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         Doodah Humor Magazine      Volume 4, Number 2
                                       September, 1991
----------------------------------------------------------------

Editorial Offices:

Charlie Radd, Editor and publisher
Paul Forrester, supervisory editor

plus a staff of K's submitting articles under various aliases
and/or real names.

The editor can be reached through the Politics Conference on the
ILink  network found  on PCBoard.  No guarantee is made that you
will receive  a reply.  We read the  mail, but we may or may not
answer it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              In This Issue:
                                Editorial
                 We finish off "The Hacker's Dictionary"
                              Not much else

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            (Late) EDITORIAL

Yo-ho!   This  is  our February issue.  Brrrrrrr, how about that weather!  
If  you  wanna know a secret (do you promise not to tell?), it's actually 
late  October,  1988, here.  Almost Hallowe'en.  The radio is saying that 
the  forecast for Chicago calls for SNOW!  That's pretty unusual for this 
early  in the season for the Midwest, which is where we are, and which is 
where  we  DON'T  want  the  snow  to  be...yet.   We  need the moisture, 
especially  after  the  summer  drought.  You remember that drought, "the 
worst  in  500  years",  and  we get a drought just like it every five to 
eight  years.   It's  the  same with the snow -- "Worst snow I ever seed" 
(spoken in Hillbilly), and it snows like that at least every other year.

    We  here  in the Midwest have it lucky.  Unlike the mountainous areas 
or  the  Northeast where they have other means of transportation, such as 
Snow  Kats, snowmobiles, or skis, we DRIVE in the snow.  I'm surprised at 
areas  like  Atlanta,  which  practically  shuts down when the staggering 
amount  of half an inch falls.  I won't make any bones about it.  We have 
probably  the  POOREST  drivers  in  the  nation.  When the roads get the 
slightest  bit  moist,  our  interstates  look  like  one big junqueyard.  
These  people simply DON'T know how to drive on wet roads.  However, once 
the  snow gets deep enough to get the morons off the road, things go very 
well.   I  was  in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1981 when FIFTEEN inches of snow 
fell  on  the  area.   It's  odd  to  be  wading hip-deep in snow and the 
temperature  is 87!  The whole place was understandably shut down.  Heck, 
fifteen  inches  of  snow would probably do that to Buffalo, New York, as 
well!   Anyway, I was working at a TV station -- I had to spend the night 
there,  having  signed  off, and no one would have been able to get there 
the  next  morning.    When  I did get off work and went back to my hotel 
around  11  the next morning, I WAS BREAKING FRESH SNOW!  No one had been 
through  there  in  the  preceeding  12  hours!   The Western Auto people 
looked  at  me like I was crazy when I asked for a can of that windshield 
de-icer.  Heck, they just barely had ice scrapers!

    Fortunately,   the   snow  only  lasted  about  four  days,  and  the 
temperature  got  back  up  into  the  high nineties and the snow melted, 
leaving the area even swampier than usual.  Bet the 'gators loved it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

           Now for the conclusion of "The Hacker's Dictionary"


                  The Hacker's Dictionary, Parts 3 and 4

JIFFY n. 1. Interval of CPU time, commonly 1/60 second or 1
   millisecond.  2. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever.
   "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never.

JOCK n. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute
   force programs.  The term is particularly well-suited for systems
   programmers.

J. RANDOM  See RANDOM.

JRST (jerst) [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v. To suddenly
   change subjects.  Usage: rather rare.  "Jack be nimble, Jack be
   quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick."

JSYS (jay'sis), pl. JSI (jay'sigh) [Jump to SYStem] See UUO.

KLUGE (kloodj) alt. KLUDGE [from the German "kluge", clever] n. 1. A
   Rube Goldberg device in hardware or software.  2. A clever
   programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an
   efficient, if not clear, manner.  Often used to repair bugs.  Often
   verges on being a crock.  3. Something that works for the wrong
   reason.  4. v. To insert a kluge into a program.  "I've kluged this
   routine to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better
   way."  Also KLUGE UP.  5. KLUGE AROUND: To avoid by inserting a
   kluge.  6. (WPI) A feature which is implemented in a RUDE manner.

LDB (lid'dib) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To extract from the
   middle.

LIFE n. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway, and
   first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American,
   October 1970).

LINE FEED (standard ASCII terminology) 1. v. To feed the paper through
   a terminal by one line (in order to print on the next line).  2. n.
   The "character" which causes the terminal to perform this action.

LINE STARVE (MIT) Inverse of LINE FEED.

LOGICAL [from the technical term "logical device", wherein a physical
   device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj. Understood to have
   a meaning not necessarily corresponding to reality.  E.g., if a
   person who has long held a certain post (e.g., Les Earnest at SAIL)
   left and was replaced, the replacement would for a while be known
   as the "logical Les Earnest".  The word VIRTUAL is also used.  At
   SAIL, "logical" compass directions denote a coordinate system in
   which "logical north" is toward San Francisco, "logical west" is
   toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between
   physical (true) north near SF and physical west near San Jose.
   (The best rule of thumb here is that El Camino Real by definition
   always runs logical north-and-south.)

LOSE [from MIT jargon] v. 1. To fail.  A program loses when it
   encounters an exceptional condition.  2. To be exceptionally
   unaesthetic.  3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as
   opposed to ignorant).  4. DESERVE TO LOSE: v. Said of someone who
   willfully does the wrong thing; humorously, if one uses a feature
   known to be marginal.  What is meant is that one deserves the
   consequences of one's losing actions.  "Boy, anyone who tries to
   use MULTICS deserves to lose!"
   LOSE LOSE - a reply or comment on a situation.

LOSER n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or
   person.  Especially "real loser".

LOSS n. Something which loses.  WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection.

LOSSAGE n. The result of a bug or malfunction.

LPT (lip'it) n. Line printer, of course.

LUSER  See USER.

MACROTAPE n. An industry standard reel of tape, as opposed to a
   MICROTAPE.

MAGIC adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain.
   (Arthur C. Clarke once said that magic was as-yet-not-understood
   science.)  "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic
   bits."  "This routine magically computes the parity of an eight-bit
   byte in three instructions."  2. (Stanford) A feature not generally
   publicized which allows something otherwise impossible, or a
   feature formerly in that category but now unveiled.  Example: The
   keyboard commands which override the screen-hiding features.

MARGINAL adj. 1. Extremely small.  "A marginal increase in core can
   decrease GC time drastically."  See EPSILON.  2. Of extremely small
   merit.  "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me."
   3. Of extremely small probability of winning.  "The power supply
   was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it crapped out."  4.
   MARGINALLY: adv. Slightly.  "The ravs here are only marginally
   better than at Small Eating Place."

MICROTAPE n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a
   MACROTAPE.  This was the official DEC term for the stuff until
   someone consed up the word "DECtape".

MISFEATURE n. A feature which eventually screws someone, possibly
   because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved.
   It is not the same as a bug because fixing it involves a gross
   philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.
   Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was
   made whose parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the
   judgment of the implementors).  "Well, yeah, it's kind of a
   misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but we're
   stuck with it for now."

MOBY [seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago.
   Entered the world of AI with the Fabritek 256K moby memory of
   MIT-AI.  Derived from Melville's "Moby Dick" (some say from "Moby
   Pickle").] 1. adj. Large, immense, or complex.  "A moby frob."  2.
   n. The maximum address space of a machine, hence 3. n. 256K words,
   the size of a PDP-10 moby.  (The maximum address space means the
   maximum normally addressable space, as opposed to the amount of
   physical memory a machine can have.  Thus the MIT PDP-10s each have
   two mobies, usually referred to as the "low moby" (0-777777) and
   "high moby" (1000000-1777777), or as "moby 0" and "moby 1".  MIT-AI
   has four mobies of address space: moby 2 is the PDP-6 memory, and
   moby 3 the PDP-11 interface.)  In this sense "moby" is often used
   as a generic unit of either address space (18. bits' worth) or of
   memory (about a megabyte, or 9/8 megabyte (if one accounts for
   difference between 32.- and 36.-bit words), or 5/4 megacharacters).
   4. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually
   used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a
   competent hacker.  "So, moby Knight, how's the CONS machine doing?"
   5. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in "moby sixes",
   "moby ones", etc.
   MOBY FOO, MOBY WIN, MOBY LOSS: standard emphatic forms.
   FOBY MOO: a spoonerism due to Greenblatt.

MODE n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the
   state.  "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode."  Usage: in its
   jargon sense, MODE is most often said of people, though it is
   sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects.  "If you're on
   a TTY, E will switch to non-display mode."  In particular, see DAY
   MODE, NIGHT MODE, and YOYO MODE; also COM MODE, TALK MODE, and
   GABRIEL MODE.

MODULO prep. Except for.  From mathematical terminology: one can
   consider saying that 4=22 "except for the 9's" (4=22 mod 9).
   "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug."

MOON n. 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
   hackers.  See PHASE OF THE MOON.  2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).

MUMBLAGE n. The topic of one's mumbling (see MUMBLE).  "All that
   mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear
   what it is or how it works, or like "all that crap" when "mumble"
   is being used as an implicit replacement for obscenities.

MUMBLE interj. 1. Said when the correct response is either too
   complicated to enunciate or the speaker has not thought it out.
   Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance
   to get into a big long discussion.  "Well, mumble."  2. Sometimes
   used as an expression of disagreement.  "I think we should buy it."
   "Mumble!"  Common variant: MUMBLE FROTZ.  3. Yet another
   metasyntactic variable, like FOO.

MUNCH (often confused with "mung", q.v.) v. To transform information
   in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation.
   To trace down a data structure.  Related to CRUNCH (q.v.), but
   connotes less pain.

MUNCHING SQUARES n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1, which
   employs a trivial computation (involving XOR'ing of x-y display
   coordinates - see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an impressive
   display of moving, growing, and shrinking squares.  The hack
   usually has a parameter (usually taken from toggle switches) which
   when well-chosen can produce amazing effects.  Some of these,
   discovered recently on the LISP machine, have been christened
   MUNCHING TRIANGLES, MUNCHING W'S, and MUNCHING MAZES.

MUNG (variant: MUNGE) [recursive acronym for Mung Until No Good] v. 1.
   To make changes to a file, often large-scale, usually irrevocable.
   Occasionally accidental.  See BLT.  2. To destroy, usually
   accidentally, occasionally maliciously.  The system only mungs
   things maliciously.

N adj. 1. Some large and indeterminate number of objects; "There were
   N bugs in that crock!"; also used in its original sense of a
   variable name.  2. An arbitrarily large (and perhaps infinite)
   number.  3. A variable whose value is specified by the current
   context.  "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner
   for N-1."  4. NTH: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N. "Now for the
   Nth and last time..."  In the specific context "Nth-year grad
   student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4, and is usually 5
   or more.  See also 69.

NIGHT MODE  See PHASE (of people).

NIL [from LISP terminology for "false"] No.  Usage: used in reply to a
   question, particularly one asked using the "-P" convention.  See T.

OBSCURE adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply a
   total lack of comprehensibility.  "The reason for that last crash
   is obscure."  "FIND's command syntax is obscure."  MODERATELY
   OBSCURE implies that it could be figured out but probably isn't
   worth the trouble.

OPEN n. Abbreviation for "open (or left) parenthesis", used when
   necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity.  To read aloud the LISP form
   (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open def-fun foo, open
   eks close, open, plus ekx one, close close."  See CLOSE.

PARSE [from linguistic terminology] v. 1. To determine the syntactic
   structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard
   English meaning).  Example: "That was the one I saw you."  "I can't
   parse that."  2. More generally, to understand or comprehend.
   "It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the
   zotz."  "I can't parse that."  3. Of fish, to have to remove the
   bones yourself (usually at a Chinese restaurant).  "I object to
   parsing fish" means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced
   one is okay."  A "parsed fish" has been deboned.  There is some
   controversy over whether "unparsed" should mean "bony", or also
   mean "deboned".

PATCH 1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a
   quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature.  A patch
   may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated
   permanently into the program.  2. v. To insert a patch into a piece
   of code.

PDL (piddle or puddle) [acronym for Push Down List] n. 1. A LIFO queue
   (stack); more loosely, any priority queue; even more loosely, any
   queue.  A person's pdl is the set of things he has to do in the
   future.  One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having
   risen to the top of the pdl.  "I'm afraid I've got real work to do,
   so this'll have to be pushed way down on my pdl."  See PUSH and
   POP.  2. Dave Lebling (PDL@DM).

PESSIMAL [Latin-based antonym for "optimal"] adj. Maximally bad.
   "This is a pessimal situation."

PESSIMIZING COMPILER n. A compiler that produces object code that is
   worse than the straightforward or obvious translation.

PHANTOM n. (Stanford) The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON (q.v.).  Typical
   phantoms include the accounting program, the news-wire monitor, and
   the lpt and xgp spoolers.

PHASE (of people) 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule
   with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle.  This is a useful
   concept among people who often work at night according to no fixed
   schedule.  It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as
   six hours/day on a regular basis.  "What's your phase?"  "I've been
   getting in about 8 PM lately, but I'm going to work around to the
   day schedule by Friday."  A person who is roughly 12 hours out of
   phase is sometimes said to be in "night mode".  (The term "day
   mode" is also used, but less frequently.)  2. CHANGE PHASE THE HARD
   WAY: To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a
   different phase.  3. CHANGE PHASE THE EASY WAY: To stay asleep etc.

PHASE OF THE MOON n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which
   something is said to depend.  Sometimes implies unreliability of
   whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on
   conditions nobody has been able to determine.  "This feature
   depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo
   switch set, and on the phase of the moon."

PLUGH [from the Adventure game] v. See XYZZY.

POM n. Phase of the moon (q.v.).  Usage: usually used in the phrase
   "POM dependent" which means flakey (q.v.).

POP [based on the stack operation that removes the top of a stack, and
   the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack]
   dialect: POPJ (pop-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure return
   instruction.  v. To return from a digression.  By verb doubling,
   "Popj, popj" means roughly, "Now let's see, where were we?"

PPN (pip'in) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n.
   1. A combination `project' (directory name) and programmer name,
   used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user.  For
   instance, "FOO,BAR" would be the FOO directory for user BAR.  Since
   the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name is
   usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or
   other special sequence.  (Standard DEC setup is to have two octal
   numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.)  2.
   Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone.  "I want
   to send you some mail; what's your ppn?"  Usage: not used at MIT,
   since ITS does not use ppn's.  The equivalent terms would be UNAME
   and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not used except in
   their technical senses.

PROTOCOL  See DO PROTOCOL.

PSEUDOPRIME n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points)
   with one point missing.

PTY (pity) n. Pseudo TTY, a simulated TTY used to run a job under the
   supervision of another job.
   PTYJOB (pity-job) n. The job being run on the PTY.  Also a common
   general-purpose program for creating and using PTYs.
   This is DEC and SAIL terminology; the MIT equivalent is STY.

PUNT [from the punch line of an old joke: "Drop back 15 yards and
   punt"] v. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying.

PUSH [based on the stack operation that puts the current information
   on a stack, and the fact that procedure call addresses are saved on
   the stack] dialect: PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure
   call instruction.  v. To enter upon a digression, to save the
   current discussion for later.

QUES (kwess) 1. n. The question mark character ("?").  2. interj.
   What?  Also QUES QUES?  See WALL.

QUUX [invented by Steele.  Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent
   verb QUUXO, QUUXARE, QUUXANDUM IRI; noun form variously QUUX
   (plural QUUCES, Anglicized to QUUXES) and QUUXU (genitive plural is
   QUUXUUM, four U's in seven letters).] 1. Originally, a meta-word
   like FOO and FOOBAR.  Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this
   purpose when he was young and naive and not yet interacting with
   the real computing community.  Many people invent such words; this
   one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a little.
   2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very little disgust, and is
   uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it.  3. n. Refers to
   one of four people who went to Boston Latin School and eventually
   to MIT:
        THE GREAT QUUX:  Guy L. Steele Jr.
        THE LESSER QUUX:  David J. Littleboy
        THE MEDIOCRE QUUX:  Alan P. Swide
        THE MICRO QUUX:  Sam Lewis
   (This taxonomy is said to be similarly applied to three Frankston
   brothers at MIT.)  QUUX, without qualification, usually refers to
   The Great Quux, who is somewhat infamous for light verse and for
   the "Crunchly" cartoons.  4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a
   QUUX.

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.  Frivolous; unproductive; undirected
   (pejorative).  "He's just a random loser."  4. Incoherent or
   inelegant; 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. Gratuitously wrong,
   i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason.  For example, a
   program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless
   way, or a routine that could easily have been coded using only
   three ac's, but randomly uses seven for assorted non-overlapping
   purposes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving
   four extra ac's.  6. In no particular order, though deterministic.
   "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is
   chosen randomly."  n. 7. A random hacker; used particularly of high
   school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the
   way.  8. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall.
   J. RANDOM is often prefixed to a noun to make a "name" out of it
   (by comparison to common names such as "J. Fred Muggs").  The most
   common uses are "J. Random Loser" and "J. Random Nurd" ("Should
   J. Random Loser be allowed to gun down other people?"), but it
   can be used just as an elaborate version of RANDOM in any sense.
   [See also the note at the end of the entry for HACK.]

RANDOMNESS n. An unexplainable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance.
   Also, a hack or crock which depends on a complex combination
   of coincidences (or rather, the combination upon which the
   crock depends).  "This hack can output characters 40-57 by
   putting the character in the accumulator field of an XCT and
   then extracting 6 bits -- the low two bits of the XCT opcode
   are the right thing."  "What randomness!"

RAPE v. To (metaphorically) screw someone or something, violently.
   Usage: 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."

RAVE (WPI) v. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.  2. To
   speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very
   little.  3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to
   correct the difficulty.  4. To purposely annoy another person
   verbally.  5. To evangelize.  See FLAME.  Also used to describe
   a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting.

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 (research project, course, etc.).  See USER.

REAL WORLD, THE n. 1. In programming, those institutions at which
   programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL,
   RPG, IBM, etc.  2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers
   and activities not related to programming.  3. A universe in which
   the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working
   hours are defined as 9 to 5.  4. The location of the status quo.
   5. 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 talking about a deceased
   person.

RECURSION n. See RECURSION, TAIL RECURSION.

REL  See BIN.

RIGHT THING, THE n. That which is "obviously" the correct or
   appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc.  Use of this term often
   implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree.  "Never let
   your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!"  "What's the
   right thing for LISP to do when it reads '(.)'?"

RUDE (WPI) adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written.  2. Functionally
   poor, e.g. a program which is very difficult to use because of
   gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions.  See CUSPY.

SACRED adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a
   metaphorical extension of the standard meaning).  "Accumulator 7 is
   sacred to the UUO handler."  Often means that anyone may look at
   the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is
   sacred to.

SAGA (WPI) n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N random
   broken people.

SAV (save)  See BIN.

SEMI 1. n. Abbreviation for "semicolon", when speaking.  "Commands to
   GRIND are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is
   ";;*", not 1/4 of a star.  2. Prefix with words such as
   "immediately", as a qualifier.  "When is the system coming up?"
   "Semi-immediately."

SERVER n. A kind of DAEMON which performs a service for the requester,
   which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the
   server runs.

SHIFT LEFT (RIGHT) LOGICAL [from any of various machines' instruction
   sets] 1. v. To move oneself to the left (right).  To move out of
   the way.  2. imper. Get out of that (my) seat!  Usage: often used
   without the "logical", or as "left shift" instead of "shift left".
   Sometimes heard as LSH (lish), from the PDP-10 instruction set.

SHR (share or shir)  See BIN.

SHRIEK  See EXCL.  (Occasional CMU usage.)

69 adj. Large quantity.  Usage: Exclusive to MIT-AI.  "Go away, I have
   69 things to do to DDT before worrying about fixing the bug in the
   phase of the moon output routine..."
   [Note: Actually, any number less than 100 but large enough to have
   no obvious magic properties will be recognized as a "large number".
   There is no denying that "69" is the local favorite.  I don't know
   whether its origins are related to the obscene interpretation, but
   I do know that 69 decimal = 105 octal, and 69 hexadecimal = 105
   decimal, which is a nice property. - GLS]

*****  End of "The Hackers Dictionary", part 3 of 4  *****
"The Hacker's Dictionary"Part 4 of 4     (19k)

SLOP n. 1. A one-sided fudge factor (q.v.).  Often introduced to avoid
   the possibility of a fencepost error (q.v.).  2. (used by compiler
   freaks) The ratio of code generated by a compiler to hand-compiled
   code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you
   didn't do it yourself.

SLURP v. To read a large data file entirely into core before working
   on it.  "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT."

SMART adj. Said of a program that does the Right Thing (q.v.) in a
   wide variety of complicated circumstances.  There is a difference
   between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in
   particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs.

SMOKING CLOVER n. A psychedelic color munch due to Gosper.

SMOP [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. A piece of code, not
   yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than
   its complexity.  Usage: used to refer to a program that could
   obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble.

SNARF v. To grab, esp. a large document or file for the purpose of
   using it either with or without the author's permission.  See BLT.
   Variant: SNARF (IT) DOWN.  (At MIT on ITS, DDT has a command called
   :SNARF which grabs a job from another (inferior) DDT.)

SOFTWARE ROT n. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been
   deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will
   stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if "nothing has
   changed".  Also known as "bit decay".

SOFTWARILY adv. In a way pertaining to software.  "The system is
   softwarily unreliable."  The adjective "softwary" is NOT used.  See
   HARDWARILY.

SOS 1. (ess-oh-ess) n. A losing editor, SON OF STOPGAP.  2. (sahss) v.
   Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set.

SPAZZ 1. v. To behave spastically or erratically; more often, to
   commit a single gross error.  "Boy, is he spazzing!"  2. n. One who
   spazzes.  "Boy, what a spazz!"  3. n. The result of spazzing.
   "Boy, what a spazz!"

SPLAT n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the
   ASCII star ("*") character.  2. (MIT) Name used by some people for
   the ASCII pound-sign ("#") character.  3. (Stanford) Name used by
   some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character.
   (This character is also called "circle-x", "blobby", and "frob",
   among other names.)  4. (Stanford) Name for the semi-mythical
   extended ASCII circle-plus character.  5. Canonical name for an
   output routine that outputs whatever the the local interpretation
   of splat is.  Usage: nobody really agrees what character "splat"
   is, but the term is common.

SUPDUP v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the SUPDUP
   program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special display
   protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites.  Sometimes
   abbreviated to SD.

STATE n. Condition, situation.  "What's the state of NEWIO?"  "It's
   winning away."  "What's your state?"  "I'm about to gronk out."  As
   a special case, "What's the state of the world?" (or, more silly,
   "State-of-world-P?") means "What's new?" or "What's going on?"

STOPPAGE n. Extreme lossage (see LOSSAGE) resulting in something
   (usually vital) becoming completely unusable.

STY (pronounced "sty", not spelled out) n. A pseudo-teletype, which is
   a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty on
   the other.  Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline from
   its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to another
   tty, thereby providing a "sub-tty").
   This is MIT terminology; the SAIL and DEC equivalent is PTY.

SUPERPROGRAMMER n. See "wizard", "hacker".  Usage: rare.  (Becoming
   more common among IBM and Yourdon types.)

SWAPPED adj. From the use of secondary storage devices to implement
   virtual memory in computer systems.  Something which is SWAPPED IN
   is available for immediate use in main memory, and otherwise is
   SWAPPED OUT.  Often used metaphorically to refer to people's
   memories ("I read TECO ORDER every few months to keep the
   information swapped in.") or to their own availability ("I'll swap
   you in as soon as I finish looking at this other problem.").

SYSTEM n. 1. The supervisor program on the computer.  2. Any
   large-scale program.  3. Any method or algorithm.  4. The way
   things are usually done.  Usage: a fairly ambiguous word.  "You
   can't beat the system."
   SYSTEM HACKER: one who hacks the system (in sense 1 only; for sense
   2 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP HACKER)

T [from LISP terminology for "true"] 1. Yes.  Usage: used in reply to
   a question, particularly one asked using the "-P" convention).  See
   NIL.  2. See TIME T.

TAIL RECURSION n. See TAIL RECURSION.

TALK MODE  See COM MODE.

TASTE n. (primarily MIT-DMS) The quality in programs which tends to be
   inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges
   programmed into it.  Also, TASTY, TASTEFUL, TASTEFULNESS.  "This
   feature comes in N tasty flavors."  Although TASTEFUL and FLAVORFUL
   are essentially synonyms, TASTE and FLAVOR are not.

TECO (tee'koe) [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] 1. n. A text
   editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody.  If
   all the dialects are included, TECO might well be the single most
   prolific editor in use.  Noted for its powerful pseudo-programming
   features and its incredibly hairy syntax.  2. v. To edit using the
   TECO editor in one of its infinite forms; sometimes used to mean
   "to edit" even when not using TECO!  Usage: rare at SAIL, where
   most people wouldn't touch TECO with a TENEX pole.
   [Historical note: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT TECO many
   years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor.  By now, TECO at
   MIT is highly display-oriented and is actually a language for
   writing editors, rather than an editor.  Meanwhile, the outside
   world's various versions of TECO remain almost the same as the MIT
   version of ten years ago.  DEC recently tried to discourage its
   use, but an underground movement of sorts kept it alive.]
   [Since this note was written I found out that DEC tried to force
   their hackers by administrative decision to use a hacked up and
   generally lobotomized version of SOS instead of TECO, and they
   revolted. - MRC]

TELNET v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the TELNET
   protocol.  TOPS-10 people use the word IMPCOM since that is the
   program name for them.  Sometimes abbreviated to TN.  "I usually TN
   over to SAIL just to read the AP News."

TENSE adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient.  A tense piece of
   code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes
   it was just based on a great idea.  A comment in a clever display
   routine by Mike Kazar: "This routine is so tense it will bring
   tears to your eyes.  Much thanks to Craig Everhart and James
   Gosling for inspiring this hack attack."  A tense programmer is one
   who produces tense code.

TERPRI (tur'pree) [from the LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP) function to
   start a new line of output] v. To output a CRLF (q.v.).

THEORY n. Used in the general sense of idea, plan, story, or set of
   rules.  "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?"  "What's the
   theory on dinner tonight?"  ("Chinatown, I guess.")  "What's the
   current theory on letting losers on during the day?"  "The theory
   behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw..."

THRASH v. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything
   useful.  Swapping systems which are overloaded waste most of their
   time moving pages into and out of core (rather than performing
   useful computation), and are therefore said to thrash.

TICK n. 1. Interval of time; basic clock time on the computer.
   Typically 1/60 second.  See JIFFY.  2. In simulations, the discrete
   unit of time that passes "between" iterations of the simulation
   mechanism.  In AI applications, this amount of time is often left
   unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is that caused
   things happen after their causes.  This sort of AI simulation is
   often pejoratively referred to as "tick-tick-tick" simulation,
   especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long,
   independent chains of causes is handwaved.

TIME T n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often
   used in conjunction with a later time T+1.  "We'll meet on campus
   at time T or at Louie's at time T+1."  2. SINCE (OR AT) TIME T
   EQUALS MINUS INFINITY: A long time ago; for as long as anyone can
   remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed.

TOOL v.i. To work; to study.  See HACK (def #9).

TRAP 1. n. A program interrupt, usually used specifically to refer to
   an interrupt caused by some illegal action taking place in the user
   program.  In most cases the system monitor performs some action
   related to the nature of the illegality, then returns control to
   the program.  See UUO.  2. v. To cause a trap.  "These instructions
   trap to the monitor."  Also used transitively to indicate the cause
   of the trap.  "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."

TTY (titty) n. Terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a
   noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor
   print quality.  Usage: antiquated (like the TTY's themselves).
   Sometimes used to refer to any terminal at all; sometimes used
   to refer to the particular terminal controlling a job.

TWEAK v. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value.  Also
   used synonymously with TWIDDLE.  See FROBNICATE and FUDGE FACTOR.

TWENEX n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC.  So named because
   TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the PDP-10.
   BBN developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN EXecutive), and
   in creating TOPS-20 for the DEC-20 DEC copied TENEX and adapted it
   for the 20.  Usage: DEC people cringe when they hear TOPS-20
   referred to as "Twenex", but the term seems to be catching on
   nevertheless.  Release 3 of TOPS-20 is sufficiently different from
   release 1 that some (not all) hackers have stopped calling it
   TWENEX, though the written abbreviation "20x" is still used.

TWIDDLE n. 1. tilde (ASCII 176, "~").  Also called "squiggle",
   "sqiggle" (sic--pronounced "skig'gul"), and "twaddle", but twiddle
   is by far the most common term.  2. A small and insignificant
   change to a program.  Usually fixes one bug and generates several
   new ones.  3. v. To change something in a small way.  Bits, for
   example, are often twiddled.  Twiddling a switch or knob implies
   much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see
   FROBNICATE.

UP adj. 1. Working, in order.  "The down escalator is up."  2. BRING
   UP: v. To create a working version and start it.  "They brought up
   a down system."

USER n. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.  One who
   asks questions.  Identified at MIT with "loser" by the spelling
   "luser".  See REAL USER.
   [Note by GLS: I don't agree with RF's definition at all.
   Basically, there are two classes of people who work with a program:
   there are implementors (hackers) and users (losers).  The users are
   looked down on by hackers to a mild degree because they don't
   understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory.
   (A few users who do are known as real winners.)  It is true that
   users ask questions (of necessity).  Very often they are annoying
   or downright stupid.]

UUO (you-you-oh) [short for "Un-Used Operation"] n. A DEC-10 system
   monitor call.  The term "Un-Used Operation" comes from the fact
   that, on DEC-10 systems, monitor calls are implemented as invalid
   or illegal machine instructions, which cause traps to the monitor
   (see TRAP).  The SAIL manual describing the available UUO's has a
   cover picture showing an unidentified underwater object.  See YOYO.
   [Note: DEC sales people have since decided that "Un-Used Operation"
   sounds bad, so UUO now stands for "Unimplemented User Operation".]
   Tenex and Twenex systems use the JSYS machine instruction (q.v.),
   which is halfway between a legal machine instruction and a UUO,
   since KA-10 Tenices implement it as a hardware instruction which
   can be used as an ordinary subroutine call (sort of a "pure JSR").

VANILLA adj. Ordinary flavor, standard.  See FLAVOR.  When used of
   food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with
   vanilla extract!  For example, "vanilla-flavored wonton soup" (or
   simply "vanilla wonton soup") means ordinary wonton soup, as
   opposed to hot and sour wonton soup.

VAXEN [from "oxen", perhaps influenced by "vixen"] n. pl. The plural
   of VAX (a DEC machine).


VIRGIN adj. Unused, in reference to an instantiation of a program.
   "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again."
   Also, by extension, unused buffers and the like within a program.

VIRTUAL adj. 1. Common alternative to LOGICAL (q.v.), but never used
   with compass directions.  2.  Performing the functions of.  Virtual
   memory acts like real memory but isn't.

VISIONARY n. One who hacks vision (in an AI context, such as the
   processing of visual images).

WALDO [probably taken from the story "Waldo", by Heinlein, which is
   where the term was first used to mean a mechanical adjunct to a
   human limb] Used at Harvard, particularly by Tom Cheatham and
   students, instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic variable and
   general nonsense word.  See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX.

WALL [shortened form of HELLO WALL, apparently from the phrase "up
   against a blank wall"] (WPI) interj. 1. An indication of confusion,
   usually spoken with a quizzical tone.  "Wall??"  2. A request for
   further explication.

WALLPAPER n. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or
   transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a
   login session.  (The idea was that the LPT paper for such listings
   was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at SAIL where
   it was used as such to cover windows.)  Usage: not often used now,
   esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g.,
   PHOTO on TWENEX).  The term possibly originated on ITS, where the
   commands to begin and end transcript files are still :WALBEG and
   :WALEND, with default file DSK:WALL PAPER.

WATERBOTTLE SOCCER n. A deadly sport practiced mainly by Sussman's
   graduate students.  It, along with chair bowling, is the most
   evident manifestation of the "locker room atmosphere" said to
   reign in that sphere.  (Sussman doesn't approve.)  [As of 11/82,
   it's reported that the sport has given way to a new game called
   "disc-boot", and Sussman even participates occasionally.]

WEDGED [from "head wedged up ass"] adj. To be in a locked state,
   incapable of proceeding without help.  (See GRONK.)  Often refers
   to humans suffering misconceptions.  "The swapper is wedged."
   This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED (q.v.).

WHAT n. The question mark character ("?").  See QUES.  Usage: rare,
   used particularly in conjunction with WOW.

WHEEL n. 1. A privilege bit that canonically allows the possessor to
   perform any operation on a timesharing system, such as read or
   write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or
   or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the
   system, and kill/create jobs and user accounts.  The term was
   invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to
   TOPS-20, Xerox-IFS and others.  2. A person who posses a wheel bit.
   "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives."

WHEEL WARS [from LOTS at Stanford University] A period during which
   student wheels hack each other by attempting to log each other out
   of the system, delete each other's files, or otherwise wreak havoc,
   usually at the expense of the lesser users.

WIN [from MIT jargon] 1. v. To succeed.  A program wins if no
   unexpected conditions arise.  2. BIG WIN: n. Serendipity.
   Emphatic forms: MOBY WIN, SUPER WIN, HYPER-WIN (often used
   interjectively as a reply).  For some reason SUITABLE WIN is also
   common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a
   problem.  See LOSE.

WINNAGE n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when
   something is winning.  Quite rare.  Usage: also quite rare.

WINNER 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer or
   person.  2. REAL WINNER: Often sarcastic, but also used as high
   praise.

WINNITUDE n. The quality of winning (as opposed to WINNAGE, which is
   the result of winning).  "That's really great!  Boy, what
   winnitude!"

WIZARD n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or
   hardware works; someone who can find and fix his bugs in an
   emergency.  Rarely used at MIT, where HACKER is the preferred term.
   2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
   people, e.g., a "net wizard" on a TENEX may run programs which
   speak low-level host-imp protocol; an ADVENT wizard at SAIL may
   play Adventure during the day.

WORMHOLE n. A location in a monitor which contains the address of a
   routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a
   different routine.  The following quote comes from "Polymorphic
   Systems", vol. 2, p. 54:

   "Any type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device
   by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing
   its address in one of the monitor's `wormholes.'*
   ----------
   *The term `wormhole' has been used to describe a hypothetical
   astronomical situation where a black hole connects to the `other
   side' of the universe.  When this happens, information can pass
   through the wormhole, in only one direction, much as `assumptions'
   pass down the monitor's wormholes."

WOW  See EXCL.

XGP 1. n. Xerox Graphics Printer.  2. v. To print something on the
   XGP.  "You shouldn't XGP such a large file."

XYZZY [from the Adventure game] adj. See PLUGH.

YOYO n. DEC service engineers' slang for UUO (q.v.).  Usage: rare at
   Stanford and MIT, has been found at random DEC installations.

YOYO MODE n. State in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
   alternates several times between being up and being down.

YU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH n. The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 11),
   which with a loop in its tail looks like a fish.  Usage: used
   primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine.  Tends to elicit
   incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.

ZERO v. 1. To set to zero.  Usually said of small pieces of data, such
   as bits or words.  2. To erase; to discard all data from.  Said of
   disks and directories, where "zeroing" need not involve actually
   writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       Coming in the next WeirdHouse:

                         LIFINO ('ell if I know)

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Haha, just joking!

Actual end of file here.
