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#======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000 =======#
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely
used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal
restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about
its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached.
Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File,
ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time.
(Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.2.0" or "The
on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000".)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over
the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to
maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors
of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions
and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to
cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent
format; and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically.
Current volunteer editors include:
Eric Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered
good form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a
published work or commercial product. We may have additional
information that would be helpful to you and can assist you in framing
your quote to reflect not only the letter of the File but its spirit as
well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer
editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise
labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this
public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited,
and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the
volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to
have a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to
purchase one of these. They often contain additional material not
found in on-line versions. The two `authorized' editions so far are
described in the Revision History section; there may be more in the
future.
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Introduction
**************
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is
included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;
what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for
fun, social communication, and technical debate.
The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths,
heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because
hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define
themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits,
it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional
culture less than 40 years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
their culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each other's
places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences.
Also as usual, _not_ knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately)
defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish
vocabulary) possibly even a {suit}. All human cultures use slang in
this threefold way -- as a tool of communication, and of inclusion, and
of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps
in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard
to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are
code for shared states of _consciousness_. There is a whole range of
altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level
hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any better
than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil'
compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang
encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple example,
take the distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and
the differing connotations attached to each. The distinction is not
only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature
of the generative processes in program design and asserts something
important about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker
and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this
kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very
conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to
be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we
are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of most of
us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most subcultures
of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious process.
Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a game to be
played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost
unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the
discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the
electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections,
well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless
culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this
process give us perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated view of
linguistic evolution in action.
Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions. For example, it has recently become
fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context'
communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context level
of their languages and art forms. It is usually claimed that
low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and
completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which
value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast,
high-context communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled,
multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value
subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. What then are we
to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely low-context
interaction with computers and exhibits primarily "low-context" values,
but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context slang style?
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a
compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the
surrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of
an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers
themselves for over 15 years. This one (like its ancestors) is
primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collect
background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would be
awkward to try to subsume under individual slang definitions.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that
the material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should
find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is
amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use
humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements about
what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of opposing
sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is
deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes;
rather we have attempted to ensure that _everyone's_ sacred cows get
gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue,
but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it
either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences
-- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefit
from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included
in {Appendix A}. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly
directed to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in {Appendix B}. Appendix
C, the {Bibliography}, lists some non-technical works which have either
influenced or described the hacker culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central
role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to
successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one
will do likewise.
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Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
=================================
Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the
term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations.
However, the ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File',
and hacker slang is traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the
jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish it from what
a _linguist_ would call hackers' jargon -- the formal vocabulary they
learn from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang and
the vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy,
and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider
technical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do
not speak or recognize hackish slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of
usage permit about the distinctions among three categories:
* `slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-technical
subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
* `jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language
peculiar to or predominantly found among hackers -- the subject of
this lexicon.
* `techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming,
computer science, electronics, and other fields connected to
hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of
this lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of
techspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake
of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises
from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more about this in
the {Jargon Construction} section below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicates
primarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical
dictionaries, or standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems,
languages, or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker
folklore that isn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey
critical historical background necessary to understand other entries to
which they are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargon
words are listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; where the
text does not specify that a straight technical sense is under
discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some
entries have a primary sense marked this way, with subsequent jargon
meanings explained in terms of it.
We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of
terms. The results are probably the least reliable information in the
lexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that
many hackish usages have been independently reinvented multiple times,
even among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It often seems
that the generative processes underlying hackish jargon formation have
an internal logic so powerful as to create substantial parallelism
across separate cultures and even in different languages! For another,
the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly that `first use'
is often impossible to pin down. And, finally, compendia like this one
alter what they observe by implicitly stamping cultural approval on
terms and widening their use.
Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related
oral history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to rest
quite a number of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due,
and illuminate the early history of many important hackerisms such as
{kluge}, {cruft}, and {foo}. We believe specialist lexicographers will
find many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revision History
==================
The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from
technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab
(SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities
including Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University
(CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File')
was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until
the plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was
named AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably
earlier ({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the
Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back
to the early 1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and
may be collectively considered `Version 1'.
In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on
the SAIL computer, {FTP}ed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that
it was hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his
directory as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.
The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning
under ITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and
Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody
thought of correcting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium
had already become widely known as the Jargon File.
Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter
and Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was
subsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic
resynchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard
Stallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and
ITS-related coinages.
In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of
the File published in Stewart Brand's "CoEvolution Quarterly" (issue
29, pages 26-35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele
(including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have
been the File's first paper publication.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass
market, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as "The
Hacker's Dictionary" (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The
other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin)
contributed to this revision, as did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff
Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is hereafter referred to as
`Steele-1983' and those six as the Steele-1983 coauthors.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively
stopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to
freeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production of
Steele-1983, but external conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to
become permanent.
The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding
cuts and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported
hardware and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT,
most AI work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time,
the commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's best
and brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip in
Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISP
machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a {TWENEX} system
rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved {ITS}.
The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although
the SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource
until 1991. Stanford became a major {TWENEX} site, at one point
operating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most
of the interesting software work was being done on the emerging BSD
Unix standard.
In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the
File were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project
at Digital Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already
dispersed, moved on to other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument
to what its authors thought was a dying tradition; no one involved
realized at the time just how wide its influence was to be.
By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that
had grown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies
obtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from
MIT and Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuing influence
on hacker language and humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer
and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File
(and related materials such as the {Some AI Koans} in Appendix A) came
to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-culture Matter of Britain
chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights of the Lab. The pace of
change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously -- but the Jargon
File, having passed from living document to icon, remained essentially
untouched for seven years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of
jargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after
careful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in
about 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material and a
very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.
This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim
is to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical
computing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More
than half of the entries now derive from {Usenet} and represent jargon
now current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts have
been made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PC
programmers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframe
world.
Eric S. Raymond <<esr@snark.thyrsus.com>> maintains the new File
with assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. <<gls@think.com>>; these are the
persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we
take pleasure in acknowledging the special contribution of the other
coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email all additions, corrections, and
correspondence relating to the Jargon File to <jargon@thyrsus.com>.
(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file _but are not
guaranteed to be correct_ later than the revision date on the first
line. _Don't_ email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces -- we
have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people.)
The 2.9.6 version became the main text of "The New Hacker's
Dictionary", by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6.
The 3.0.0 version was published in September 1993 as the second
edition of "The New Hacker's Dictionary", again from MIT Press (ISBN
0-262-18154-1).
If you want the book, you should be able to find it at any of the
major bookstore chains. Failing that, you can order by mail from
The MIT Press 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142
or order by phone at (800)-356-0343 or (617)-625-8481.
The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of the
Jargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue to
make it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust of the
hacker community.
Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line
revisions:
Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again after a
seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S.
Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and
microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time.
Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy for
book. This version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551 characters,
and 1702 entries.
Version 2.9.7, Oct 28 1991: first markup for hypertext browser.
This version had 19432 lines, 152132 words, 999595 characters, and 1750
entries.
Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the book,
including over fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions to
old ones. Packaged with version 1.1 of vh(1) hypertext reader. This
version had 19509 lines, 153108 words, 1006023 characters, and 1760
entries.
Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. This
version had 20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and 1821
entries.
Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material. This
version had 21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters, and 1891
entries.
Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material. This
version had 21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters, and 1922
entries.
Version 2.9.12, May 10 1993: a few new entries & changes, marginal
MUD/IRC slang and some borderline techspeak removed, all in preparation
for 2nd Edition of TNHD. This version had 22238 lines, 175114 words,
1152467 characters, and 1946 entries.
Version 3.0.0, Jul 27 1993: manuscript freeze for 2nd edition of
TNHD. This version had 22548 lines, 177520 words, 1169372 characters,
and 1961 entries.
Version 3.1.0, Oct 15 1994: interim release to test WWW conversion.
This version had 23197 lines, 181001 words, 1193818 characters, and
1990 entries.
Version 3.2.0, Mar 15 1995: Spring 1995 update. This version had
23822 lines, 185961 words, 1226358 characters, and 2031 entries.
Version 3.3.0, Jan 20 1996: Winter 1996 update. This version had
24055 lines, 187957 words, 1239604 characters, and 2045 entries.
Version 3.3.1, Jan 25 1996: Copy-corrected improvement on 3.3.0
shipped to MIT Press as a step towards TNHD III. This version had
24147 lines, 188728 words, 1244554 characters, and 2050 entries.
Version 3.3.2, Mar 20 1996: A number of new entries pursuant on
3.3.2. This version had 24442 lines, 190867 words, 1262468 characters,
and 2061 entries.
Version 3.3.3, Mar 25 1996: Cleanup before TNHD III manuscript
freeze. This version had 24584 lines, 191932 words, 1269996
characters, and 2064 entries.
Version 4.0.0, Jul 25 1996: The actual TNHD III version after
copy-edit. This version had 24801 lines, 193697 words, 1281402
characters, and 2067 entries.
Version 4.1.0, 8 Apr 1999: The Jargon File rides again after three
years. This version had 25777 lines, 206825 words, 1359992 characters,
and 2217 entries.
Version 4.1.1, 18 Apr 1999: Corrections for minor errors in 4.1.0,
and some new entries. This version had 25921 lines, 208483 words,
1371279 characters, and 2225 entries.
Version 4.1.2, 28 Apr 1999: Moving texi2html out of the production
path. This version had 26006 lines, 209479 words, 1377687 characters,
and 2225 entries.
Version 4.1.3, 14 Jun 1999: Minor updates and markup fixes. This
version had 26108 lines, 210480 words, 1384546 characters, and 2234
entries.
Version 4.1.4, 17 Jun 1999: Markup fixes for framed HTML. This
version had 26117 lines, 210527 words, 1384902 characters, and 2234
entries.
Version 4.2.0, 31 Jan 2000: Markup fixes for framed HTML. This
version had 26598 lines, 214639 words, 1412243 characters, and 2267
entries.
Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as
major.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS)
Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR
(Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.)
leading up to and including the second paper edition. From now on,
major version number N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper
edition. Usually later versions will either completely supersede or
incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping
old versions around.
Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and
assistance, and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here)
who contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go to several
of the old-timers on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers, who
contributed much useful commentary and many corrections and valuable
historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer <<jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>>,
Bernie Cosell <<cosell@bbn.com>>, Earl Boebert <<boebert@SCTC.com>>, and
Joe Morris <<jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>>.
We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished
linguists. David Stampe <<stampe@hawaii.edu>> and Charles Hoequist
<<hoequist@bnr.ca>> contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane
<<jgk@osc.osc.com>> helped us improve the pronunciation guides.
A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to
Brian A. LaMacchia <<bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu>> for obtaining permission
for us to use material from the "TMRC Dictionary"; also, Don Libes
<<libes@cme.nist.gov>> contributed some appropriate material from his
excellent book "Life With UNIX". We thank Per Lindberg
<<per@front.se>>, author of the remarkable Swedish-language 'zine
"Hackerbladet", for bringing "FOO!" comics to our attention and
smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out
to us. Thanks also to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the
inclusion of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And
our gratitude to Marc Weiser of XEROX PARC
<<Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com>> for securing us permission to quote from
PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy.
It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of
Mark Brader <<msb@sq.com>> and Steve Summit <<scs@eskimo.com>> to the
File and Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts, checked
facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful
comments, and done yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage
bobbles. Their rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence,
wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of
language has been of invaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume and
quality of Mr. Brader's input over several years and several different
editions has only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the
slimmest of margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly <<georgere@microsoft.com>> helped with TeX
arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and Eric
Tiedemann <<est@thyrsus.com>> contributed sage advice throughout on
rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Jargon Works
******************
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jargon Construction
=====================
There are some standard methods of jargonification that became
established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such
sources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers,
and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include verb
doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization,
spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussed
below. We also cover the standard comparatives for design quality.
Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization,
anthropomorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have
become quite general; but soundalike slang is still largely confined to
MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found only
where LISPers flourish.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verb Doubling
---------------
A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as
an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!". Most of
these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise,
sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a
doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process
remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends
to do next. Typical examples involve {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame},
{barf}, {chomp}:
"The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose."
"Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame."
"Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!"
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately
obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.
The {Usenet} culture has one _tripling_ convention unrelated to
this; the names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last
element. The first and paradigmatic example was
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "Muppet Show" reference); other
infamous examples have included:
alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die
comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk
sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom
alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Soundalike slang
------------------
Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an
ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. It is
considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to
include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine
"Dr. Dobb's Journal" is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr.
Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have
been in fairly wide use include names for newspapers:
Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried)
Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle
=> the Crocknicle (or the Comical)
New York Times => New York Slime
Wall Street Journal => Wall Street Urinal
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the
moment. Standard examples include:
Data General => Dirty Genitals
IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys)
=> Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate
for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford)
=> Marginal Hacks Hall
Microsoft => Microsloth
Internet Explorer => Internet Exploiter
This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque
whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The `-P' convention
---------------------
Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P'; from
the LISP convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate
(a boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no
answer, though it needn't. (See {T} and {NIL}.)
At dinnertime:
Q: ``Foodp?''
A: ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!''
At any time:
Q: ``State-of-the-world-P?''
A: (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.''
A: (Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.''
On the phone to Florida:
Q: ``State-p Florida?''
A: ``Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?''
[One of the best of these is a {Gosperism}. Once, when we were at a
Chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would
like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry
was: "Split-p soup?" -- GLS]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overgeneralization
--------------------
A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which
techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language
primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside
of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to
cite one of the best-known examples) Unix hackers often {grep} for
things rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well.
Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to
them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to
nonuniform cases (or vice versa). For example, because
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
hackers happily generalize:
mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrosity
obvious => obviosity
dubious => dubiosity
Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' to
abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage
arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the
same abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'. Thus:
win => winnitude (a common exclamation)
loss => lossitude
cruft => cruftitude
lame => lameitude
Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for
example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called
`lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be
verbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm
grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading in this
direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are
simply a bit ahead of the curve.
The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fanciful
ways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the
system starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than one headfull
of ideas, I start writing it all down." A common use is "screenfull",
meaning the amount of text that will fit on one screen, usually in text
mode where you have no choice as to character size. Another common form
is "bufferfull".
However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a
hacker would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or
`securitize' things. Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic
bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.
Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good
form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:
win => winnitude, winnage
disgust => disgustitude
hack => hackification
Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural
forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary
includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces},
and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This
latter has apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among
railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years.
On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may
form plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text).
Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way;
e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
`frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and `Unices'
and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {Unix},
{TWENEX} in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are
never used; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex'
are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it
has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose'
ought to be `polygoose'.
The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an
import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the
Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally
considered to apply.
This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well
aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is
grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to
impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spoken inarticulations
------------------------
Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places
where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been
suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of
representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs,
and IRC channels (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have
been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another
expression sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anthropomorphization
----------------------
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish
tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. This isn't done in
a naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of
feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things
they work on every day are `alive'. What _is_ common is to hear
hardware or software talked about as though it has homunculi talking to
each other inside it, with intentions and desires. Thus, one hears
"The protocol handler got confused", or that programs "are trying" to
do things, or one may say of a routine that "its goal in life is to X".
One even hears explanations like "... and its poor little brain
couldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things this
way actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps because
it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complex
behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comparatives
--------------
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood
as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the
adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality
of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum:
monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature
crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the
reliability of software:
broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle
solid robust bulletproof armor-plated
Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is
rare in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers.
Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest
in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that
hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has
for obnoxious people.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hacker Writing Style
======================
We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for
form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in
hackish writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently
misspells `wrong' as `worng'. Others have been known to criticize
glitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of Douglas
Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Too repetetetive", or "Bad
speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms
are often made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are
confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common
(similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd
today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sort of thing is quite
common and is enjoyed by all concerned.
Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses,
much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a
phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers
generally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and "Spock
groks". This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which
would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the
string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate
literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the
sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming,
American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When
communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters
can be a real pain in the neck.
Consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like
this:
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".
Standard usage would make this
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."
but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone to
type the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in `vi(1)' dot repeats the
last command accepted. The net result would be to delete _two_ lines!
The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great
Britain, though the older style (which became established for
typographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma and
quotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. "Hart's Rules" and
the "Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors" call the hacker-like
style `new' or `logical' quoting. This turn British English to the
style Latin languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan)
have been using this style all along.
Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare'
quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes
for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports
of speech or text included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some
authorities describe this as correct general usage, but mainstream
American English has gone to using double-quotes indiscriminately
enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in fact, I thought this
was a personal quirk of mine until I checked with Usenet --ESR]. One
further permutation that is definitely _not_ standard is a hackish
tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single quotes) in
pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on string and character
literal syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact
that many character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter
style, as a vertical single quote).
One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of Unix
hackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are normally
all-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands and C
routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning
of sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the case of such
identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation (the
`spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (an
appropriate reflex because Unix and C both distinguish cases and
confusing them can lead to {lossage}). A way of escaping this dilemma
is simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of
sentences.
There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to
the effect that precision of expression is more important than
conformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity or
lose information they can be discarded without a second thought. It is
notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example, in
vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning even when
constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker, the
contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is a
substantial part of its humor!
Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis
conventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and
these are occasionally carried over into written documents even when
normal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.
One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and
this becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who
goes to caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting,
please, you're hurting my ears!".
Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to
signify emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the
*hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the
asterisk suffix as a footnote mark. The underscore is also common,
suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles;
for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote
_The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel of
the future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other forms exemplified
by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed
that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to the
right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling
over). On FidoNet, you might see #bright# and ^dark^ text, which was
actually interpreted by some reader software. Finally, words may also
be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of carets (^) under them
on the next line of the text.
There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which
emphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which
suggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a
very young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word with
the `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers to
consider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made.
Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.
One might also see the above sound effects as <bang>, <hic>, <ring>,
<grin>, <kick>, <stomp>, <mumble>. This use of angle brackets to mark
their contents originally derives from conventions used in {BNF}, but
since about 1993 it has been reinforced by the HTML markup used on the
World Wide Web.
Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands
for some {random} member of a larger class (this is straight from
{BNF}). Examples like the following are common:
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day...
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,
he's visiting from corporate HQ.
reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...". This comes
from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print
representation for a backspace. It parallels (and may have been
influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fiction
fanzines.
A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to
previous text. This custom is fading as more mailers get good editing
capabilities, but one occasionally still sees things like this:
I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.
Send it to Erik for the File.
Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.
The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding". This
syntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools `ed' and `sed', but is
widely recognized by non-Unix hackers as well.
In a formula, `*' signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a
row are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN).
Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the
caret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2^8 = 256'. This
goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII
`up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up by Kemeny
and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the design of the
`bc(1)' and `dc(1)' Unix tools, which have probably done most to
reinforce the convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode also uses ^ for
exponention.) The notation is mildly confusing to C programmers,
because `^' means bitwise exclusive-or in C. Despite this, it was
favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of Usenet. It is used
consistently in this lexicon.
In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper
fractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed
fractions (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is probably that the former
are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desire to avoid
the risk that the latter might be read as `three minus one-half'. The
decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions with a terminating
decimal representation; there may be some cultural influence here from
the high status of scientific notation.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very
small numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This
is a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for
example, one year is about 3e7 seconds long.
The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of
`approximately'; that is, `~50' means `about fifty'.
On Usenet and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and
relational operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=',
`>', `<', `>=', and `=<' are often combined with English. The Pascal
not-equals, `<>', is also recognized, and occasionally one sees `/=' for
not-equals (from Ada, Common Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix
`!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or `no-' is particularly common;
thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'.
A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming
languages to express ideas in a natural-language text. For example,
one might see the following:
In <jrh578689@thudpucker.com> J. R. Hacker wrote:
>I recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
>Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was
>right, and the racing stripe on the case looked
>kind of neat, but its performance left something
>to be desired.
Yeah, I tried one out too.
#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
net volumes?
#endif /* FLAME */
I guess they figured the price premium for true
frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
you're on a *very* tight budget.
#include <disclaimer.h>
--
== Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)
In the above, the `#ifdef'/`#endif' pair is a conditional
compilation syntax from C; here, it implies that the text between
(which is a {flame}) should be evaluated only if you have turned on (or
defined on) the switch FLAME. The `#include' at the end is C for
"include standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' is
understood to read, roughly, "These are my personal opinions and not to
be construed as the official position of my employer."
The top section in the example, with > at the left margin, is an
example of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.
More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide
Web, pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes:
<flame>
Your father was a hamster and your mother smelt of elderberries!
</flame>
You'll even see this with an HTML-style modifier:
<flame intensity="100%">
You seem well-suited for a career in government.
</flame>
Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on USENET seems
to be borrowed from Perl. It consists of using a dollar sign before an
uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggest any {random} member of
the class indicated by the word. Thus: `$PHB' means "any random member
of the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'".
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream
usage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit
sequence where you intend the reader to understand the text string that
names that number in English. So, hackers prefer to write `1970s'
rather than `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter looks like a
possessive).
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to
use multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of
this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply
nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has
also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing
with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line
communication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting
effect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through which
emotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything about
other parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This has
both good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honesty
and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad one
is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous rudeness.
Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often display a sort
of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed out of
fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase
"Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would face
to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and
clarity of expression. It may well be that future historians of
literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal
letters as art.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions
========================================
One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux
is the marking of included material from earlier messages -- what would
be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual
typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra
indent), there derived a practice of included text being indented by
one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under Unix and many other
environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages
this way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD `Mail(1)' was
the first message agent to support inclusion, and early Usenetters
emulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push included text
too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions),
leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion (during
which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spaces became
established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading `>' or `> '
became standard, perhaps owing to its use in `ed(1)' to display tabs
(alternatively, it may derive from the `>' that some early Unix mailers
used to quote lines starting with "From" in text, so they wouldn't look
like the beginnings of new message headers). Inclusions within
inclusions keep their `>' leaders, so the `nesting level' of a
quotation is visually apparent.
The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a
followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: the
fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order.
Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even
consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It
was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around 1984,
new news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include
the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whatever the poster
chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines.
The result has been that, now, careless posters post articles
containing the _entire_ text of a preceding article, _followed_ only by
"No, that's wrong" or "I agree".
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease,
and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader
skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software
rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning
with `>' -- but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the
deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted
and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold.
Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other operating
systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older
conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still
alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both
netnews and mail.
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the
`correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}.
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will
immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like
this,
> relevant excerpt 1
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 2
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 3
response to excerpt
or for short messages like this:
> entire message
response to message
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
occasionally see the entire quoted message _after_ the response, like
this
response to message
> entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Though `>' remains the standard inclusion leader, `|' is
occasionally used for extended quotations where original variations in
indentation are being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses
`|>'). One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors
in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses
a leader of `> ' for everyone, another (the most common) is `> > > > ',
`> > > ', etc. (or `>>>> ', `>>>', etc., depending on line length and
nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet
another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say
`> ', `: ', `| ', `} ' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order
of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors'
names). Yet _another_ style is to use each poster's initials (or login
name) as a citation leader for that poster.
Occasionally one sees a `# ' leader used for quotations from
authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended
allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued
when one is running as the privileged super-user).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hacker Speech Style
=====================
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful
word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively
little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns,
and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlying
seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough
jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the
culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho
attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally
spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical
fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is
fairly constant throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative
questions -- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are
often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they
have done so much programming that distinguishes between
if (going) ...
and
if (!going) ...
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may seem to be
asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so to merit an
answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking
non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative
part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian,
Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the
problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a
word like French `si', German `doch', or Dutch `jawel' - a word with
which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
(See also {mu})
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows
them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an
affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb
them.
In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering
questions containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather
than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough
to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding that bug _now_
or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct
answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you
didn't ask which!").
------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Style
=====================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage
in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad.
Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of
jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon
File versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of
them may be of some use to travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These
are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in
the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada,
Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced by
American usage). There is also an entry on {{Commonwealth Hackish}}
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S.
hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that
they often use a mixture of English and their native languages for
technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their
English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles.
Some of these are reported here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and
vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian
hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and
`deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere' and
`cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seen
conjugated in Swedish. And Spanish-speaking hackers use `linkar' (to
link), `debugear' (to debug), and `lockear' (to lock).
European hackers report that this happens partly because the English
terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native
vocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes for
amusing wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they
are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers
===============================
From the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,
MS-DOS-based bulletin boards has been developing separately from
Internet hackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a
stratum of `pirate boards' inhabited by {cracker}s, phone phreaks, and
{warez d00dz}. These people (mostly teenagers running IBM-PC clones
from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon,
heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.
Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they
typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet
expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems).
Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's. Nevertheless,
this lexicon covers much of it so the reader will be able to understand
what goes by on bulletin-board systems.
Here is a brief guide to cracker and {warez d00dz} usage:
* Misspell frequently. The substitutions
phone => fone
freak => phreak
are obligatory.
* Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" -> "codez").
* Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").
* Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
frequently.
* Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").
* Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer").
* TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE
TIME.
These traits are similar to those of {B1FF}, who originated as a
parody of naive {BBS} users. Occasionally, this sort of distortion may
be used as heavy sarcasm by a real hacker, as in:
> I got X Windows running under Linux!
d00d! u R an '1337 hax0r
The only practice resembling this in actual hacker usage is the
substitution of a dollar sign of `s' in names of products or service
felt to be excessively expensive, e.g. Compu$erve, Micro$oft.
For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see {lamer},
{elite}, {leech}, {poser}, {cracker}, and especially {warez d00dz}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to Use the Lexicon
************************
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pronunciation Guide
=====================
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all
entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard
English nor obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic
pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the following
conventions:
1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or
back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks
a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). If
no accent is given, the word is pronounced with equal accentuation
on all syllables (this is common for abbreviations).
2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g'
is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft
("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound
that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in
"pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of
"loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph 'gh' is the aspirated g+h of
"bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English).
3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names;
thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ may
be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
4. Vowels are represented as follows:
a
back, that
ah
father, palm (see note)
ar
far, mark
aw
flaw, caught
ay
bake, rain
e
less, men
ee
easy, ski
eir
their, software
i
trip, hit
i:
life, sky
o
block, stock (see note)
oh
flow, sew
oo
loot, through
or
more, door
ow
out, how
oy
boy, coin
uh
but, some
u
put, foot
y
yet, young
yoo
few, chew
[y]oo
/oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
The glyph /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded
vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The
schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n;
that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/,
not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in
standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV
network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest,
Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate
/o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help
readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation.
The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to
map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset
of the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can
smash terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers of many
varieties of southern American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and
so forth. (Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this
purpose because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions
than other major dialects, and tends to retain distinctions between
unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what your editor speaks.)
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No,
Unix weenies, this does _not_ mean `pronounce like previous
pronunciation'!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Lexicon Conventions
===========================
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than
the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in
mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with
nonalphabetic characters are sorted after Z. The case-blindness is a
feature, not a bug.
The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (`:') at the left
margin. This convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers that
benefit from knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as
context-sensitive as humans.
In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used to
bracket words which themselves have entries in the File. This isn't
done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a
reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one might
wish to refer to its entry.
In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are
distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::"
rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}"
rather than "{" and "}".
Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. A
defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an
explanation of it.
Prefixed ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect
usage.
We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing
Style section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual
excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which
mark a word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes
(which turn an utterance into the string of letters or words that name
it) are both rendered with single quotes.
References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to Unix facilities
(some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed
over Usenet). The Unix manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in
section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls,
n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is
system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals
have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in
any of the entries.
Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized
here:
abbrev.
abbreviation
adj.
adjective
adv.
adverb
alt.
alternate
cav.
caveat
conj.
conjunction
esp.
especially
excl.
exclamation
imp.
imperative
interj.
interjection
n.
noun
obs.
obsolete
pl.
plural
poss.
possibly
pref.
prefix
prob.
probably
prov.
proverbial
quant.
quantifier
suff.
suffix
syn.
synonym (or synonymous with)
v.
verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
var.
variant
vi.
intransitive verb
vt.
transitive verb
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt.
separates two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var.
prefixes one that is markedly less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known
to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list
of abbreviations used in etymologies:
Amateur Packet Radio
A technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP for
wide-area networking and BBS systems.
Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
Cambridge
the university in England (_not_ the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
DEC
The Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq).
Fairchild
The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group
FidoNet
See the {FidoNet} entry
IBM
International Business Machines
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI
Lab culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups,
including the Tech Model Railroad Club
NRL
Naval Research Laboratories
NYU
New York University
OED
The Oxford English Dictionary
Purdue
Purdue University
SAIL
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at Stanford
University)
SI
From Syste`me International, the name for the standard conventions
of metric nomenclature used in the sciences
Stanford
Stanford University
Sun
Sun Microsystems
TMRC
Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC)
at MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from "An Abridged
Dictionary of the TMRC Language", originally compiled by Pete
Samson in 1959
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
UK
the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)
Usenet
See the {Usenet} entry
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of
PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s
WWW
The World-Wide-Web.
XEROX PARC
XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering
research in user interface design and networking
Yale
Yale University
Some other etymology abbreviations such as {Unix} and {PDP-10} refer
to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems,
processors, or other environments. The fact that a term is labelled
with any one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use
is confined to that culture. In particular, many terms labelled `MIT'
and `Stanford' are in quite general use. We have tried to give some
indication of the distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however,
a number of factors mentioned in the introduction conspire to make
these indications less definite than might be desirable.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed].
These are usually generalizations suggested by editors or Usenet
respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of
those entries. These are _not_ represented as established jargon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Format For New Entries
========================
You can mail submissions for the Jargon File to
<jargon@snark.thyrsus.com>.
We welcome new jargon, and corrections to or amplifications of
existing entries. You can improve your submission's chances of being
included by adding background information on user population and years
of currency. References to actual usage via URLs and/or DejaNews
pointers are particularly welcomed.
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be
considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this
File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be
edited for accuracy, clarity and concision.
We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties
covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the
scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also
in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language
design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are _not_ interested in straight technical terms explained by
textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates
`underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories.
We are also not interested in `joke' entries -- there is a lot of humor
in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what
hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have
spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally
acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent
submission from two different sites.
An HTML version of the File is available at
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon. Please send us URLs for materials
related to the entries, so we can enrich the File's link structure.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for
browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number.
Read it, pass it around, contribute -- this is _your_ monument!
The Jargon Lexicon
******************
= 0 =
=====
------------------------------------------------------------------------
0
of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot
alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct
have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and
letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero
looks more like an American football stood on end (or the reverse),
you're probably looking at a modern character display (though the
dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270
controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're
probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from
the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype
(Scandinavians, for whom /O is a letter, curse this arrangement).
(Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates computers; Florian
Cajori's monumental "A History of Mathematical Notations" notes that
it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O
has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned
for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early
mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse _this_ arrangement even more,
because it means two of their letters collide). Some
Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a _reversed_ slash.
Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an
oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet another
convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but
added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an
inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft
ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final
standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left
corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1TBS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
120 reset
wall voltage] To cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam
it. Compare {Big Red Switch}, {power cycle}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2
often represents the syllable _to_ with the connotation `translate
to': as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to
string), and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff). Several versions of a
joke have floated around the internet in which some idiot programmer
fixes the Y2K bug by changing all the Y's in something to K's, as in
Januark, Februark, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
404
Extended to humans to convey that the subject has no idea or no clue
- sapience not found. May be used reflexively; "Uh, I'm 404ing"
means "I'm drawing a blank".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
404 compliant
completely removed, usually by the administrators of the hosting
site as a result of net abuse by the website operators. The term is
a tongue-in-cheek reference to the standard "301 compliant"
Murkowski Bill disclaimer used by spammers. See also: {spam},
{spamvertize}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2
invariably refers to {BSD} Unix release 4.2. Note that it is an
indication of cluelessness to say "version 4.2", and "release 4.2"
is rare; the number stands on its own, or is used in the more
explicit forms 4.2BSD or (less commonly) BSD 4.2. Similar remarks
apply to "4.3", "4.4" and to earlier, less-widespread releases 4.1
and 2.9.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
@-party
address] (alt. `@-sign party' /at'si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party
thrown for hackers at a science-fiction convention (esp. the annual
World Science Fiction Convention or "Worldcon"); one must have a
{network address} to get in, or at least be in company with someone
who does. One of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to
meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by
mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare {boink}.
The first recorded @-party was held at the Westercon (a California
SF convention) over the July 4th weekend in 1980. It is not clear
exactly when the canonical @-party venue shifted to the Worldcon but
it had certainly become established by Constellation in 1983.
Sadly, the @-party tradition has been in decline since about 1996,
mainly because having an @-address no longer functions as an
effective lodge pin.
= A =
=====
------------------------------------------------------------------------
abbrev
`abbreviation'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABEND
termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives from an
error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but seriously
mainly by {code grinder}s. Usually capitalized, but may appear as
`abend'. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is called
`abend' because it is what system operators do to the machine late
on Friday when they want to call it a day, and hence is from the
German `Abend' = `Evening'. 2. [alt.callahans] Absent By Enforced
Net Deprivation - used in the subject lines of postings warning
friends of an imminent loss of Internet access. (This can be
because of computer downtime, loss of provider, moving or illness.)
Variants of this also appear: ABVND = `Absent By Voluntary Net
Deprivation' and ABSEND = `Absent By Self-Enforced Net Deprivation'
have been sighted.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
accumulator
use of it as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable
indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or
that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in
full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example,
though symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in `A'
derive from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not,
actually, from `arithmetic'). Confusingly, though, an `A' register
name prefix may also stand for `address', as for example on the
Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A register being used for arithmetic or
logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one
being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is
in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The FOOBAZ
routine uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket (esp. among
old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this reviewed? Sure,
just put it in the accumulator." (See {stack}.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACK
0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare
mainstream _Yo!_). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}. 2.
[from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of surprised
disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous. Generally this sense
is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is distinguished by a following
exclamation point. 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell
them you understand their point (see {NAK}). Thus, for example, you
might cut off an overly long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I
get it now".
There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has gone
away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK} (sense 2),
i.e., "I'm not here").
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acme
non-functional gadgetry - where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson
(two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop.
The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company
Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand sold from Sears
Roebuck catalogs in the early 1900s.) Describing some X as an "Acme
X" either means "This is {insanely great}", or, more likely, "This
looks {insanely great} on paper, but in practice it's really easy to
shoot yourself in the foot with it." Compare {pistol}.
This term, specially cherished by American hackers and explained
here for the benefit of our overseas brethren, comes from the Warner
Brothers' series of "Roadrunner" cartoons. In these cartoons, the
famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with,
trap, and eat the Roadrunner. His attempts usually involved one or
more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices - rocket jetpacks,
catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were
usually delivered in large cardboard boxes, labeled prominently with
the Acme name. These devices invariably malfunctioned in improbable
and violent ways.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
acolyte
data and programs to a member of the {priesthood}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ad-hockery
assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which
lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact
entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of input tokens
that might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look
as though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to
cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to
{choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner and
more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity'
(/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also {ELIZA effect}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ada
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that,
technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind
of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult
to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle
(one common description wss "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find
Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features
particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron
who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with
Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in
the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her
name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said
about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming
to get out from inside its vast, {elephantine} bulk.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
address harvester
filters netnews traffic looking for valid email addresses. Some
address harvesters are benign, used only for compiling address
directories. Most, unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling
address lists to {spam}. Address harvesters can be foiled by a
{teergrube}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
adger
middle name of an infamous {tenured graduate student}] To make a
bonehead move with consequences that could have been foreseen with
even slight mental effort. E.g., "He started removing files and
promptly adgered the whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
admin
used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge
on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin' and
`site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site contact
for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically on news).
Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system mangler}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADVENT
first designed by Will Crowther on the {PDP-10} in the mid-1970s as
an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had
been one of the authors of {INTERCAL}.) Now better known as
Adventure, but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only
six-letter filenames. See also {vadding}, {Zork}, and {Infocom}.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style since expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars
the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a maze
of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little maze of
twisty passages, all different." The `magic words' {xyzzy} and
{plugh} also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually _has_ a `Colossal
Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that also turns
up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary entrance.
ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
`ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z'.
There's a version implemented as a set of web scripts at
`http://tjwww.stanford.edu/adventure/'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFAIK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFJ
Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on
Usenet and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April
Fool's Day is the _only_ seasonal holiday consistently marked by
customary observances on Internet and other hacker networks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFK
others that you will be momentarily unavailable online. eg. "Let's
not go kill that frost giant yet, I need to go AFK to make a phone
call". Often MUDs will have a command to politely inform others of
your absence when they try to talk with you. The term is not
restricted to MUDs, however, and has become common in many chat
situations, from IRC to Unix talk.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI
common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among
hackers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI-complete
with `NP-complete' (see {NP-})] Used to describe problems or
subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a
solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a
human-level intelligence). A problem that is AI-complete is, in
other words, just too hard.
Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem'
(building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The Natural
Language Problem' (building a system that can understand and speak a
natural language as well as a human). These may appear to be
modular, but all attempts so far (1999) to solve them have foundered
on the amount of context information and `intelligence' they seem to
require. See also {gedanken}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AI koans
teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around
various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included
under {Some AI Koans} in Appendix A). See also {ha ha only
serious}, {mu}, and {{hacker humor}}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AIDS
{glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple or Amiga),
this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe {SEX}.
See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse}, {virgin}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AIDX
of Unix, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000
series (some hackers think it is funnier just to pronounce "AIX" as
"aches"). A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this attempt
to combine the two main currents of the Unix stream ({BSD} and {USG
Unix}) became a {monstrosity} to haunt system administrators'
dreams. For example, if new accounts are created while many users
are logged on, the load average jumps quickly over 20 due to silly
implementation of the user databases. For a quite similar disease,
compare {HP-SUX}. Also, compare {Macintrash}, {Nominal
Semidestructor}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
airplane rule
failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as
a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and
electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is
correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems
is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've
built a really _good_ basket. See also {KISS Principle}, {elegant}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alderson loop
loop} where there is an exit condition available, but inaccessible
in the current implementation of the code. Typically this is
created while debugging user interface code. An example would be
when there is a menu stating, "Select 1-3 or 9 to quit" and 9 is not
allowed by the function that takes the selection from the user.
This term received its name from a programmer who had coded a modal
message box in MSAccess with no Ok or Cancel buttons, thereby
disabling the entire program whenever the box came up. The message
box had the proper code for dismissal and even was set up so that
when the non-existent Ok button was pressed the proper code would be
called.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
aliasing bug
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via `malloc(3)' or
equivalent. If several pointers address (`aliases for') a given
hunk of storage, it may happen that the storage is freed or
reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced
through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly
intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation
history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation
strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of
higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage
collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also
{precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory
leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.
Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with C
programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alice and Bob
in discussions of cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists
would say something like: "A communicates with someone who claims to
be B, So to be sure, A tests that B knows a secret number K. So A
sends to B a random number X. B then forms Y by encrypting X under
key K and sends Y back to A" Because this sort of thing is is quite
hard to follow, theorists stopped using the unadorned letters A and
B to represent the main players and started calling them Alice and
Bob. So now we say "Alice communicates with someone claiming to be
Bob, and to be sure, So Alice tests that Bob knows a secret number
K. Alice sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then forms Y by
encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to Alice". A whole
mythology rapidly grew up around Alice and Bob; see
`http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html'.
In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text "Applied
Cryptography" (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-11709-9)
he introduces a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice and Bob.
Others include Carol (a participant in three- and four-party
protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an
eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active attacker), Trent (a
trusted arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor
(a verifier). These names for roles are either already standard or,
given the wide popularity of the book, may be expected to quickly
become so.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
all-elbows
(terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC program, such as the N pop-up
calendar and calculator utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems:
unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the
resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also
be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up
due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See {rude},
also {mess-dos}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
alpha geek
technically accomplished or skillful person in some implied context.
"Ask Larry, he's the alpha geek here."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
alpha particles
------------------------------------------------------------------------
alt
keyboard; see {bucky bits}, sense 2 (though typical PC usage does
not simply set the 0200 bit). 2. n. The `option' key on a
Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked
PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {feature key}, which is
sometimes _incorrectly_ called `alt'). 3. n.,obs. [PDP-10; often
capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII ESC character
(ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some older terminals;
also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character was almost never
pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in {TECO}, or under TOPS-10 --
always alt, as in "Type alt alt to end a TECO command" or "alt-U
onto the system" (for "log onto the [ITS] system"). This usage
probably arose because alt is more convenient to say than `escape',
especially when followed by another alt or a character (or another
alt _and_ a character, for that matter). 4. The alt hierarchy on
Usenet, the tree of newsgroups created by users without a formal
vote and approval procedure. There is a myth, not entirely
implausible, that alt is acronymic for "anarchists, lunatics, and
terrorists"; but in fact it is simply short for "alternative".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
alt bit
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aluminum Book
Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second edition 1990).
Note that due to a technical screwup some printings of the second
edition are actually of a color the author describes succinctly as
"yucky green". See also {{book titles}}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ambimouseterous
[modeled on ambidextrous] Able to use a mouse with either hand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga
by Commodore, based on 680x0 processors, custom support chips and an
operating system that combined some of the best features of
Macintosh and Unix with compatibility with neither.
The Amiga was released just as the personal computing world
standardized on IBM-PC clones. This prevented it from gaining
serious market share, despite the fact that the first Amigas had a
substantial technological lead on the IBM XTs of the time. Instead,
it acquired a small but zealous population of enthusiastic hackers
who dreamt of one day unseating the clones (see {Amiga Persecution
Complex}). The traits of this culture are both spoofed and
illuminated in The BLAZE Humor Viewer
(http://www-ccsl.cs.umass.edu/~barrett/bm/Viewer_Sections/Main.HTML).
The strength of the Amiga platform seeded a small industry of
companies building software and hardware for the platform,
especially in graphics and video applications (see {video toaster}).
Due to spectacular mismanagement, Commodore did hardly any R&D,
allowing the competition to close Amiga's technological lead. After
Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 the technology passed through
several hands, none of whom did much with it. However, the Amiga is
still being produced in Europe under license and has a substantial
number of fans, which will probably extend the platform's life
considerably.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga Persecution Complex
particularly egregious variety of {bigot}, those who believe that
the marginality of their preferred machine is the result of some
kind of industry-wide conspiracy (for without a conspiracy of some
kind, the eminent superiority of their beloved shining jewel of a
platform would obviously win over all, market pressures be damned!)
Those afflicted are prone to engaging in {flame war}s and calling
for boycotts and mailbombings. Amiga Persecution Complex is by no
means limited to Amiga users; NeXT, {NeWS}, {OS/2}, Macintosh,
{LISP}, and {GNU} users are also common victims. {Linux} users used
to display symptoms very frequently before Linux started winning;
some still do. See also {newbie}, {troll}, {holy wars}, {weenie},
{Get a life!}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
amoeba
computer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
amp off
shell `&' operator.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
amper
(`&', ASCII 0100110) character. See {{ASCII}} for other synonyms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angband
one of the large freely distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like
simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and
operating systems. The name is from Tolkien's Pits of Angband
(compare {elder days}, {elvish}). Has been described as "Moria on
steroids"; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of the game are
customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be hackers into
fooling with these instead of doing productive work. There are many
Angband variants, of which the most notorious is probably the rather
whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that does not
correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display "Type ?
for help" 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random error
messages including "An error has occurred because an error of type
42 has occurred" and "Windows 95 uninstalled successfully" will be
displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus (who
has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends), "Bull
Gates", and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney has a nasty
case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at
`http://www.phial.com/angband' and a zangband one at
`http://thangorodrim.angband.org'. See also {Random Number God}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
angle brackets
and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or greater-than signs).
Typographers in the {Real World} use angle brackets which are either
taller and slimmer (the ISO `Bra' and `Ket' characters), or
significantly smaller (single or double guillemets) than the
less-than and greater-than signs. See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
angry fruit salad
too many colors. (This term derives, of course, from the bizarre
day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad.) Too often one sees
similar effects from interface designers using color window systems
such as {X}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy
and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
annoybot
------------------------------------------------------------------------
annoyware
normal program operation to display requests for payment to the
author in return for the ability to disable the request messages.
(Also called `nagware') The requests generally require user action
to acknowledge the message before normal operation is resumed and
are often tied to the most frequently used features of the software.
See also {careware}, {charityware}, {crippleware}, {freeware},
{FRS}, {guiltware}, {postcardware}, and {-ware}; compare {payware}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANSI
Standards Institute. ANSI, along with the International Organization
for Standards (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see
{K&R}, {Classic C}), and promulgates many other important software
standards. 2. n. [techspeak] A terminal may be said to be `ANSI' if
it meets the ANSI X.364 standard for terminal control.
Unfortunately, this standard was both over-complicated and too
permissive. It has been retired and replaced by the ECMA-48
standard, which shares both flaws. 3. n. [BBS jargon] The set of
screen-painting codes that most MS-DOS and Amiga computers accept.
This comes from the ANSI.SYS device driver that must be loaded on an
MS-DOS computer to view such codes. Unfortunately, neither DOS ANSI
nor the BBS ANSIs derived from it exactly match the ANSI X.364
terminal standard. For example, the ESC-[1m code turns on the bold
highlight on large machines, but in IBM PC/MS-DOS ANSI, it turns on
`intense' (bright) colors. Also, in BBS-land, the term `ANSI' is
often used to imply that a particular computer uses or can emulate
the IBM high-half character set from MS-DOS. Particular use depends
on context. Occasionally, the vanilla ASCII character set is used
with the color codes, but on BBSs, ANSI and `IBM characters' tend to
go together.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANSI standard
`ANSI standard' refers to any practice which is typical or broadly
done. It's most appropriately applied to things that everyone does that
are not quite regulation. For example: ANSI standard shaking of a
laser printer cartridge to get extra life from it, or the ANSI
standard word tripling in names of usenet alt groups.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANSI standard pizza
and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most pizzas ordered by
CMU hackers during some period leading up to mid-1990 were of that
flavor. See also {rotary debugger}; compare {ISO standard cup of
tea}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AOL!
the legendary propensity of America Online users to utter
contentless "Me, too!" postings. The number of exclamation points
following varies from zero to five or so. The pseudo-HTML
<AOL>Me, too!</AOL>
is also frequently seen. See also {September that never ended}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
app
systems program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run
as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers,
program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would
consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is often a
self-contained environment for performing some well-defined task
such as `word processing'; hackers tend to prefer more
general-purpose tools.) See {killer app}; oppose {tool}, {operating
system}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
arena
process by `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic
storage. So named from a `malloc: corrupt arena' message emitted
when some early versions detected an impossible value in the free
block list. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing bug}, {memory leak},
{memory smash}, {smash the stack}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
arg
so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from
`pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent
function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {param}, {parm},
{var}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARMM
A Usenet {cancelbot} created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio.
ARMM was intended to automatically cancel posts from
anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for
anonymous postings triggered on its own automatically-generated
control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming
ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke
loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to {spam}
news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.
ARMM's bug produced a recursive {cascade} of messages each of which
mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other
headers of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which
each header took up several screens and each message ID and subject
line got longer and longer and longer.
Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological
messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying
line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM
debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term
{despew}), and it has since been widely cited as a cautionary
example of the havoc the combination of good intentions and
incompetence can wreak on a network. Compare {Great Worm};
{sorcerer's apprentice mode}. See also {software laser}, {network
meltdown}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
armor-plated
------------------------------------------------------------------------
asbestos
to protect one from {flame}s; also in other highly
{flame}-suggestive usages. See, for example, {asbestos longjohns}
and {asbestos cork award}.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
asbestos cork award
{flamer} so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had
made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been
nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. (Any reader in doubt as to
the intended application of the cork should consult the etymology
under {flame}.) Since then, it is agreed that only a select few
have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious
dignity -- but there is no agreement on _which_ few.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
asbestos longjohns
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
{flamage}. This is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages.
Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASCII
Code for Information Interchange) but now merely conventional] The
predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. The
standard version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most
earlier codes (including early drafts of of ASCII prior to June
1961) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase
letters -- a major {win} -- but it did not provide for accented
letters or any other letterforms not used in English (such as the
German sharp-S or the ae-ligature which is a letter in, for
example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It could be much
worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how. A history of ASCII and
its ancestors is at `http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html'.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names -- some
formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
characters are collected here. See also individual entries for
{bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat},
{twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the
particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. The
abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close"
respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage
information.
!
Common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>. Rare:
factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham;
eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control.
"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch;
<quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime.
#
Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; {crunch}; hex;
[mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; <square>,
pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}.
$
Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash;
string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC);
ding; cache; [big money].
%
Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
&
Common: <ampersand>; amper; and. Rare: address (from C); reference
(from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from `sh(1)');
pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what could be
sillier?]
'
Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime; glitch;
tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation mark>; <acute
accent>.
( )
Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close;
paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r
banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing
parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane];
parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear.
*
Common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle;
mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see {glob}); {Nathan
Hale}.
+
Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].
,
Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].
-
Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.