X agreed to meet after two months. When they do meet, one is skinny X and the other overweight. The thin one says "How did you manage? X I ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase X me --- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to X eating mice, insects, even grass." The fat one replies "Well, *I* X hid near an IBM office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even X noticed!" X XLISP n. The name of AI's mother tongue, a language based on the ideas X of 1) variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types, X and 2) the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Invented X by John McCarthy at Stanford in the late 1950s, it is actually X older than any other HLL still in use except FORTRAN. Accordingly, X it has undergone considerable adaptive radiation over the years; X modern variants (of which Scheme is perhaps the most successful) X are quite different in detail from the original LISP 1.5 at X Stanford. The hands-down favorite of hackers until the early X 1980s, LISP now shares the throne with C (q.v.). See LANGUAGES OF X CHOICE. X XLITTLE-ENDIAN adj. Describes a computer architecture in which, within X a given 16- or 32-bit word, lower byte addresses have lower X significance (the word is stored `little-end-first'). The PDP-11 X and VAX families of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot X of communications and networking hardware are little-endian. See X BIG-ENDIAN, MIDDLE-ENDIAN. X XLIVE FREE OR DIE! imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire. 2. A X slogan associated with UNIX in the romantic days when UNIX X aficionados saw themselves as a tiny, beleaguered underground X tilting against the windmills of industry. Armando Stettner, one of X the early UNIX developers, used to give out fake license plates X bearing this motto under a large UNIX, all in New Hampshire colors X of green and white. These are now valued collector's items. X XLIVELOCK n. A situation in which some critical stage of a task is X unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work X for it to do after they've been serviced but before it can clear. X Differs from DEADLOCK in that the process is not blocked or waiting X for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and X accomplishes nothing. X XLIVEWARE n. Synonym for WETWARE (q.v.) Less common. X XLOCKED UP adj. Syn. for HUNG, WEDGED. X XLOGIC BOMB n. Code surreptitiously inserted in an application or OS X which causes it to perform some destructive or X security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are X met. Compare BACK DOOR. X XLOGICAL [from the technical term "logical device", wherein a X physical device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj. X Understood to have a meaning not necessarily corresponding to X reality. E.g., if a person who has long held a certain post (e.g., X Les Earnest at SAIL) left and was replaced, the replacement would X for a while be known as the "logical Les Earnest". Compare X VIRTUAL, oppose PHYSICAL. This use of LOGICAL is an extension from X its technical use in computer science. A program can be written to X do input or output using a "logical device"; when the program is X run, the user can specify which "physical" (actual) device to use X for that logical device. For example, a program might write all X its error messages to a logical device called ERROR; the user can X then specify whether logical device ERROR should be associated to X the terminal, a disk file, or the BIT BUCKET (to throw the error X messages away). Perhaps the word "logical" is used because even X though a thing isn't the actual object in question, you can reason X logically about the thing as if it were the actual object. X X At Stanford, "logical" compass directions denoted a coordinate X system in which "logical north" is toward San Francisco, X "logical west" is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical X north varies between physical (true) north near San Franscisco and X physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that X El Camino Real by definition always runs logical north-and-south.) X In giving directions, one might say, "To get to Rincon Tarasco X restaurant, get onto El Camino Bignum going logical north." Using X the word "logical" helps to prevent the recipient from worrying X about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in X front of him. The concept is perpetuated by North American X highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labelled X with logical rather than physical directions. A similar situation X exists at MIT. Route 128 (famous for the electronics industries X that have grown up along it) is a three-quarters circle surrounding X Boston at a radius of ten miles, terminating at the coastline at X each end. It would be most precise to describe the two directions X along this highway as being "clockwise" and "counterclockwise", X but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. X A hacker would describe these directions as "logical north" and X "logical south", to indicate that they are conventional X directions not corresponding to the usual convention for those X words. (If you went logical south along the entire length of route X 128, you would start out going northwest, curve around to the X south, and finish headed due east!) X XLORD HIGH FIXER [primarily British] n. The person in an organisation X who knows the most about some aspect of a system. See WIZARD. X XLOSE [from MIT jargon] v. 1. To fail. A program loses when it X encounters an exceptional condition or fails to work in the X expected manner. 2. To be exceptionally unaesthetic. 3. Of X people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to X ignorant). 4. DESERVES TO LOSE: v. Said of someone who willfully X does the wrong thing; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be X marginal. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of X one's losing actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use MESS-DOS X deserves to lose!" (ITS fans used to say this of UNIX; many still X do) See also SCREW, CHOMP, BAGBITER. LOSE LOSE --- a reply or X comment on a situation. 5. LOSE as a noun refers to something which X is losing, especially in the phrases "That's a lose!" or "What a X lose!". X XLOSE LOSE interj. A reply or comment on an undesirable situation. "I X accidentally deleted all my files!" "Lose lose." X XLOSER n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or X person. Someone who habitually loses (even winners can lose X occasionally). Someone who knows not and knows not that he knows X not. emphatic forms are "real loser", "total loser", and X "complete loser" (but not "moby loser", which would be a X contradiction in terms). See LUSER. X XLOSS n. Something (not a person) which loses; a situation in which X something is losing. Emphatic forms include "moby loss" "total X loss", "complete loss". WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection. X Compare LOSSAGE. X XLOSSAGE /los'@j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This is a X collective noun. "What a loss!" and "What lossage!" are nearly X synonymous remarks. The former is slightly more particular to the SHAR_EOF chmod 0644 jsplit.ae || echo "restore of jsplit.ae fails" if [ $TOUCH = can ] then touch -am 1215215290 jsplit.ae fi exit 0