orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless. See [8742]NUXI problem. Non-US hackers use this term to describe the American mm/dd/yy style of writing dates (Europeans write little-endian dd/mm/yy, and Japanese use big-endian yy/mm/dd for Western dates).
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Node:middle-out implementation, Next:[8743]milliLampson, Previous:[8744]middle-endian, Up:[8745]= M =
middle-out implementation
See [8746]bottom-up implementation. _________________________________________________________________
Node:milliLampson, Next:[8747]minifloppies, Previous:[8748]middle-out implementation, Up:[8749]= M =
milliLampson /mil’*-lamp`sn/ n.
A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his speeding brain.
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Node:minifloppies, Next:[8750]MIPS, Previous:[8751]milliLampson, Up:[8752]= M =
minifloppies n.,obs.
5.25-inch floppy disks, as opposed to 3.5-inch or [8753]microfloppies and the long-obsolescent 8-inch variety (if there is ever a smaller size, they will undoubtedly be tagged `nanofloppies’). At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody paid any attention. See [8754]stiffy. _________________________________________________________________
Node:MIPS, Next:[8755]misbug, Previous:[8756]minifloppies, Up:[8757]= M =
MIPS /mips/ n.
[abbreviation] 1. A measure of computing speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per Second’ (that’s 10^6 per second, not 2^(20)!); often rendered by hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed’ or in other unflattering ways, such as `Meaningless Information Provided by Salesmen’. This joke expresses an attitude nearly universal among hackers about the value of most [8758]benchmark claims, said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and [8759]marketroids (see also [8760]BogoMIPS). The singular is sometimes `1 MIP’ even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also [8761]KIPS and [8762]GIPS. 2. Computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as sources of [8763]computrons. “This is just a workstation; the heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement.” 3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company; among other things, they designed the processor chips used in [8764]DEC’s 3100 workstation series. 4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second’ (a joke, prob. from sense 1).
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Node:misbug, Next:[8765]misfeature, Previous:[8766]MIPS, Up:[8767]= M =
misbug /mis-buhg/ n.
[MIT; rare (like its referent)] An unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a [8768]bug but turns out to be a [8769]feature. Compare [8770]green lightning. See [8771]miswart.
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Node:misfeature, Next:[8772]Missed’em-five, Previous:[8773]misbug, Up:[8774]= M =
misfeature /mis-fee’chr/ or /mis’fee`chr/ n.
[common] A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all). A misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). “Well, yeah, it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory space and we’re stuck with it for now.”
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Node:Missed’em-five, Next:[8775]missile address, Previous:[8776]misfeature, Up:[8777]= M =
Missed’em-five n.
Pejorative hackerism for AT&T System V Unix, generally used by [8778]BSD partisans in a bigoted mood. (The synonym `SysVile’ is also encountered.) See [8779]software bloat, [8780]Berzerkeley. _________________________________________________________________
Node:missile address, Next:[8781]miswart, Previous:[8782]Missed’em-five, Up:[8783]= M =
missile address n.
See [8784]ICBM address.
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Node:miswart, Next:[8785]MMF, Previous:[8786]missile address, Up:[8787]= M =
miswart /mis-wort/ n.
[from [8788]wart by analogy with [8789]misbug] A [8790]feature that superficially appears to be a [8791]wart but has been determined to be the [8792]Right Thing. For example, in some versions of the [8793]EMACS text editor, the `transpose characters’ command exchanges the character under the cursor with the one before it on the screen, except when the cursor is at the end of a line, in which case the two characters before the cursor are exchanged. While this behavior is perhaps surprising, and certainly inconsistent, it has been found through extensive experimentation to be what most users want. This feature is a miswart.
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Node:MMF, Next:[8794]mobo, Previous:[8795]miswart, Up:[8796]= M =
MMF //
[Usenet; common] Abbreviation: “Make Money Fast”. Refers to any kind of scheme which promises participants large profits with little or no risk or effort. Typically, it is a some kind of multi-level marketing operation which involves recruiting more members, or an illegal pyramid scam. The term is also used to refer to any kind of spam which promotes this. For more information, see the [8797]Make Money Fast Myth Page.
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Node:mobo, Next:[8798]moby, Previous:[8799]MMF, Up:[8800]= M =
mobo /moh’bo/
Written and (rarely) spoken contraction of “motherboard” _________________________________________________________________
Node:moby, Next:[8801]mockingbird, Previous:[8802]mobo, Up:[8803]= M =
moby /moh’bee/
[MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago. Derived from Melville’s “Moby Dick” (some say from `Moby Pickle’). Now common.] 1. adj. Large, immense, complex, impressive. “A Saturn V rocket is a truly moby frob.” “Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the Harvard-Yale game.” (See [8804]Appendix A for discussion.) 2. n. obs. The maximum address space of a machine (see below). For a 680[234]0 or VAX or most modern 32-bit architectures, it is 4,294,967,296 8-bit bytes (4 gigabytes). 3. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker. “Greetings, moby Dave. How’s that address-book thing for the Mac going?” 4. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in `moby sixes’, `moby ones’, etc. Compare this with [8805]bignum (sense 3): double sixes are both bignums and moby sixes, but moby ones are not bignums (the use of `moby’ to describe double ones is sarcastic). Standard emphatic forms: `Moby foo’, `moby win’, `moby loss’. `Foby moo’: a spoonerism due to Richard Greenblatt. 5. The largest available unit of something which is available in discrete increments. Thus, ordering a “moby Coke” at the local fast-food joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it’s an explicit request for the largest size they sell.
This term entered hackerdom with the Fabritek 256K memory added to the MIT AI PDP-6 machine, which was considered unimaginably huge when it was installed in the 1960s (at a time when a more typical memory size for a timesharing system was 72 kilobytes). Thus, a moby is classically 256K 36-bit words, the size of a PDP-6 or PDP-10 moby. Back when address registers were narrow the term was more generally useful, because when a computer had virtual memory mapping, it might actually have more physical memory attached to it than any one program could access directly. One could then say “This computer has 6 mobies” meaning that the ratio of physical memory to address space is 6, without having to say specifically how much memory there actually is. That in turn implied that the computer could timeshare six `full-sized’ programs without having to swap programs between memory and disk.
Nowadays the low cost of processor logic means that address spaces are usually larger than the most physical memory you can cram onto a machine, so most systems have much less than one theoretical `native’ moby of [8806]core. Also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make the `moby count’ less significant. However, there is one series of widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be revived — the Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly [8807]brain-damaged segmented-memory designs. On these, a `moby’ would be the 1-megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit bytes). _________________________________________________________________
Node:mockingbird, Next:[8808]mod, Previous:[8809]moby, Up:[8810]= M =
mockingbird n.
Software that intercepts communications (especially login transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like responses to the users while saving their responses (especially account IDs and passwords). A special case of [8811]Trojan horse. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mod, Next:[8812]mode, Previous:[8813]mockingbird, Up:[8814]= M =
mod vt.,n.
[very common] 1. Short for `modify’ or `modification’. Very commonly used — in fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal. The plural `mods’ is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or software, most esp. with respect to [8815]patch sets or a [8816]diff. 2. Short for [8817]modulo but used only for its techspeak sense. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mode, Next:[8818]mode bit, Previous:[8819]mod, Up:[8820]= M =
mode n.
[common] A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. Use of the word `mode’ rather than `state’ implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is being carried out. “No time to hack; I’m in thesis mode.” In its jargon sense, `mode’ is most often attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. In particular, see [8821]hack mode, [8822]day mode, [8823]night mode, [8824]demo mode, [8825]fireworks mode, and [8826]yoyo mode; also [8827]talk mode.
One also often hears the verbs `enable’ and `disable’ used in connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying “I’m going to crash” is “I’m going to enable crash mode now”. One might also hear a request to “disable flame mode, please”.
In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a document in the Unix editor vi, one must type the “i” key, which invokes the “Insert” command. The effect of this command is to put vi into “insert mode”, in which typing the “i” key has a quite different effect (to wit, it inserts an “i” into the document). One must then hit another special key, “ESC”, in order to leave “insert mode”. Nowadays, modeful interfaces are generally considered [8828]losing but survive in quite a few widely used tools built in less enlightened times. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mode bit, Next:[8829]modulo, Previous:[8830]mode, Up:[8831]= M =
mode bit n.
[common] A [8832]flag, usually in hardware, that selects between two (usually quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are different from [8833]flag bit in that mode bits are mainly written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitly read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinary program. The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status Word of the IBM 360.
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Node:modulo, Next:[8834]molly-guard, Previous:[8835]mode bit, Up:[8836]= M =
modulo /mod’yu-loh/ prep.
Except for. An overgeneralization of mathematical terminology; one can consider saying that 4 equals 22 except for the 9s (4 = 22 mod 9). “Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that [8837]GC bug.” “I feel fine today modulo a slight headache.”
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Node:molly-guard, Next:[8838]Mongolian Hordes technique, Previous:[8839]modulo, Up:[8840]= M =
molly-guard /mol’ee-gard/ n.
[University of Illinois] A shield to prevent tripping of some [8841]Big Red Switch by clumsy or ignorant hands. Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 after a programmer’s toddler daughter (named Molly) frobbed it twice in one day. Later generalized to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment. In hardware catalogues, you’ll see the much less interesting description “guarded button”. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Mongolian Hordes technique, Next:[8842]monkey up, Previous:[8843]molly-guard, Up:[8844]= M =
Mongolian Hordes technique n.
[poss. from the Sixties counterculture expression `Mongolian clusterfuck’ for a public orgy] Development by [8845]gang bang. Implies that large numbers of inexperienced programmers are being put on a job better performed by a few skilled ones (but see [8846]bazaar). Also called `Chinese Army technique’; see also [8847]Brooks’s Law.
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Node:monkey up, Next:[8848]monkey scratch, Previous:[8849]Mongolian Hordes technique, Up:[8850]= M =
monkey up vt.
To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely [8851]crufty and consciously temporary solution. Compare [8852]hack up, [8853]kluge up, [8854]cruft together. _________________________________________________________________
Node:monkey scratch, Next:[8855]monstrosity, Previous:[8856]monkey up, Up:[8857]= M =
monkey, scratch n.
See [8858]scratch monkey.
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Node:monstrosity, Next:[8859]monty, Previous:[8860]monkey scratch, Up:[8861]= M =
monstrosity
1. n. A ridiculously [8862]elephantine program or system, esp. one that is buggy or only marginally functional. 2. adj. The quality of being monstrous (see `Overgeneralization’ in the discussion of jargonification). See also [8863]baroque. _________________________________________________________________
Node:monty, Next:[8864]Moof, Previous:[8865]monstrosity, Up:[8866]= M =
monty /mon’tee/ n.
1. [US Geological Survey] 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 [8867]FTP files off the network. 2. [Great Britain; commonly capitalized as `Monty’ or as `the Full Monty’] 16 megabytes of memory, when fitted to an IBM-PC or compatible. A standard PC-compatible using the AT- or ISA-bus with a normal BIOS cannot access more than 16 megabytes of RAM. Generally used of a PC, Unix workstation, etc. to mean `fully populated with’ memory, disk-space or some other desirable resource. This usage may be related to a TV commercial for Del Monte fruit juice, in which one of the characters insisted on “the full Del Monte”; but see the World Wide Words article [8868]”The Full Monty” for discussion of the rather complex etymology that may lie behind this. Compare American [8869]moby.
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Node:Moof, Next:[8870]Moore’s Law, Previous:[8871]monty, Up:[8872]= M =
Moof /moof/
[Macintosh users] 1. n. The call of a semi-legendary creature, properly called the [8873]dogcow. (Some previous versions of this entry claimed, incorrectly, that Moof was the name of the creature.) 2. adj. Used to flag software that’s a hack, something untested and on the edge. On one Apple CD-ROM, certain folders such as “Tools & Apps (Moof!)” and “Development Platforms (Moof!)”, are so marked to indicate that they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned by the powers that be. When you open these folders you cross the boundary into hackerland. 3. v. On the Microsoft Network, the term `moof’ has gained popularity as a verb meaning `to be suddenly disconnected by the system’. One might say “I got moofed”. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Moore’s Law, Next:[8874]moose call, Previous:[8875]Moof, Up:[8876]= M =
Moore’s Law /morz law/ prov.
The observation that the logic density of silicon integrated circuits has closely followed the curve (bits per square inch) = 2^(t – 1962) where t is time in years; that is, the amount of information storable on a given amount of silicon has roughly doubled every year since the technology was invented. This relation, first uttered in 1964 by semiconductor engineer Gordon Moore (who co-founded Intel four years later) held until the late 1970s, at which point the doubling period slowed to 18 months. The doubling period remained at that value through time of writing (late 1999). Moore’s Law is apparently self-fulfilling. The implication is that somebody, somewhere is going to be able to build a better chip than you if you rest on your laurels, so you’d better start pushing hard on the problem. See also [8877]Parkinson’s Law of Data and [8878]Gates’s Law. _________________________________________________________________
Node:moose call, Next:[8879]moria, Previous:[8880]Moore’s Law, Up:[8881]= M =
moose call n.
See [8882]whalesong.
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Node:moria, Next:[8883]MOTAS, Previous:[8884]moose call, Up:[8885]= M =
moria /mor’ee-*/ n.
Like [8886]nethack and [8887]rogue, one of the large PD Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from Tolkien’s Mines of Moria; compare [8888]elder days, [8889]elvish. The game is extremely addictive and a major consumer of time better used for hacking. See also [8890]nethack, [8891]rogue, [8892]Angband. _________________________________________________________________
Node:MOTAS, Next:[8893]MOTOS, Previous:[8894]moria, Up:[8895]= M =
MOTAS /moh-tahz/ n.
[Usenet: Member Of The Appropriate Sex, after [8896]MOTOS and [8897]MOTSS] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See also [8898]SO.
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Node:MOTOS, Next:[8899]MOTSS, Previous:[8900]MOTAS, Up:[8901]= M =
MOTOS /moh-tohs/ n.
[acronym from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet: Member Of The Opposite Sex] A potential or (less often) actual sex partner. See [8902]MOTAS, [8903]MOTSS, [8904]SO. Less common than MOTSS or [8905]MOTAS, which has largely displaced it. _________________________________________________________________
Node:MOTSS, Next:[8906]mouse ahead, Previous:[8907]MOTOS, Up:[8908]= M =
MOTSS /mots/ or /M-O-T-S-S/ n.
[from the 1970 U.S. census forms via Usenet] Member Of The Same Sex, esp. one considered as a possible sexual partner. The gay-issues newsgroup on Usenet is called soc.motss. See [8909]MOTOS and [8910]MOTAS, which derive from it. See also [8911]SO. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mouse ahead, Next:[8912]mouse around, Previous:[8913]MOTSS, Up:[8914]= M =
mouse ahead vi.
Point-and-click analog of `type ahead’. To manipulate a computer’s pointing device (almost always a mouse in this usage, but not necessarily) and its selection or command buttons before a computer program is ready to accept such input, in anticipation of the program accepting the input. Handling this properly is rare, but it can help make a [8915]WIMP environment much more usable, assuming the users are familiar with the behavior of the user interface. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mouse around, Next:[8916]mouse belt, Previous:[8917]mouse ahead, Up:[8918]= M =
mouse around vi.
To explore public portions of a large system, esp. a network such as Internet via [8919]FTP or [8920]TELNET, looking for interesting stuff to [8921]snarf.
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Node:mouse belt, Next:[8922]mouse droppings, Previous:[8923]mouse around, Up:[8924]= M =
mouse belt n.
See [8925]rat belt.
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Node:mouse droppings, Next:[8926]mouse elbow, Previous:[8927]mouse belt, Up:[8928]= M =
mouse droppings n.
[MS-DOS] Pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the screen, producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left droppings behind. The major causes for this problem are programs that write to the screen memory corresponding to the mouse pointer’s current location without hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not quite support the graphics mode in use. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mouse elbow, Next:[8929]mouso, Previous:[8930]mouse droppings, Up:[8931]= M =
mouse elbow n.
A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of a [8932]WIMP environment. Similarly, `mouse shoulder’; GLS reports that he used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.
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Node:mouso, Next:[8933]MS-DOS, Previous:[8934]mouse elbow, Up:[8935]= M =
mouso /mow’soh/ n.
[by analogy with `typo’] An error in mouse usage resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen. Compare [8936]thinko, [8937]braino.
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Node:MS-DOS, Next:[8938]mu, Previous:[8939]mouso, Up:[8940]= M =
MS-DOS /M-S-dos/ n.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A [8941]clone of [8942]CP/M for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products, who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever since. Microsoft licensed QDOS order to have something to demo for IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft’s 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was attached to IBM’s first disk operating system for the 360). The name further annoys those who know what the term [8943]operating system does (or ought to) connote; DOS is more properly a set of relatively simple interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS like “dose”, as in “I don’t work on dose, man!”, or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation among hackers exhorts: “MS-DOS: Just say No!”). See [8944]mess-dos, [8945]ill-behaved.
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Node:mu, Next:[8946]MUD, Previous:[8947]MS-DOS, Up:[8948]= M =
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. Native speakers do not recognize the Discordian question-denying use, which almost certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known Rinzai Zen [8949]koan:
A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have the Buddha nature?” Joshu retorted, “Mu!”
See also [8950]has the X nature, [8951]Some AI Koans, and Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” (pointer in the [8952]Bibliography in Appendix C. _________________________________________________________________
Node:MUD, Next:[8953]muddie, Previous:[8954]mu, Up:[8955]= M =
MUD /muhd/ n.
[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt. Multi-User Dimension] 1. A class of [8956]virtual reality experiments accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have multiple `locations’ like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world. 2. vi. To play a MUD. The acronym MUD is often lowercased and/or verbed; thus, one may speak of `going mudding’, etc.
Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU- form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the University of Essex’s DEC-10 in the early 1980s; descendants of that game still exist today and are sometimes generically called BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth (repeated, unfortunately, by earlier versions of this lexicon) that the name MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto: “You haven’t lived ’til you’ve died on MUD!”); however, this is false — Richard Bartle explicitly placed `MUD’ in the public domain in 1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the myth.
Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. Because these had an image as `research’ they often survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together with the fact that Usenet feeds were often spotty and difficult to get in the U.K., made the MUDs major foci of hackish social interaction there.
AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and quickly gained popularity in the U.S.; they became nuclei for large hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to emphasize social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition (in writing, these social MUDs are sometimes referred to as `MU*’, with `MUD’ implicitly reserved for the more game-oriented ones). By 1991, over 50% of MUD sites were of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesizes the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of TinyMud. In 1996 the cutting edge of the technology is Pavel Curtis’s MOO, even more extensible using a built-in object-oriented language. The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue.
The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. Around 1991 there was an unsuccessful movement to deprecate the term [8957]MUD itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. It survived. See also [8958]bonk/oif, [8959]FOD, [8960]link-dead, [8961]mudhead, [8962]talk mode.
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Node:muddie, Next:[8963]mudhead, Previous:[8964]MUD, Up:[8965]= M =
muddie n.
Syn. [8966]mudhead. More common in Great Britain, possibly because system administrators there like to mutter “bloody muddies” when annoyed at the species.
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Node:mudhead, Next:[8967]muggle, Previous:[8968]muddie, Up:[8969]= M =
mudhead n.
Commonly used to refer to a [8970]MUD player who eats, sleeps, and breathes MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail their degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made wizard level. When encountered in person, on a MUD, or in a chat system, all a mudhead will talk about is three topics: the tactic, character, or wizard that is supposedly always unfairly stopping him/her from becoming a wizard or beating a favorite MUD; why the specific game he/she has experience with is so much better than any other; and the MUD he or she is writing or going to write because his/her design ideas are so much better than in any existing MUD. See also [8971]wannabee.
To the anthropologically literate, this term may recall the Zuni/Hopi legend of the mudheads or `koyemshi’, mythical half-formed children of an unnatural union. Figures representing them act as clowns in Zuni sacred ceremonies. Others may recall the `High School Madness’ sequence from the Firesign Theatre album “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”, in which there is a character named “Mudhead”. _________________________________________________________________
Node:muggle, Next:[8972]multician, Previous:[8973]mudhead, Up:[8974]= M =
muggle
[from J.K. Rowling’s `Harry Potter’ books, 1998] A non-[8975]wizard. Not as disparaging as [8976]luser; implies vague pity rather than contempt. In the universe of Rowling’s enormously (and deservedly) popular children’s series, muggles and wizards inhabit the same modern world, but each group is ignorant of the commonplaces of the others’ existence – most muggles are unaware that wizards exist, and wizards (used to magical ways of doing everything) are perplexed and fascinated by muggle artifacts.
In retrospect it seems completely inevitable that hackers would adopt this metaphor, and in hacker usage it readily forms compounds such as `muggle-friendly’. Compare [8977]luser, [8978]mundane. _________________________________________________________________
Node:multician, Next:[8979]Multics, Previous:[8980]muggle, Up:[8981]= M =
multician /muhl-ti’shn/ n.
[coined at Honeywell, ca. 1970] Competent user of [8982]Multics. Perhaps oddly, no one has ever promoted the analogous `Unician’. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Multics, Next:[8983]multitask, Previous:[8984]multician, Up:[8985]= M =
Multics /muhl’tiks/ n.
[from “MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service”] An early time-sharing [8986]operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to [8987]CTSS. The design was first presented in 1965, planned for operation in 1967, first operational in 1969, and took several more years to achieve respectable performance and stability.
Multics was very innovative for its time — among other things, it provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual files and introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special files. It was also the first OS to run on a symmetric multiprocessor, and the only general-purpose system to be awarded a B2 security rating by the NSA (see [8988]Orange Book).
Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that [8989]second-system effect had bloated Multics to the point of practical unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 after buying out GE’s computer group, but it was never very successful: at its peak in the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each a multi-million dollar mainframe.
One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken Thompson, and [8990]Unix deliberately carried through and extended many of Multics’ design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name `Unix’ as `a weak pun on Multics’. For this and other reasons, aspects of the Multics design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See also [8991]brain-damaged and [8992]GCOS.
MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977. Honeywell sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and development on Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were known to be still in use as late as 1998. There is a Multics page at [8993]http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.php. _________________________________________________________________
Node:multitask, Next:[8994]mumblage, Previous:[8995]Multics, Up:[8996]= M =
multitask n.
Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to describe a person doing several things at once (but see [8997]thrash). The term `multiplex’, from communications technology (meaning to handle more than one channel at the same time), is used similarly. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mumblage, Next:[8998]mumble, Previous:[8999]multitask, Up:[9000]= M =
mumblage /muhm’bl*j/ n.
The topic of one’s mumbling (see [9001]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. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mumble, Next:[9002]munch, Previous:[9003]mumblage, Up:[9004]= M =
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.” 2. [MIT] Expression of not-quite-articulated agreement, often used as an informal vote of consensus in a meeting: “So, shall we dike out the COBOL emulation?” “Mumble!” 3. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement (distinguished from sense 2 by tone of voice and other cues). “I think we should buy a [9005]VAX.” “Mumble!” Common variant: `mumble frotz’ (see [9006]frotz; interestingly, one does not say `mumble frobnitz’ even though `frotz’ is short for `frobnitz’). 4. Yet another [9007]metasyntactic variable, like [9008]foo. 5. When used as a question (“Mumble?”) means “I didn’t understand you”. 6. Sometimes used in `public’ contexts on-line as a placefiller for things one is barred from giving details about. For example, a poster with pre-released hardware in his machine might say “Yup, my machine now has an extra 16M of memory, thanks to the card I’m testing for Mumbleco.” 7. A conversational wild card used to designate something one doesn’t want to bother spelling out, but which can be [9009]glarked from context. Compare [9010]blurgle. 8. [XEROX PARC] A colloquialism used to suggest that further discussion would be fruitless.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:munch, Next:[9011]munching, Previous:[9012]mumble, Up:[9013]= M =
munch vt.
[often confused with [9014]mung, q.v.] To transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related to [9015]crunch and nearly synonymous with [9016]grovel, but connotes less pain. _________________________________________________________________
Node:munching, Next:[9017]munching squares, Previous:[9018]munch, Up:[9019]= M =
munching n.
Exploration of security holes of someone else’s computer for thrills, notoriety, or to annoy the system manager. Compare [9020]cracker. See also [9021]hacked off.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:munching squares, Next:[9022]munchkin, Previous:[9023]munching, Up:[9024]= M =
munching squares n.
A [9025]display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T — see [9026]HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened `munching triangles’ (try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), `munching w’s’, and `munching mazes’. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as `munching foos’. [This is a good example of the use of the word [9027]foo as a [9028]metasyntactic variable.] _________________________________________________________________
Node:munchkin, Next:[9029]mundane, Previous:[9030]munching squares, Up:[9031]= M =
munchkin /muhnch’kin/ n.
[from the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz”] A teenage-or-younger micro enthusiast hacking BASIC or something else equally constricted. A term of mild derision — munchkins are annoying but some grow up to be hackers after passing through a [9032]larval stage. The term [9033]urchin is also used. See also [9034]wannabee, [9035]bitty box.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:mundane, Next:[9036]mung, Previous:[9037]munchkin, Up:[9038]= M =
mundane n.
[from SF fandom] 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….” See also [9039]Real World, [9040]muggle.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:mung, Next:[9041]munge, Previous:[9042]mundane, Up:[9043]= M =
mung /muhng/ vt.
[in 1960 at MIT, `Mash Until No Good’; sometime after that the derivation from the [9044]recursive acronym `Mung Until No Good’ became standard; but see [9045]munge] 1. To make changes to a file, esp. large-scale and irrevocable changes. See [9046]BLT. 2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The system only mungs things maliciously; this is a consequence of [9047]Finagle’s Law. See [9048]scribble, [9049]mangle, [9050]trash, [9051]nuke. Reports from [9052]Usenet suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/ is now usual in speech, but the spelling `mung’ is still common in program comments (compare the widespread confusion over the proper spelling of [9053]kluge). 3. The kind of beans the sprouts of which are used in Chinese food. (That’s their real name! Mung beans! Really!)
Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have originated at [9054]TMRC; it was already in use there in 1958. Peter Samson (compiler of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it may originally have been onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay spring (contact) being twanged. However, it is known that during the World Wars, `mung’ was U.S. army slang for the ersatz creamed chipped beef better known as `SOS’, and it seems quite likely that the word in fact goes back to Scots-dialect [9055]munge.
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Node:munge, Next:[9056]Murphy’s Law, Previous:[9057]mung, Up:[9058]= M =
munge /muhnj/ vt.
1. [derogatory] To imperfectly transform information. 2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole program. 3. To modify data in some way the speaker doesn’t need to go into right now or cannot describe succinctly (compare [9059]mumble). 4. To add [9060]spamblock to an email address.
This term is often confused with [9061]mung, which probably was derived from it. However, it also appears the word `munge’ was in common use in Scotland in the 1940s, and in Yorkshire in the 1950s, as a verb, meaning to munch up into a masticated mess, and as a noun, meaning the result of munging something up (the parallel with the [9062]kluge/[9063]kludge pair is amusing). The OED reports `munge’ as an archaic verb nmeaning “to wipe (a person’s nose)”. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Murphy’s Law, Next:[9064]music, Previous:[9065]munge, Up:[9066]= M =
Murphy’s Law prov.
The correct, original Murphy’s Law reads: “If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.” This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for [9067]lusers. For example, you don’t make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP’; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under [9068]magic smoke).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject’s body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.
Within months `Murphy’s Law’ had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Most of these are variants on “Anything that can go wrong, will”; this is correctly referred to as [9069]Finagle’s Law. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy’s Law acting on itself!
_________________________________________________________________
Node:music, Next:[9070]mutter, Previous:[9071]Murphy’s Law, Up:[9072]= M =
music n.
A common extracurricular interest of hackers (compare [9073]science-fiction fandom, [9074]oriental food; see also [9075]filk). Hackish folklore has long claimed that musical and programming abilities are closely related, and there has been at least one large-scale statistical study that supports this. Hackers, as a rule, like music and often develop musical appreciation in unusual and interesting directions. Folk music is very big in hacker circles; so is electronic music, and the sort of elaborate instrumental jazz/rock that used to be called `progressive’ and isn’t recorded much any more. The hacker’s musical range tends to be wide; many can listen with equal appreciation to (say) Talking Heads, Yes, Gentle Giant, Pat Metheny, Scott Joplin, Tangerine Dream, Dream Theater, King Sunny Ade, The Pretenders, Screaming Trees, or the Brandenburg Concerti. It is also apparently true that hackerdom includes a much higher concentration of talented amateur musicians than one would expect from a similar-sized control group of [9076]mundane types. _________________________________________________________________
Node:mutter, Next:[9077]N, Previous:[9078]music, Up:[9079]= M =
mutter vt.
To quietly enter a command not meant for the ears, eyes, or fingers of ordinary mortals. Often used in `mutter an [9080]incantation’. See also [9081]wizard.
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Node:= N =, Next:[9082]= O =, Previous:[9083]= M =, Up:[9084]The Jargon Lexicon
= N =
* [9085]N:
* [9086]nadger:
* [9087]nagware:
* [9088]nailed to the wall:
* [9089]nailing jelly:
* [9090]naive:
* [9091]naive user:
* [9092]NAK:
* [9093]NANA:
* [9094]nano:
* [9095]nano-:
* [9096]nanoacre:
* [9097]nanobot:
* [9098]nanocomputer:
* [9099]nanofortnight:
* [9100]nanotechnology:
* [9101]nasal demons:
* [9102]nastygram:
* [9103]Nathan Hale:
* [9104]nature:
* [9105]neat hack:
* [9106]neats vs. scruffies:
* [9107]neep-neep:
* [9108]neophilia:
* [9109]nerd:
* [9110]nerd knob:
* [9111]net.-:
* [9112]net.god:
* [9113]net.personality:
* [9114]net.police:
* [9115]NetBOLLIX:
* [9116]netburp:
* [9117]netdead:
* [9118]nethack:
* [9119]netiquette:
* [9120]netlag:
* [9121]netnews:
* [9122]netrock:
* [9123]Netscrape:
* [9124]netsplit:
* [9125]netter:
* [9126]network address:
* [9127]network meltdown:
* [9128]New Jersey:
* [9129]New Testament:
* [9130]newbie:
* [9131]newgroup wars:
* [9132]newline:
* [9133]NeWS:
* [9134]newsfroup:
* [9135]newsgroup:
* [9136]nick:
* [9137]nickle:
* [9138]night mode:
* [9139]Nightmare File System:
* [9140]NIL:
* [9141]Ninety-Ninety Rule:
* [9142]nipple mouse:
* [9143]NMI:
* [9144]no-op:
* [9145]noddy:
* [9146]node:
* [9147]Nominal Semidestructor:
* [9148]non-optimal solution:
* [9149]nonlinear:
* [9150]nontrivial:
* [9151]not ready for prime time: * [9152]notwork:
* [9153]NP-:
* [9154]nroff:
* [9155]NSA line eater:
* [9156]NSP:
* [9157]nude:
* [9158]nugry:
* [9159]nuke:
* [9160]number-crunching:
* [9161]numbers:
* [9162]NUXI problem:
* [9163]nybble:
* [9164]nyetwork:
_________________________________________________________________
Node:N, Next:[9165]nadger, Previous:[9166]mutter, Up:[9167]= N =
N /N/ quant.
1. A large and indeterminate number of objects: “There were N bugs in that crock!” Also used in its original sense of a variable name: “This crock has N bugs, as N goes to infinity.” (The true number of bugs is always at least N + 1; see [9168]Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology.) 2. A variable whose value is inherited from the current context. For example, when a meal is being ordered at a restaurant, N may be understood to mean however many people there are at the table. From the remark “We’d like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for N – 1” you can deduce that one person at the table wants to eat only soup, even though you don’t know how many people there are (see [9169]great-wall). 3. `Nth’: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N, senses 1 and 2. “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 [9170]tenured graduate student). See also [9171]random numbers, [9172]two-to-the-N. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nadger, Next:[9173]nagware, Previous:[9174]N, Up:[9175]= N =
nadger /nad’jr/ v.
[UK, from rude slang noun `nadgers’ for testicles; compare American & British `bollixed’] Of software or hardware (not people), to twiddle some object in a hidden manner, generally so that it conforms better to some format. For instance, string printing routines on 8-bit processors often take the string text from the instruction stream, thus a print call looks like jsr print:”Hello world”. The print routine has to `nadger’ the saved instruction pointer so that the processor doesn’t try to execute the text as instructions when the subroutine returns. See [9176]adger.
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Node:nagware, Next:[9177]nailed to the wall, Previous:[9178]nadger, Up:[9179]= N =
nagware /nag’weir/ n.
[Usenet] The variety of [9180]shareware that displays a large screen at the beginning or end reminding you to register, typically requiring some sort of keystroke to continue so that you can’t use the software in batch mode. Compare [9181]annoyware, [9182]crippleware. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nailed to the wall, Next:[9183]nailing jelly, Previous:[9184]nagware, Up:[9185]= N =
nailed to the wall adj.
[like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted, and even heroic, effort.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nailing jelly, Next:[9186]naive, Previous:[9187]nailed to the wall, Up:[9188]= N =
nailing jelly vi.
See [9189]like nailing jelly to a tree. _________________________________________________________________
Node:naive, Next:[9190]naive user, Previous:[9191]nailing jelly, Up:[9192]= N =
naive adj.
1. Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather than the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most designs aren’t `really good’ in the appropriate sense). This trait is completely unrelated to general maturity or competence, or even competence at any other specific program. It is a sad commentary on the primitive state of computing that the natural opposite of this term is often claimed to be `experienced user’ but is really more like `cynical user’. 2. Said of an algorithm that doesn’t take advantage of some superior but advanced technique, e.g., the [9193]bubble sort. It may imply naivete on the part of the programmer, although there are situations where a naive algorithm is preferred, because it is more important to keep the code comprehensible than to go for maximum performance. “I know the linear search is naive, but in this case the list typically only has half a dozen items.” _________________________________________________________________
Node:naive user, Next:[9194]NAK, Previous:[9195]naive, Up:[9196]= N =
naive user n.
A [9197]luser. Tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. When this is applied to someone who has experience, there is a definite implication of stupidity. _________________________________________________________________
Node:NAK, Next:[9198]NANA, Previous:[9199]naive user, Up:[9200]= N =
NAK /nak/ interj.
[from the ASCII mnemonic for 0010101] 1. On-line joke answer to [9201]ACK?: “I’m not here.” 2. On-line answer to a request for chat: “I’m not available.” 3. Used to politely interrupt someone to tell them you don’t understand their point or that they have suddenly stopped making sense. See [9202]ACK, sense 3. “And then, after we recode the project in COBOL….” “Nak, Nak, Nak! I thought I heard you say COBOL!” 4. A negative answer. “OK if I boot the server?” “NAK!” _________________________________________________________________
Node:NANA, Next:[9203]nano, Previous:[9204]NAK, Up:[9205]= N =
NANA //
[Usenet] The newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, devoted to fighting [9206]spam and network abuse. Each individual newsgroup is often referred to by adding a letter to NANA. For example, NANAU would refer to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
When spam began to be a serious problem around 1995, and a loose network of anti-spammers formed to combat it, spammers immediately accused them of being the [9207]backbone cabal, or the Cabal reborn. Though this was not true, spam-fighters ironically accepted the label and the tag line “There is No Cabal” reappeared (later, and now commonly, abbreviated to “TINC”). Nowadays “the Cabal” is generally understood to refer to the NANA regulars. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nano, Next:[9208]nano-, Previous:[9209]NANA, Up:[9210]= N =
nano /nan’oh/ n.
[CMU: from `nanosecond’] A brief period of time. “Be with you in a nano” means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies what mainstream people mean by “in a jiffy” (whereas the hackish use of `jiffy’ is quite different — see [9211]jiffy). _________________________________________________________________
Node:nano-, Next:[9212]nanoacre, Previous:[9213]nano, Up:[9214]= N =
nano- pref.
[SI: the next quantifier below [9215]micro-; meaning * 10^(-9)] Smaller than [9216]micro-, and used in the same rather loose and connotative way. Thus, one has [9217]nanotechnology (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by analogy with `microtechnology’; and a few machine architectures have a `nanocode’ level below `microcode’. Tom Duff at Bell Labs has also pointed out that “Pi seconds is a nanocentury”. See also [9218]quantifiers, [9219]pico-, [9220]nanoacre, [9221]nanobot, [9222]nanocomputer, [9223]nanofortnight. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nanoacre, Next:[9224]nanobot, Previous:[9225]nano-, Up:[9226]= N =
nanoacre /nan’oh-ay`kr/ n.
A unit (about 2 mm square) of real estate on a VLSI chip. The term gets its giggle value from the fact that VLSI nanoacres have costs in the same range as real acres once one figures in design and fabrication-setup costs.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nanobot, Next:[9227]nanocomputer, Previous:[9228]nanoacre, Up:[9229]= N =
nanobot /nan’oh-bot/ n.
A robot of microscopic proportions, presumably built by means of [9230]nanotechnology. As yet, only used informally (and speculatively!). Also called a `nanoagent’. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nanocomputer, Next:[9231]nanofortnight, Previous:[9232]nanobot, Up:[9233]= N =
nanocomputer /nan’oh-k*m-pyoo’tr/ n.
A computer with molecular-sized switching elements. Designs for mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods for their logic have been proposed. The controller for a [9234]nanobot would be a nanocomputer.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nanofortnight, Next:[9235]nanotechnology, Previous:[9236]nanocomputer, Up:[9237]= N =
nanofortnight n.
[Adelaide University] 1 fortnight * 10^(-9), or about 1.2 msec. This unit was used largely by students doing undergraduate practicals. See [9238]microfortnight, [9239]attoparsec, and [9240]micro-. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nanotechnology, Next:[9241]nasal demons, Previous:[9242]nanofortnight, Up:[9243]= N =
nanotechnology /nan’-oh-tek-no`l*-jee/ n.
A hypothetical fabrication technology in which objects are designed and built with the individual specification and placement of each separate atom. The first unequivocal nanofabrication experiments took place in 1990, for example with the deposition of individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate to spell the logo of a certain very large computer company. Nanotechnology has been a hot topic in the hacker subculture ever since the term was coined by K. Eric Drexler in his book “Engines of Creation” (Anchor/Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-19973-2), where he predicted that nanotechnology could give rise to replicating assemblers, permitting an exponential growth of productivity and personal wealth (there’s an authorized transcription at [9244]http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.php.). See also [9245]blue goo, [9246]gray goo, [9247]nanobot.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nasal demons, Next:[9248]nastygram, Previous:[9249]nanotechnology, Up:[9250]= N =
nasal demons n.
Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group comp.std.c for any unexpected behavior of a C compiler on encountering an undefined construct. During a discussion on that group in early 1992, a regular remarked “When the compiler encounters [a given undefined construct] it is legal for it to make demons fly out of your nose” (the implication is that the compiler may choose any arbitrarily bizarre way to interpret the code without violating the ANSI C standard). Someone else followed up with a reference to “nasal demons”, which quickly became established.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nastygram, Next:[9251]Nathan Hale, Previous:[9252]nasal demons, Up:[9253]= N =
nastygram /nas’tee-gram/ n.
1. A protocol packet or item of email (the latter is also called a [9254]letterbomb) that takes advantage of misfeatures or security holes on the target system to do untoward things. 2. Disapproving mail, esp. from a [9255]net.god, pursuant to a violation of [9256]netiquette or a complaint about failure to correct some mail- or news-transmission problem. Compare [9257]shitogram, [9258]mailbomb. 3. A status report from an unhappy, and probably picky, customer. “What’d Corporate say in today’s nastygram?” 4. [deprecated] An error reply by mail from a [9259]daemon; in particular, a [9260]bounce message. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Nathan Hale, Next:[9261]nature, Previous:[9262]nastygram, Up:[9263]= N =
Nathan Hale n.
An asterisk (see also [9264]splat, [9265]ASCII). Oh, you want an etymology? Notionally, from “I regret that I have only one asterisk for my country!”, a misquote of the famous remark uttered by Nathan Hale just before he was hanged. Hale was a (failed) spy for the rebels in the American War of Independence.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:nature, Next:[9266]neat hack, Previous:[9267]Nathan Hale, Up:[9268]= N =
nature n.
See [9269]has the X nature.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:neat hack, Next:[9270]neats vs. scruffies, Previous:[9271]nature, Up:[9272]= N =
neat hack n.
[very common] 1. A clever technique. 2. A brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display switch (see [9273]Appendix A for discussion). See also [9274]hack. _________________________________________________________________
Node:neats vs. scruffies, Next:[9275]neep-neep, Previous:[9276]neat hack, Up:[9277]= N =
neats vs. scruffies n.
The label used to refer to one of the continuing [9278]holy wars in AI research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; `neats’ tend to try to build systems that `reason’ in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while `scruffies’ profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favor looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident, and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture `common sense’ of living intelligences.
_________________________________________________________________
Node:neep-neep, Next:[9279]neophilia, Previous:[9280]neats vs. scruffies, Up:[9281]= N =
neep-neep /neep neep/ n.
[onomatopoeic, widely spread through SF fandom but reported to have originated at Caltech in the 1970s] One who is fascinated by computers. Less specific than [9282]hacker, as it need not imply more skill than is required to boot games on a PC. The derived noun `neeping’ applies specifically to the long conversations about computers that tend to develop in the corners at most SF-convention parties (the term `neepery’ is also in wide use). Fandom has a related proverb to the effect that “Hacking is a conversational black hole!”. _________________________________________________________________
Node:neophilia, Next:[9283]nerd, Previous:[9284]neep-neep, Up:[9285]= N =
neophilia /nee`oh-fil’-ee-*/ n.
The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology `Whole Earth’ wing of the ecology movement, space activists, many members of Mensa, and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground. All these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, [9286]music, and [9287]oriental food. The opposite tendency is `neophobia’.
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Node:nerd, Next:[9288]nerd knob, Previous:[9289]neophilia, Up:[9290]= N =
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what’s really important and interesting and doesn’t care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses of [9291]computer geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines “And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!” in the Dr. Seuss book “If I Ran the Zoo” (1950). (The spellings `nurd’ and `gnurd’ also used to be current at MIT, where `nurd’ is reported from as far back as 1957.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly “annoying misfit” without the connotation of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd’ in its variant form `knurd’ from the word `drunk’ backwards, but this bears all the hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some actually wear “Nerd Pride” buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
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Node:nerd knob, Next:[9292]net.-, Previous:[9293]nerd, Up:[9294]= N =
nerd knob n.
[Cisco] a command in a complex piece of software which is more likely to be used by an extremely experienced user to tweak a setting of one sort or another – a setting which the average user may not even know exists. Nerd knobs tend to be toggles, turning on or off a particular, specific, narrowly defined behavior.
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Node:net.-, Next:[9295]net.god, Previous:[9296]nerd knob, Up:[9297]= N =
net.- /net dot/ pref.
[Usenet] Prefix used to describe people and events related to Usenet. From the time before the [9298]Great Renaming, when most non-local newsgroups had names beginning `net.’. Includes [9299]net.gods, `net.goddesses’ (various charismatic net.women with circles of on-line admirers), `net.lurkers’ (see [9300]lurker), `net.person’, `net.parties’ (a synonym for [9301]boink, sense 2), and many similar constructs. See also [9302]net.police. _________________________________________________________________
Node:net.god, Next:[9303]net.personality, Previous:[9304]net.-, Up:[9305]= N =
net.god /net god/ n.
Accolade referring to anyone who satisfies some combination of the following conditions: has been visible on Usenet for more than 5 years, ran one of the original backbone sites, moderated an important newsgroup, wrote news software, or knows Gene, Mark, Rick, Mel, Henry, Chuq, and Greg personally. See [9306]demigod. Net.goddesses such as Rissa or the Slime Sisters have (so far) been distinguished more by personality than by authority.
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Node:net.personality, Next:[9307]net.police, Previous:[9308]net.god, Up:[9309]= N =
net.personality /net per`sn-al’-*-tee/ n.
Someone who has made a name for him or herself on [9310]Usenet, through either longevity or attention-getting posts, but doesn’t meet the other requirements of [9311]net.godhood. _________________________________________________________________
Node:net.police, Next:[9312]NetBOLLIX, Previous:[9313]net.personality, Up:[9314]= N =
net.police /net-p*-lees’/ n.
(var. `net.cops’) Those Usenet readers who feel it is their responsibility to pounce on and [9315]flame any posting which they regard as offensive or in violation of their understanding of [9316]netiquette. Generally used sarcastically or pejoratively. Also spelled `net police’. See also [9317]net.-, [9318]code police. _________________________________________________________________
Node:NetBOLLIX, Next:[9319]netburp, Previous:[9320]net.police, Up:[9321]= N =
NetBOLLIX n.
[from bollix: to bungle, or British `bollocks’] [9322]IBM’s NetBIOS, an extremely [9323]brain-damaged network protocol that, like [9324]Blue Glue, is used at commercial shops that don’t know any better.
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Node:netburp, Next:[9325]netdead, Previous:[9326]NetBOLLIX, Up:[9327]= N =
netburp n.
[IRC] When [9328]netlag gets really bad, and delays between servers exceed a certain threshhold, the [9329]IRC network effectively becomes partitioned for a period of time, and large numbers of people seem to be signing off at the same time and then signing back on again when things get better. An instance of this is called a `netburp’ (or, sometimes, [9330]netsplit).
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Node:netdead, Next:[9331]nethack, Previous:[9332]netburp, Up:[9333]= N =
netdead n.
[IRC] The state of someone who signs off [9334]IRC, perhaps during a [9335]netburp, and doesn’t sign back on until later. In the interim, he is “dead to the net”. Compare [9336]link-dead. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nethack, Next:[9337]netiquette, Previous:[9338]netdead, Up:[9339]= N =
nethack /net’hak/ n.
[Unix] A dungeon game similar to [9340]rogue but more elaborate, distributed in C source over [9341]Usenet and very popular at Unix sites and on PC-class machines (nethack is probably the most widely distributed of the freeware dungeon games). The earliest versions, written by Jay Fenlason and later considerably enhanced by Andries Brouwer, were simply called `hack’. The name changed when maintenance was taken over by a group of hackers originally organized by Mike Stephenson. There is now an official site one at [9342]http://www.nethack.org/. See also [9343]moria, [9344]rogue, [9345]Angband.
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Node:netiquette, Next:[9346]netlag, Previous:[9347]nethack, Up:[9348]= N =
netiquette /net’ee-ket/ or /net’i-ket/ n.
[portmanteau, network + etiquette] The conventions of politeness recognized on [9349]Usenet, such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate groups and refraining from commercial pluggery outside the biz groups.
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Node:netlag, Next:[9350]netnews, Previous:[9351]netiquette, Up:[9352]= N =
netlag n.
[IRC, MUD] A condition that occurs when the delays in the [9353]IRC network or on a [9354]MUD become severe enough that servers briefly lose and then reestablish contact, causing messages to be delivered in bursts, often with delays of up to a minute. (Note that this term has nothing to do with mainstream “jet lag”, a condition which hackers tend not to be much bothered by.) Often shortened to just `lag’. _________________________________________________________________
Node:netnews, Next:[9355]netrock, Previous:[9356]netlag, Up:[9357]= N =
netnews /net’n[y]ooz/ n.
1. The software that makes [9358]Usenet run. 2. The content of Usenet. “I read netnews right after my mail most mornings.” _________________________________________________________________
Node:netrock, Next:[9359]Netscrape, Previous:[9360]netnews, Up:[9361]= N =
netrock /net’rok/ n.
[IBM] A [9362]flame; used esp. on VNET, IBM’s internal corporate network.
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Node:Netscrape, Next:[9363]netsplit, Previous:[9364]netrock, Up:[9365]= N =
Netscrape n.
[sometimes elaborated to `Netscrape Fornicator’, also `Nutscrape’] Standard name-of-insult for Netscape Navigator/Communicator, Netscape’s overweight Web browser. Compare [9366]Internet Exploiter. _________________________________________________________________
Node:netsplit, Next:[9367]netter, Previous:[9368]Netscrape, Up:[9369]= N =
netsplit n.
Syn. [9370]netburp.
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Node:netter, Next:[9371]network address, Previous:[9372]netsplit, Up:[9373]= N =
netter n.
1. Loosely, anyone with a [9374]network address. 2. More specifically, a [9375]Usenet regular. Most often found in the plural. “If you post that in a technical group, you’re going to be flamed by angry netters for the rest of time!”
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Node:network address, Next:[9376]network meltdown, Previous:[9377]netter, Up:[9378]= N =
network address n.
(also `net address’) As used by hackers, means an address on `the’ network (see [9379]the network; this used to include [9380]bang path addresses but now almost always implies an [9381]Internet address). Net addresses are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names without ever learning each others’ `legal’ monikers. Indeed, display of a network address (e.g on business cards) used to function as an important hacker identification signal, like lodge pins among Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In the day of pervasive Internet this is less true, but you can still be fairly sure that anyone with a network address handwritten on his or her convention badge is a hacker. _________________________________________________________________
Node:network meltdown, Next:[9382]New Jersey, Previous:[9383]network address, Up:[9384]= N =
network meltdown n.
A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of [9385]thrashing. This may be induced by a [9386]Chernobyl packet. See also [9387]broadcast storm, [9388]kamikaze packet.
Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don’t cope well with the very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world. One amusing instance of this is triggered by the popular and very bloody shoot-’em-up game Doom on the PC. When used in multiplayer mode over a network, the game uses broadcast packets to inform other machines when bullets are fired. This causes problems with weapons like the chain gun which fire rapidly — it can blast the network into a meltdown state just as easily as it shreds opposing monsters. _________________________________________________________________
Node:New Jersey, Next:[9389]New Testament, Previous:[9390]network meltdown, Up:[9391]= N =
New Jersey adj.
[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C, C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey). “This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from a compiler designed in New Jersey?” Compare [9392]Berkeley Quality Software. See also [9393]Unix conspiracy. _________________________________________________________________
Node:New Testament, Next:[9394]newbie, Previous:[9395]New Jersey, Up:[9396]= N =
New Testament n.
[C programmers] The second edition of K&R’s “The C Programming Language” (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI Standard C. See [9397]K&R; this version is also called `K&R2′. _________________________________________________________________
Node:newbie, Next:[9398]newgroup wars, Previous:[9399]New Testament, Up:[9400]= N =
newbie /n[y]oo’bee/ n.
[verry common; orig. from British public-school and military slang variant of `new boy’] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced in the [9401]newsgroup talk.bizarre but is now in wide use (the combination “clueless newbie” is especially common). Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The label `newbie’ is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around Usenet for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. See [9402]B1FF; see also [9403]gnubie. _________________________________________________________________
Node:newgroup wars, Next:[9404]newline, Previous:[9405]newbie, Up:[9406]= N =
newgroup wars /n[y]oo’groop worz/ n.
[Usenet] The salvos of dueling newgroup and rmgroup messages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether a [9407]newsgroup should be created net-wide, or (even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn’t). At times, especially in the completely anarchic alt hierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork which originated as a birthday joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notorious [9408]flamers, e.g., alt.weemba. _________________________________________________________________
Node:newline, Next:[9409]NeWS, Previous:[9410]newgroup wars, Up:[9411]= N =
newline /n[y]oo’li:n/ n.
1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used under [9412]Unix as a text line terminator. Though the term `newline’ appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before Unix. 2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or operation (like Pascal’s writeln procedure) required to terminate a text record or separate lines. See [9413]crlf, [9414]terpri.
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Node:NeWS, Next:[9415]newsfroup, Previous:[9416]newline, Up:[9417]= N =
NeWS /nee’wis/, /n[y]oo’is/ or /n[y]ooz/ n.
[acronym; the `Network Window System’] The road not taken in window systems, an elegant [9418]PostScript-based environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war with [9419]X if it hadn’t been [9420]proprietary to Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that too many software vendors haven’t yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS from Usenet news (the [9421]netnews software). _________________________________________________________________
Node:newsfroup, Next:[9422]newsgroup, Previous:[9423]NeWS, Up:[9424]= N =
newsfroup // n.
[Usenet] Silly synonym for [9425]newsgroup, originally a typo but now in regular use on Usenet’s talk.bizarre, and other lunatic-fringe groups. Compare [9426]hing, [9427]grilf, [9428]pr0n and [9429]filk. _________________________________________________________________
Node:newsgroup, Next:[9430]nick, Previous:[9431]newsfroup, Up:[9432]= N =
newsgroup n.
[Usenet] One of [9433]Usenet’s huge collection of topic groups or [9434]fora. Usenet groups can be `unmoderated’ (anyone can post) or `moderated’ (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups have parallel [9435]mailing lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as `digests’, with groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting with an index.
Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum), comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.unix.wizards (for Unix wizards), rec.arts.sf.written and siblings (for science-fiction fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and [9436]flamage).
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Node:nick, Next:[9437]nickle, Previous:[9438]newsgroup, Up:[9439]= N =
nick n.
[IRC; very common] Short for nickname. On [9440]IRC, every user must pick a nick, which is sometimes the same as the user’s real name or login name, but is often more fanciful. Compare [9441]handle, [9442]screen name.
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Node:nickle, Next:[9443]night mode, Previous:[9444]nick, Up:[9445]= N =
nickle /ni’kl/ n.
[from `nickel’, common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] A [9446]nybble + 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel’s GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See also [9447]deckle, and [9448]nybble for names of other bit units.
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Node:night mode, Next:[9449]Nightmare File System, Previous:[9450]nickle, Up:[9451]= N =
night mode n.
See [9452]phase (of people).
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Node:Nightmare File System, Next:[9453]NIL, Previous:[9454]night mode, Up:[9455]= N =
Nightmare File System n.
Pejorative hackerism for Sun’s Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher [9456]spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen — worst of all, the user can’t even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS’s problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great [9457]misfeature). (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix’s alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s.) See also [9458]broadcast storm.
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Node:NIL, Next:[9459]Ninety-Ninety Rule, Previous:[9460]Nightmare File System, Up:[9461]= N =
NIL /nil/
No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-P’ convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from LISP terminology for `false’ (see also [9462]T), but NIL as a negative reply was well-established among radio hams decades before the advent of LISP. The historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham radio world was strong enough that this may have been an influence. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Ninety-Ninety Rule, Next:[9463]nipple mouse, Previous:[9464]NIL, Up:[9465]= N =
Ninety-Ninety Rule n.
“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley’s September 1985 “Bumper-Sticker Computer Science” column in “Communications of the ACM”. It was there called the “Rule of Credibility”, a name which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include the law attributed to the early British computer scientist Douglas Hartree: “The time from now until the completion of the project tends to become constant.” _________________________________________________________________
Node:nipple mouse, Next:[9466]NMI, Previous:[9467]Ninety-Ninety Rule, Up:[9468]= N =
nipple mouse n.
Var. `clit mouse, clitoris’ Common term for the pointing device used on IBM ThinkPads and a few other laptop computers. The device, which sits between the `g’ and `h’ keys on the keyboard, indeed resembles a rubber nipple intended to be tweaked by a forefinger. Many hackers consider these superior to the glide pads found on most laptops, which are harder to control precisely.
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Node:NMI, Next:[9469]no-op, Previous:[9470]nipple mouse, Up:[9471]= N =
NMI /N-M-I/ n.
Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with a [9472]priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is never ignored. Except, that is, on [9473]clone boxes, where NMI is often ignored on the motherboard because flaky hardware can generate many spurious ones.
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Node:no-op, Next:[9474]noddy, Previous:[9475]NMI, Up:[9476]= N =
no-op /noh’op/ n.,v.
alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] 1. A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be removed in binaries). 2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. As in “He’s a no-op.” 3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go away. “Oh, well, that was a no-op.” Hot-and-sour soup (see [9477]great-wall) that is insufficiently either is `no-op soup’; so is wonton soup if everybody else is having hot-and-sour.
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Node:noddy, Next:[9478]node, Previous:[9479]no-op, Up:[9480]= N =
noddy /nod’ee/ adj.
[UK: from the children’s books] 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is [9481]hello world. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn’t worth using. “This editor’s a bit noddy.” 2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a [9482]hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. “I’ll just throw together a noddy [9483]awk script to dump all the first fields.” In North America this might be called a [9484]mickey mouse program. See [9485]toy program.
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Node:node, Next:[9486]Nominal Semidestructor, Previous:[9487]noddy, Up:[9488]= N =
node n.
1. [Internet, UUCP] A host machine on the network. 2. [MS-DOS BBSes] A dial-in line on a BBS. Thus an MS-DOS [9489]sysop might say that his BBS has 4 nodes even though it has a single machine and no Internet link, confusing an Internet hacker no end. _________________________________________________________________
Node:Nominal Semidestructor, Next:[9490]non-optimal solution, Previous:[9491]node, Up:[9492]= N =
Nominal Semidestructor n.
Soundalike slang for `National Semiconductor’, found among other places in the Networking/2 networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the NS16000 and NS32000 and several variants. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80×86 and Motorola 680×0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn’t get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors. Compare [9493]HP-SUX, [9494]AIDX, [9495]buglix, [9496]Macintrash, [9497]Telerat, [9498]ScumOS, [9499]sun-stools, [9500]Slowlaris, [9501]Internet Exploder.
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Node:non-optimal solution, Next:[9502]nonlinear, Previous:[9503]Nominal Semidestructor, Up:[9504]= N =
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. Compare [9505]stunning. See also [9506]Bad Thing. _________________________________________________________________
Node:nonlinear, Next:[9507]nontrivial, Previous:[9508]non-optimal solution, Up:[9509]= N =
nonlinear adj.
[scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion; unstable. When used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of design specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from its expected course. 2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a [9510]flame. “When you talk to Bob, don’t mention the drug problem or he’ll go nonlinear for hours.” In this context, `go nonlinear’ connotes `blow up out of proportion’ (proportion connotes linearity). _________________________________________________________________
Node:nontrivial, Next:[9511]not ready for prime time, Previous:[9512]nonlinear, Up:[9513]= N =
nontrivial adj.
Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or impractical, or even entirely unsolvable (“Proving P=NP is nontrivial”). The preferred emphatic form is `decidedly nontrivial’. See [9514]trivial, [9515]uninteresting, [9516]interesting. _________________________________________________________________
Node:not ready for prime time, Next:[9517]notwork, Previous:[9518]nontrivial, Up:[9519]= N =
not ready for prime time adj.
Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only. Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be made more solid [9520]Real Soon Now. This term comes from the ensemble name of the original cast of “Saturday Night Live”, the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”. It has extra flavor for hackers because of the special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of [9521]prime time. Compare [9522]beta.
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Node:notwork, Next:[9523]NP-, Previous:[9524]not ready for prime time, Up:[9525]= N =
notwork /not’werk/ n.
A network, when it is acting [9526]flaky or is [9527]down. Compare [9528]nyetwork. Said at IBM to have originally referred to a