Brush up on your geek speak. These are
excerpts from Jargon 2.9.12. Also, Windows haiku.
angry fruit salad n. A bad visual-interface
design that uses too many colors. (This term derives, of course,
from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad.)
Too often one sees similar effects from interface designers using
color window systems such as X; there is a tendency to create
displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable
for long-term use.
banana problem n. [from the story of the little
girl who said “I know how to spell ‘banana,’
but I don’t know when to stop.”] Not knowing where
or when to bring a production to a close (compare fencepost error).
One may say “there is a banana problem” of an algorithm
with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in
discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to
featuritis (see also creeping elegance, creeping featuritis).
Big Room, the n. The extremely large room with
the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or
black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night)
found outside all computer installations. “He can’t
come to the phone right now; he’s somewhere out in the Big
Room.”
bit rot n. Also bit decay. Hypothetical disease
the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that
unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient
time has passed, even if “nothing has changed.” The
theory explains that bits decay as if they were radioactive. As
time passes, the contents of a file or the code in a program will
become increasingly garbled.
blinkenlights /blink'*n-li:tz/ n. Front-panel
diagnostic lights on a computer, esp. a dinosaur. Derives from
the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled
pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in
the English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as
follows:
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer
gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk,
blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer
gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen
das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen
das blinkenlichten.
This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford
University and had already gone international by the early 1960s,
when it was reported at London University’s ATLAS computing
site. There are several variants of it in circulation, some of
which actually do end with the word “blinkenlight.”
In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers
have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster
in fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:
ATTENTION This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the “lefthanders”
stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere!
Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights.
brochureware n. Planned but non-existent product
like vaporware, but with the added implication that marketing
is actively selling and promoting it (they’ve printed brochures).
Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic weapon; the idea
is to con customers into not committing to an existing product
of the competition’s. It is a safe bet that when a brochureware
product finally becomes real, it will be more expensive than and
inferior to the alternatives that had been available for years.
busy-wait vi. Used of human behavior, conveys
that the subject is busy waiting for someone or something, intends
to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and thus cannot do anything
else at the moment. “Can’t talk now, I’m busy-waiting
till Bill gets off the phone.”
crawling horror n. Ancient crufty hardware or
software that is kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control
of the hackers at a site. Like dusty deck or gonkulator, but connotes
that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active
menace to health and sanity. “Mostly we code new stuff in
C, but they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application
from nineteen-sixty-X that’s a real crawling horror....”
creationism n. The (false) belief that large,
innovative software designs can be completely specified in advance
and then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts
of a team of normally talented programmers. In fact, experience
has shown repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary,
exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful
of) exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population
--- and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
Unfortunately, because these truths don’t fit the planning
models beloved of management, they are generally ignored.
cruft /kruhft/ [back-formation from crufty]
1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your
bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking
it with a broom only produces more. 2. n. The results of shoddy
construction. 3. vt. [from “hand cruft,” pun on “hand
craft”] To write assembler code for something normally (and
better) done by a compiler (see hand-hacking). 4. n. Excess; superfluous
junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded code.
This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure
of its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall
at Harvard University which is part of the old physics building;
it’s said to have been the physics department's radar lab
during WWII. To this day (early 1993) the windows appear to be
full of random techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln Labs people may well
have coined the term as a knock on the competition.
drool-proof paper n. Documentation that has
been obsessively dumbed down, to the point where only a cretin
could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the ‘drool-proof
paper syndrome’ or to have been ‘written on drool-proof
paper’. For example, this is an actual quote from Apple’s
LaserWriter manual: “Do not expose your LaserWriter to open
fire or flame.”
external memory n. A memo pad or written notes.
“Hold on while I write that to external memory.” The
analogy is with store or DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage
on computers.
face time n. Time spent interacting with somebody
face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links). “Oh,
yeah, I spent some face time with him at the last Usenix.”
feature shock [from Alvin Toffler's book title
“Future Shock”] n. A user’s (or programmer’s!)
confusion when confronted with a package that has too many features
and poor introductory material.
foo 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. Used very generally
as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files
(esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic
variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux,
corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
The etymology of hackish `foo' is obscure. When used in connection
with `bar' it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym
FUBAR (`Fu*ked Up Beyond All Recognition'), later bowdlerized to
foobar. (See also FUBAR).
However, the use of the word `foo' itself has
more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic
strips and cartoons. The old "Smokey Stover" comic strips by Bill
Holman often included the word `FOO', in particular on license plates
of cars; allegedly, `FOO' and `BAR' also occurred in Walt Kelly's
"Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", a very early
version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!";
oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative
use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be related to
the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can
mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog
guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly
called "fu dogs").
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the
possibility that hacker usage actually sprang from `FOO, Lampoons
and Parody', the title of a comic book first issued in September
1958, a joint project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert
Crumb (then in his mid-teens) later became one of the most important
and influential artists in underground comics, this venture was
hardly a success; indeed, the brothers later burned most of the
existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was featured in large
letters on the front cover. However, very few copies of this comic
actually circulated, and students of Crumb's `oeuvre' have established
that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.
gonkulator /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old “Hogan's
Heroes” TV series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that
actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one’s
least favorite piece of computer hardware.
Good Thing n.,adj. Often capitalized; always
pronounced as if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone
in a position to notice: “The Trailblazer’s 19.2Kbaud
PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing
for sites relaying netnews.” 2. Something that can’t
possibly have any ill side-effects and may save considerable grief
later: “Removing the self-modifying code from that shared
library would be a Good Thing.” 3. When said of software
tools or libraries, as in “YACC is a Good Thing,”
specifically connotes that the thing has drastically reduced a
programmer’s work load.
grind crank n. A mythical accessory to a terminal.
A crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a
zizzing noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one
does not refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the
appropriate gesture and noise.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the
days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known
as ‘The Rice Institute Computer’ (TRIC) and later
as ‘The Rice University Computer’ (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run
switch for use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping
through a large program was rather tedious, there was also a crank
with a cam and gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step
button. This allowed one to ‘crank’ through a lot
of code, then slow down to single-step for a bit when you got
near the code of interest, poke at some registers using the console
typewriter, and then keep on cranking.
guiltware /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of freeware
decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author
worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if
one does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of
money. 2. Shareware that works.
handwave [poss. from gestures characteristic
of stage magicians] 1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract
a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with
blatantly faulty logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. “Boy,
what a handwave!” If someone starts a sentence with “Clearly...”
or “Obviously...” or “It is self-evident that...”,
it is a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of
these constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of
someone else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory
behind this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment,
the listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that
what you have said is bogus. Failing that, if a listener does
object, you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of
your hand.
The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands
up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting
at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of
the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position
while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In
context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker
makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply
wave your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent
than words could express, that his logic is faulty.
IBM discount n. A price increase. Outside IBM,
this derives from the common perception that IBM products are
generally overpriced; inside, it is said to spring from a belief
that large numbers of IBM employees living in an area cause prices
to rise.
let the smoke out v. To fry hardware. See magic
smoke for the mythology behind this.
lion food [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff
(by extension, administrative drones in general). From an old
joke about two lions who, escaping from the zoo, split up to increase
their chances but agreed to meet after 2 months. When they finally
meet, one is skinny and the other overweight. The thin one says:
“How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned
out a small army to chase me --- guns, nets, it was terrible.
Since then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass.”
The fat one replies: “Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and
ate a manager a day. And nobody even noticed!”
lunatic fringe [IBM] n. Customers who can be
relied upon to accept release 1 versions of software.
magic smoke n. A substance trapped inside IC
packages that enables them to function (also called ‘blue
smoke’; this is similar to the archaic ‘phlogiston’
hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by
what happens when a chip burns up --- the magic smoke gets let
out, so it doesn’t work any more.
marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ alt. ‘marketing
slime’, ‘marketeer’, ‘mar-ket-ing droid’,
‘marketdroid’. n. A member of a company’s marketing
department, esp. one who promises users that the next version
of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled
for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement, and/or are
in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one who describes
existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden
adspeak. Derogatory.
maximum Maytag mode What a washing machine or,
by extension, any hard disk is in when it’s being used so
heavily that it’s shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced
load. If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming
walking drives.
megapenny /meg'*-pen`ee/ n. $10,000 (1 cent
* 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer
cost and performance figures.
mess-dos /mes-dos/ n. Derisory term for MS-DOS.
Often followed by the ritual banishing “Just say No!”
See MS-DOS. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe MS-DOS
for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size,
its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness. Also ‘mess-loss’,
‘messy-dos’, ‘mess-dog’, ‘mess-dross’,
‘mush-dos’, and various combinations thereof. In Ireland
and the U.K. it is even sometimes called ‘Domestos’
after a brand of toilet cleanser.
metasyntactic variable n. A name used in examples
and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion,
or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The
word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never
(well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like it as permanent
names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any
filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch
file that may be deleted at any time.
To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic
variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used
for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here
are a few common signatures:
foo, bar, baz, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage,
now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!).
At MIT, baz dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s.
A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts qux before quux.
foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU.
Other CMU-associated variables include gorp.
foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at
XEROX PARC.
fred, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend to be
Britishisms.
toto, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic
variables among francophones.
corge, grault, flarp: Popular at Rutgers University and
among GOSMACS hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England).
shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks. Pronounced /shmee/.
foo, bar, zot: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, wibble: New Zealand
Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal
(and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and `foobaz' also enjoy
very wide currency.
monty /mon'tee/ [US Geological Survey] n. A
program with a ludicrously complex user interface written to perform
extremely trivial tasks. An example would be a menu-driven, button
clicking, pulldown, pop-up windows program for listing directories.
The original monty was an infamous weather-reporting program,
Monty the Amazing Weather Man, written at the USGS. Monty had
a widget-packed X-window interface with over 200 buttons; and
all monty actually *did* was FTP files off the network.
mu /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick
question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”.
Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife,
the answer “yes” is wrong because it implies that
you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but “no”
is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating
her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter,
the correct answer is usually “mu”, a Japanese word
alleged to mean “Your question cannot be answered because
it depends on incorrect assumptions”. Hackers tend to be
sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted
this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word ‘mu’ is
actually from Chinese, meaning ‘nothing’; it is used
in mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not
recognize the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly
derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following
well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle:
A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have the Buddha nature?”
Joshu retorted, “Mu!”
mumblage /muhm'bl*j/ n. The topic of one's mumbling
(see mumble). “All that mumblage” is used like “all
that stuff” when it is not quite clear how the subject of
discussion works, or like “all that crap” when ‘mumble’
is being used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives.
mumble interj. 1. Said when the correct response
is 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 long discussion. “Don’t you
think that we could improve LISP performance by using a hybrid
reference-count transaction garbage collector, if the cache is
big enough and there are some extra cache bits for the microcode
to use?” “Well, mumble ... I'll have to think about
it.”
mundane [from SF fandom] n. 1. A person who
is not in science fiction fandom. 2. A person who is not in the
computer industry. In this sense, most often an adjectival modifier
as in “in my mundane life....”
non-optimal solution n. (also ‘sub-optimal
solution’) An astoundingly stupid way to do something. This
term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest
when the person speaking looks completely serious.
one-banana problem n. At mainframe shops, where
the computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers
and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim
that a trained monkey could do their job. It is frequently observed
that the incentives that would be offered said monkeys can be
used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana
problem is simple; hence, “It’s only a one-banana
job at the most; what’s taking them so long?”
At IBM, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and three-banana
problems. Other cultures have different hierarchies and may divide
them more finely; at ICL, for example, five grapes (a bunch) equals
a banana. Their upper limit for the in-house sysapes is said to
be two bananas and three grapes (another source claims it’s
three bananas and one grape, but observes “However, this
is subject to local variations, cosmic rays and ISO”). At
a complication level any higher than that, one asks the manufacturers
to send someone around to check things.
phase 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 and/or according
to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to change one’s
phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a regular basis. “What’s
your phase?” “I’ve been getting in about 8 P.M.
lately, but I’m going to wrap 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 (but less frequently) used, meaning
you’re working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act
of altering one’s cycle is called ‘changing phase’;
‘phase shifting’ has also been recently reported from
Caltech. 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.
However, some claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping
longer is easy, and that it is *shortening* your day or night
that’s hard. The ‘jet lag’ that afflicts travelers
who cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct
causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing
phase. Hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically
in a short period of time, particularly the hard way, experience
something very like jet lag without traveling.
psyton /si:'ton/ [TMRC] n. The elementary particle
carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing
is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. Psytons
are generated by observers, which is why demos are more likely
to fail when lots of people are watching.
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.
return from the dead v. To regain access to
the net after a long absence.
sagan /say'gn/ [from Carl Sagan’s TV series
“Cosmos”; think “billions and billions”]
n. A large quantity of anything. “There’s a sagan
different ways to tweak EMACS.” “The U.S. Government
spends sagans on bombs and welfare --- hard to say which is more
destructive.”
salescritter /sayls'kri`tr/ n. Pejorative hackerism
for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the following joke: Q.
What’s the difference between a used-car dealer and a computer
salesman? A. The used-car dealer knows he’s lying. [Some
versions add: ...and probably knows how to drive.]
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters
are self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains
and the inclination to use them, they’d be in programming).
The terms ‘salesthing’ and ‘salesdroid’
are also common.
same-day service n. Ironic term used to describe
long response time, particularly with respect to MS-DOS system
calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second
to execute). Such response time is a major incentive for programmers
to write programs that are not well-behaved.
silly walk [from Monty Python's Flying Circus]
vi. 1. A ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. Like
grovel, but more random and humorous. “I had to silly-walk
through half the /usr directories to find the maps file.”
2. Syn. fandango on core.
suit n. 1. Ugly and uncomfortable ‘business
clothing’ often worn by non-hackers. Invariably worn with
a ‘tie’, a strangulation device that partially cuts
off the blood supply to the brain. It is thought that this explains
much about the behavior of suit-wearers.
sun lounge [Great Britain] n. The room where
all the Sun workstations live. The humor in this term comes from
the fact that it’s also in mainstream use to describe a
solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered together give
off an amazing amount of heat.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!
The canonical first parry in a debate about a purported bug. The
complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug
is then at best a misfeature.
This time, for sure! excl. Ritual affirmation
frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving
numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection).
For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation
of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: “Hey, Rocky! Watch me
pull a rabbit out of my hat!” The canonical response is,
of course, “But that trick *never* works!”
time sink [poss. by analogy with ‘heat
sink’ or ‘current sink’] n. A project that consumes
unbounded amounts of time.
tip of the ice-cube [IBM] n. The visible part
of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment
in situations where ‘tip of the iceberg’ might be
appropriate if the subject were at all important.
to a zeroth approximation [from ‘to a
first approximation’] A *really* sloppy approximation; a
wild guess.
tree-killer [Sun] n. 1. A printer. 2. A person
who wastes paper. This should be interpreted in a broad sense;
‘wasting paper’ includes the production of spiffy
but content-free documents. Thus, most suits are tree-killers.
The negative loading of this term may reflect the epithet ‘tree-killer’
applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s
‘Lord of the Rings’.
treeware n. Printouts, books, and other information
media made from pulped dead trees.
virtual Friday n. (also ‘logical Friday’)
The last day before an extended weekend, if that day is not a
‘real’ Friday. For example, the U.S. holiday Thanksgiving
is always on a Thursday. The next day is often also a holiday
or taken as an extra day off, in which case Wednesday of that
week is a virtual Friday (and Thursday is a virtual Saturday,
as is Friday). There are also ‘virtual Mondays’ that
are actually Tuesdays, after the three-day weekends associated
with many national holidays in the U.S.
Vulcan nerve pinch n. [from the old “Star
Trek” TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers] The keyboard
combination that forces a soft-boot or jump to ROM monitor (on
machines that support such a feature). On many micros this is
Ctrl-Alt-Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is <Cmd>-<Power
switch>! Also called three-finger salute.
walking drives n. An occasional failure mode
of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge,
clunky washing machines. Those old dinosaur parts carried terrific
angular momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn
bearings and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause
them to ‘walk’ across a room, lurching alternate corners
forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about
a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room
and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in
order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns
of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk,
followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of
old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns
that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive
races.
wall follower n. A person or algorithm that
compensates for lack of sophistication or native stupidity by
efficiently following some simple procedure shown to have been
effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not necessarily
pejorative; it recalls ‘Harvey Wallbanger’, the winning
robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the cocktail).
Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a ‘finger’
on one wall and running till it came out the other end. This was
inelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work on simply-connected
mazes --- and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more sophisticated
robots that tried to ‘learn’ each maze by building
an internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term *is*
pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book
mentality.
wave a dead chicken v. To perform a ritual in
the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes
to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are
satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended.
“I’ll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but
I really think we’ve run into an OS bug.”
wetware /wet'weir/ [prob. from the novels of
Rudy Rucker] n. 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer
hardware or software. “Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary
registers.” 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators)
attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware
or software.
wugga wugga /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n. Imaginary sound
that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult
task.
zipperhead [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.