MacHack 1996/MacHack 1996.toast/Hacks/Hacks ’87/hacker dictionary/Hacker's Dictionary 3 of 4

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"The Hacker's Dictionary"Part 3 of 4     (22k)

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  *****