hackers a-z.txt

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= A =

abbrev: /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. Common abbreviation for
   `abbreviation'.

ABEND: [ABnormal END] /ah'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. Abnormal
   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'.

accumulator: n. 1. Archaic term for a register.  On-line 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: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 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").

ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous 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 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/).  See also {ELIZA effect}.

Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
   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 is "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.

adger: /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences
   that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental
   effort.  E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
   whole project".  Compare {dumbass attack}.

admin: /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly
   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: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
   implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
   computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
   puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods.  Now better known as Adventure,
   but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only 6-letter
   filenames.  See also {vadding}.

   This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now 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.

AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with
   `NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. 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 (1991) to solve them have
   foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence'
   they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.

AI koans: /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen
   teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around
   various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included in
   appendix A).  See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and
   {{Humor, Hacker}}.

AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a
   {glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple),
   this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe
   {SEX}.  See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse},
   {virgin}.

airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of
   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 (see
   also {KISS Principle}).  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.

aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can
   arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
   `malloc(3)' or equivalent.  If more than one pointer addresses
   (`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
   storage is freed 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.  Also avoidable 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}, {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.

all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (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 also {mess-dos}.

alpha particles: n. See {bit rot}.

ALT: /awlt/ 1. n. The ALT shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}.
   2. [possibly lowercased] n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a
   Macintosh; use of this term usually reveals that the speaker hacked
   PCs before coming to the Mac (see also {command key}).  Some Mac
   hackers, confusingly, reserve `ALT' for the Option key.  3. n.obs.
   [PDP-10] 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 was probably 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).

alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.

Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common LISP: The Language', by
   Guy L.  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}}.

amoeba: n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.

amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}.  From the UNIX shell `&'
   operator.

amper: n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
   ASCII 0100110) character.  See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
   0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
   greater-than signs).  The {Real World} angle brackets used by
   typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than
   sign.
   See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.

angry fruit salad: n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too
   many colors.  This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo
   colors found in canned fruit salad.  Too often one sees similar
   affects 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.

AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a
   PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
   something.  "AOS the campfire."  Usage: considered silly, and now
   obsolete.  Now largely supplanted by {bump}.  See {SOS}.  2. A
   {{Multics}}-derived OS supported at one time by Data General.  This
   was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/.  A spoof of the standard
   AOS system administrator's manual (`How to load and generate
   your AOS system') was created, issued a part number, and circulated
   as photocopy folklore.  It was called `How to goad and
   levitate your chaos system'.  3. Algebraic Operating System, in
   reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix
   (reverse Polish) notation.

   Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
   instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
   1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'.  Why, you may ask,
   does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'?  Ah,
   here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore.  There were eight such
   instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction
   if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if
   the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped
   if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always;
   and so on.  Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never
   skipped.

   For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'.  Even
   more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'!  If you wanted to skip the
   next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'.  Likewise, JUMP meant
   `do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA.  However, hackers
   never did this.  By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST}
   (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster
   and so was invariably used.  Such were the perverse mysteries of
   assembler programming.

app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a
   systems program.  What systems vendors are forever chasing
   developers to create for their environments so they can sell more