= R =
=====

rain dance: n. 1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware
   problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished.
   This especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards,
   reconnecting cables, etc.  "I can't boot up the machine.  We'll
   have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance."  2. Any arcane
   sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order
   to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals
   that include both an {incantation} or two and physical activity
   or motion.  Compare {magic}, {voodoo programming}, {black
   art}.

random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical
   definition); weird.  "The system's been behaving pretty
   randomly."  2. Assorted; undistinguished.  "Who was at the
   conference?"  "Just a bunch of random business types."
   3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected.  "He's just a
   random loser."  4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not
   well organized.  "The program has a random set of misfeatures."
   "That's a random name for that function."  "Well, all the names
   were chosen pretty randomly."  5. In no particular order, though
   deterministic.  "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file
   is opened one is chosen randomly."  6. Arbitrary.  "It generates
   a random name for the scratch file."  7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e.,
   poorly done and for no good apparent reason.  For example, a
   program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless
   way, or an assembler routine that could easily have been coded
   using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with
   non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it
   without first saving four extra registers.  What {randomness}!
   8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students
   who soak up computer time and generally get in the way.  9. n.
   Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the
   hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2.  "I went to the talk,
   but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".
   10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall.  See
   also {J. Random}, {some random X}.

random numbers:: n. When one wishes to specify a large but random
   number of things, and the context is inappropriate for {N}, certain
   numbers are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily
   recognized as placeholders).  These include the following:

     17
          Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see 23.
     23
          Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and 5).
     42
          The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and
          Everything. (Note that this answer is completely fortuitous. `:-)')
     69
          From the sexual act.  This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture.
     105
          69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal.
     666
          The Number of the Beast.

   For further enlightenment, consult the `Principia Discordia',
   `The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', `The Joy of Sex',
   and the Christian Bible (Revelation 13:8).  See also
   {Discordianism} or consult your pineal gland.

   One common rhetorical maneuver uses any of the canonical random
   numbers as placeholders for variables.  "The max function takes
   42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42." "There are 69 ways
   to leave your lover, for 69 = 50."  This is especially likely when
   the speaker has uttered a random number and realizes that it was
   not recognized as such, but even `non-random' numbers are
   occasionally used in this fashion.  A related joke is that pi
   equals 3 --- for small values of pi and large values of 3.

randomness: n. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
   Also, a {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex
   combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon
   which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction).
   "This hack can output characters 40--57 by putting the character
   in the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits
   --- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What
   randomness!"

rape: vt. 1. To {screw} someone or something, violently; in
   particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably.
   Often used in describing file-system damage.  "So-and-so was
   running a program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping
   the master directory."  2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts.

rare mode: [UNIX] adj. CBREAK mode (character-by-character with
   interrupts enabled).  Distinguished from {raw mode} and `cooked
   mode'; the phrase "a sort of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used
   in the V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode.  Usage: rare.

raster blaster: n. [Cambridge] Specialized hardware for
   {bitblt} operations (a {blitter}).  Allegedly inspired by
   `Rasta Blasta', British slang for the sort of portable stereo
   Americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto blaster'.

raster burn: n. Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at
   low-res, poorly tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics
   monitors.  See {terminal illness}.

rat belt: n. A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic
   kind that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random
   twist of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip
   frobs).  Small cable ties are `mouse belts'.

rave: [WPI] vi. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.
   2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows
   very little.  3. To complain to a person who is not in a position
   to correct the difficulty.  4. To purposely annoy another person
   verbally.  5. To evangelize.  See {flame}.  6. Also used to
   describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly
   bullshitting.  `Rave' differs slightly from {flame} in that
   `rave' implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the
   person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat
   more strongly that the tone is offensive as well.

rave on!: imp. Sarcastic invitation to continue a {rave}, often by
   someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is
   unlikely.

ravs: /ravz/, also `Chinese ravs' n. Jiao-zi (steamed or
   boiled) or Guo-tie (pan-fried).  A Chinese appetizer, known
   variously in the plural as dumplings, pot stickers (the literal
   translation of guo-tie), and (around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'.  The
   term `rav' is short for `ravioli', which among hackers always
   means the Chinese kind rather than the Italian kind.  Both consist
   of a filling in a pasta shell, but the Chinese kind includes no
   cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good
   ones include Chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by
   steaming or frying.  A rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a
   potsticker is always the fried kind (so called because it sticks to
   the frying pot and has to be scraped off).  "Let's get
   hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs."  See also
   {{oriental food}}.

raw mode: n. A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly
   to or from an I/O device without any processing, abstraction, or
   interpretation by the operating system.  Compare {rare}.  This is
   techspeak under UNIX, jargon elsewhere.

rc file: /R-C fi:l/ [UNIX: from the startup script
   `/etc/rc', but this is commonly believed to have been named
   after older scripts to `run commands'] n. Script file containing
   startup instructions for an application program (or an entire
   operating system), usually a text file containing commands of the
   sort that might have been invoked manually once the system was
   running but are to be executed automatically each time the system
   starts up.  See also {dot file}.

RE: /R-E/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for {regexp}.

read-only user: n. Describes a {luser} who uses computers almost
   exclusively for reading USENET, bulletin boards, and/or email,
   rather than writing code or purveying useful information.  See
   {twink}, {terminal junkie}, {lurker}.

README file: n. By convention, the top-level directory of a UNIX
   source distribution always contains a file named `README' (or
   READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or some other variant), which is a
   hacker's-eye introduction containing a pointer to more detailed
   documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history notes, etc.
   When asked, hackers invariably relate this to the famous scene in
   Lewis Carroll's `Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' in which
   Alice confronts magic munchies labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink
   Me".

real estate: n. May be used for any critical resource measured in
   units of area.  Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the
   area available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit
   (see also {nanoacre}).  May also be used of floor space in a
   {dinosaur pen}, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether
   physical or electronic).

real hack: n. A {crock}.  This is sometimes used affectionately;
   see {hack}.

real operating system: n. The sort the speaker is used to.  People
   from the academic community are likely to issue comments like
   "System V?  Why don't you use a *real* operating system?",
   people from the commercial/industrial UNIX sector are known to
   complain "BSD?  Why don't you use a *real* operating
   system?", and people from IBM object "UNIX?  Why don't
   you use a *real* operating system?"  See {holy wars},
   {religious issues}, {proprietary}, {Get a real computer!}

real programmer: [indirectly, from the book `Real Men Don't
   Eat Quiche'] n. A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed
   of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even
   when justified by experience.  The archetypal `real programmer'
   likes to program on the {bare metal} and is very good at same,
   remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever
   programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit
   his code because full-screen editors are for wimps.  Real
   Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been {bum}med
   into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture.  Real
   Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was
   hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to
   understand."  Real Programmers can make machines do things that
   were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really
   happy unless doing so.  A Real Programmer's code can awe with its
   fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls.  Real
   Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on
   their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers ---
   because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand
   their code in order to change it.  Their successors generally
   consider it a {Good Thing} that there aren't many Real
   Programmers around any more.  For a famous (and somewhat more
   positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see "The Story of
   Mel" in appendix A.

Real Soon Now: [orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by
   Jerry Pournelle's column in `BYTE'] adv. 1. Supposed to be available
   (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to
   somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.  2. When one's
   gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other
   words, don't hold your breath).  Often abbreviated RSN.

real time: 1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a
   program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of
   response time (typically milli- or microseconds).  Process control
   at a chemical plant is the classic example.  Such applications
   often require special operating systems (because everything else
   must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware.
   2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are watching
   or waiting.  "I asked her how to find the calling procedure's
   program counter on the stack and she came up with an algorithm in
   real time."

real user: n. 1. A commercial user.  One who is paying *real*
   money for his computer usage.  2. A non-hacker.  Someone using the
   system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.)
   other than pure exploration.  See {user}.  Hackers who are also
   students may also be real users.  "I need this fixed so I can do a
   problem set.  I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real
   user."  See also {luser}.

Real World: n. 1. Those institutions at which `programming' may
   be used in the same sentence as `FORTRAN', `{COBOL}',
   `RPG', `{IBM}', `DBASE', etc.  Places where programs do such
   commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as
   generating payroll checks and invoices.  2. The location of
   non-programmers and activities not related to programming.  3. A
   bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and
   in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see
   {code grinder}).  4. Anywhere outside a university.  "Poor
   fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World."  Used
   pejoratively by those not in residence there.  In conversation,
   talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike
   speaking of a deceased person.  See also {fear and loathing},
   {mundane}, and {uninteresting}.

reality check: n. 1. The simplest kind of test of software or
   hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is
   and seeing if you get 4.  The software equivalent of a
   {smoke test}.  2. The act of letting a {real user} try out
   prototype software.  Compare {sanity check}.

reaper: n. A {prowler} that {GFR}s files.  A file removed in
   this way is said to have been `reaped'.

rectangle slinger: n. See {polygon pusher}.

recursion: n. See {recursion}.  See also {tail recursion}.

recursive acronym:: pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition
   is to choose acronyms that refer humorously to themselves or to
   other acronyms.  The classic examples were two MIT editors called
   EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE
   Initially").  More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called
   LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and {GNU} (q.v.,
   sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!" --- and a company with
   the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".
   See also {mung}, {EMACS}.

Red Book: n. 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
   references on PostScript (`PostScript Language Reference
   Manual', Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985; QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN
   0-201-10174-2); the others are known as the {Green Book} and
   the {Blue Book}.  2. Informal name for one of the 3 standard
   references on Smalltalk (`Smalltalk-80: The Interactive
   Programming Environment' by Adele Goldberg (Addison-Wesley, 1984;
   QA76.8.S635G638; ISBN 0-201-11372-4); this too is associated with
   blue and green books).  3. Any of the 1984 standards issued by the
   CCITT eighth plenary assembly.  Until now, these have changed color
   each review cycle (1988 was {Blue Book}, 1992 will be {Green
   Book}); however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be
   dropped before 1992.  These include, among other things, the
   X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards.  4. The
   new version of the {Green Book} (sense 4) --- IEEE 1003.1-1990, a.k.a
   ISO 9945-1 --- is (because of the color and the fact that it is
   printed on A4 paper) known in the U.S.A. as "the Ugly Red Book
   That Won't Fit On The Shelf" and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book
   That's A Sensible Size".  5. The NSA `Trusted Network
   Interpretation' companion to the {Orange Book}.  See also
   {{book titles}}.

regexp: /reg'eksp/ [UNIX] n. (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex')
   1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular
   expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by UNIX
   utilities such as `grep(1)', `sed(1)', and `awk(1)'.
   These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those
   described under {glob}.  For purposes of this lexicon, it is
   sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character
   sets using `^'; thus, one can specify `any non-alphabetic
   character' with `[^A-Za-z]'.  2. Name of a well-known PD
   regexp-handling package in portable C, written by revered USENETter
   Henry Spencer (henry@zoo.toronto.edu).

reincarnation, cycle of: n. See {cycle of reincarnation}.

reinvent the wheel: v. To design or implement a tool equivalent to
   an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so
   is silly or a waste of time.  This is often a valid criticism.
   On the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some
   kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them
   right.  On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to
   come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset
   axle.

religious issues: n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised
   without touching off {holy wars}, such as "What is the best
   operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail
   reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?",
   "What should we add to the new Jargon File?"  See {holy wars};
   see also {theology}, {bigot}.

   This term is an example of {ha ha only serious}.  People
   actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense
   attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible.
   The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the
   crossfire is mumble {Get a life!} and leave --- unless, of course,
   one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct
   choices are being slammed.

replicator: n. Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself;
   this could be a living organism, an idea (see {meme}), a program
   (see {worm}, {wabbit}, and {virus}), a pattern in a cellular
   automaton (see {life}, sense 1), or (speculatively) a robot or
   {nanobot}.  It is even claimed by some that {{UNIX}} and {C}
   are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see
   {UNIX conspiracy}.

reply: n. See {followup}.

reset: [the MUD community] v. In AberMUD, to bring all dead mobiles
   to life and move items back to their initial starting places. New
   players who can't find anything shout "Reset! Reset!" quite a bit.
   Higher-level players shout back "No way!" since they know where
   points are to be found.  Used in {RL}, it means to put things back
   to the way they were when you found them.

restriction: n. A {bug} or design error that limits a program's
   capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can
   quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a {feature}.  Often
   used (esp. by {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though
   some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all
   along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints of a
   nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these claims are
   almost invariably false).

   Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever choosing a
   quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a
   power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1.  If you impose a limit of
   17 items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number --- on
   the other hand, a limit of 15 or 16 suggests some deep reason
   (involving 0- or 1-based indexing in binary) and you will get less
   {flamage} for it.  Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are
   always especially suspect.

retcon: /ret'kon/ [`retroactive continuity', from the USENET
   newsgroup rec.arts.comics] 1. n. The common situation in pulp
   fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story `reveals'
   things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the
   `facts' the same (thus preserving continuity) while completely
   changing their interpretation.  E.g., revealing that a whole season
   of "Dallas" was a dream was a retcon.  2. vt. To write such a
   story about a character or fictitious object.  "Byrne has
   retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer unbreakable."
   "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic
   dreams."  "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed person
   into a sentient vegetable."

   [This is included because it is a good example of hackish linguistic
   innovation in a field completely unrelated to computers.  The word
   `retcon' will probably spread through comics fandom and lose its
   association with hackerdom within a couple of years; for the
   record, it started here. --- ESR]

RETI: v. Syn. {RTI}

retrocomputing: /ret'-roh-k*m-pyoo'ting/ n. Refers to emulations
   of way-behind-the-state-of-the-art hardware or software, or
   implementations of never-was-state-of-the-art; esp. if such
   implementations are elaborate practical jokes and/or parodies of
   more `serious' designs.  Perhaps the most widely distributed
   retrocomputing utility was the `pnch(6)' or `bcd(6)'
   program on V7 and other early UNIX versions, which would accept up
   to 80 characters of text argument and display the corresponding
   pattern in {{punched card}} code.  Other well-known retrocomputing
   hacks have included the programming language {INTERCAL}, a
   {JCL}-emulating shell for UNIX, the card-punch-emulating editor
   named 029, and various elaborate PDP-11 hardware emulators and RT-11
   OS emulators written just to keep an old, sourceless {Zork} binary
   running.

RFC: /R-F-C/ [Request For Comment] n. One of a long-established
   series of numbered Internet standards widely followed by commercial
   and PD software in the Internet and UNIX communities.  Perhaps the
   single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet
   mail-format standard).  The RFCs are unusual in that they are
   floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and
   reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated
   through an institution such as ANSI.  For this reason, they remain
   known as RFCs even once adopted.

RFE: /R-F-E/ n. 1. [techspeak] Request For Enhancement.  2. [from
   `Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet, a system
   (originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among Sun
   SPARCstations over the ethernet.

rib site: [by analogy with {backbone site}] n. A machine that
   has an on-demand high-speed link to a {backbone site} and serves
   as a regional distribution point for lots of third-party traffic in
   email and USENET news.  Compare {leaf site}, {backbone site}.

rice box: [from ham radio slang] n. Any Asian-made commodity
   computer, esp. an 80x86-based machine built to IBM PC-compatible
   ISA or EISA-bus standards.

Right Thing: n. That which is {compellingly} the correct or
   appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc.  Often capitalized, always
   emphasized in speech as though capitalized.  Use of this term often
   implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree.  "What's the
   right thing for LISP to do when it sees `(mod a 0)'?  Should
   it return `a', or give a divide-by-0 error?"  Oppose
   {Wrong Thing}.

RL: // [MUD community] n. Real Life.  "Firiss laughs in RL"
   means that Firiss's player is laughing.  Oppose {VR}.

roach: [Bell Labs] vt. To destroy, esp. of a data structure.  Hardware
   gets {toast}ed or {fried}, software gets roached.

robust: adj. Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to
   recover gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and
   situations in a given environment.  One step below {bulletproof}.
   Carries the additional connotation of elegance in addition to just
   careful attention to detail.  Compare {smart}, oppose
   {brittle}.

rococo: adj. {Baroque} in the extreme.  Used to imply that a
   program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of
   gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the
   underlying design.  Called after the later and more extreme forms
   of Baroque architecture and decoration prevalent during the
   mid-1700s in Europe.  Fred Brooks (the man who coined
   {second-system effect}) said: "Every program eventually becomes
   rococo, and then rubble."

rogue: [UNIX] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character
   graphics, written under BSD UNIX and subsequently ported to other
   UNIX systems.  The original BSD `curses(3)' screen-handling
   package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support
   `rogue(6)' and has since become one of UNIX's most important
   and heavily used application libraries.  Nethack, Omega, Larn, and
   an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the
   inspiration provided by `rogue(6)'.  See {nethack}.

room-temperature IQ: [IBM] quant. 80 or below.  Used in describing the
   expected intelligence range of the {luser}.  "Well, but
   how's this interface going to play with the room-temperature IQ
   crowd?"  See {drool-proof paper}.  This is a much more insulting
   phrase in countries that use Celsius thermometers.

root: [UNIX] n. 1. The {superuser} account that ignores
   permission bits, user number 0 on a UNIX system.  This account
   has the user name `root'.  The term {avatar} is also used.
   2. The top node of the system directory structure (home directory
   of the root user).  3. By extension, the privileged
   system-maintenance login on any OS.  See {root mode}, {go root}.

root mode: n. Syn. with {wizard mode} or `wheel mode'.  Like
   these, it is often generalized to describe privileged states in
   systems other than OSes.

rot13: /rot ther'teen/ [USENET: from `rotate alphabet
   13 places'] n., v. The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that replaces
   each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back along
   the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur ohgyre
   qvq vg!"  Most USENET news reading and posting programs include a
   rot13 feature.  It is used to enclose the text in a sealed wrapper
   that the reader must choose to open --- e.g., for posting things
   that might offend some readers, or answers to puzzles.  A major
   advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it
   is self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and
   decoding.

rotary debugger: [Commodore] n. Essential equipment for those
   late-night or early-morning debugging sessions.  Mainly used as
   sustenance for the hacker.  Comes in many decorator colors, such as
   Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage.  See {pizza, ANSI standard}.

RSN: // adj. See {Real Soon Now}.

RTFAQ: /R-T-F-A-Q/ [USENET: primarily written, by analogy with
   {RTFM}] imp. Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that
   the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's {FAQ list}
   before posting questions.

RTFM: /R-T-F-M/ [UNIX] imp. Acronym for `Read The Fucking
   Manual'.  1. Used by {guru}s to brush off questions they
   consider trivial or annoying.  Compare {Don't do that, then!}
   2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just
   asking out of {randomness}.  "No, I can't figure out how to
   interface UNIX to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM."  Unlike
   sense 1, this use is considered polite.  See also
   {RTFAQ}, {RTM}.  The variant RTFS, where S = `Standard',
   has also been reported.  Compare {UTSL}.

RTI: /R-T-I/ interj. The mnemonic for the `return from
   interrupt' instruction on many computers including the 6502 and
   6800.  The variant `RETI' is found among former Z80 hackers (almost
   nobody programs these things in assembler anymore).  Equivalent to
   "Now, where was I?" or used to end a conversational digression.
   See {pop}; see also {POPJ}.

RTM: /R-T-M/ [USENET: acronym for `Read The Manual']
   1. Politer variant of {RTFM}.  2. Robert T. Morris, perpetrator
   of the great Internet worm of 1988; villain to many, na"ive hacker
   gone wrong to a few.  Morris claimed that the worm that brought
   the Internet to its knees was a benign experiment that got out of
   control as the result of a coding error.  After the storm of negative
   publicity that followed this blunder, Morris's name on ITS was
   hacked from RTM to {RTFM}.

rude: [WPI] adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written.  2. Functionally
   poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use because of
   gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions.  See {cuspy}.

runes: pl.n. 1. Anything that requires {heavy wizardry} or
   {black art} to {parse}: core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code
   in a language you haven't a clue how to read.  Compare {casting
   the runes}, {Great Runes}.  2. Special display characters (for
   example, the high-half graphics on an IBM PC).

runic: adj. Syn. {obscure}.  VMS fans sometimes refer to UNIX as
   `Runix'; UNIX fans return the compliment by expanding VMS to `Very
   Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais Syst`eme' (French; lit.
   "Cowlike Bad System", idiomatically "Bitchy Bad System").

rusty iron: n. Syn. {tired iron}.  It has been claimed that this
   is the inevitable fate of {water MIPS}.

rusty memory: n. Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based magnetic
   media (esp. tape and the pre-Winchester removable disk packs used
   in {washing machine}s).  Compare {donuts}.