The Original Hacker's Dictionary

A standard construction is to double a verb and use it as a comment on what the implied subject does. Often used to terminate a conversation. Typical examples involve WIN, LOSE, HACK, FLAME, BARF, CHOMP. "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." "Mostly he just talked about his crock. Flame, flame." "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!"

Similar to Cockney rhyming slang. Often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples: Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American
New York Times => New York Slime
historical reasons => hysterical raisins
government property do not duplicate (seen on keys) => government duplicity - do not propagate Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in a standard jargon word: Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal
creeping featurism => feeping creaturism
Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall

Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable "P"; from the LISP convention of appending the letter "P" to denote a predicate (a Boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: "Foodp?" "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!" "State-of-the-world-P?" (Straight) "I'm about to go home." (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state." [One of the best of these is a Gosperism (i.e., due to Bill Gosper). When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" -GLS]

MIT AI hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases. Examples: porous => porosity. generous => generosity. Ergo: mysterious => mysteriosity. ferrous => ferocity. Other examples: winnitude, disgustitude, hackification.

Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan" are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises in a com link. Another expression sometimes heard is "complain!"

Used with @END humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. From the SCRIBE command of the same name. @Begin(Flame)
Predicate logic is the only good programming language.
Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also,
computers should be tredecimal instead of binary.
@End(Flame)

Either of the characters "<" and ">". See BROKET.

[based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] To increase the amount of something. "Aos the campfire." Usage: considered silly. See SOS.

Abbreviation for "argument" (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word.

Automatically, but in a way which, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), I don't feel like explaining to you. See MAGIC. Example: Some programs which produce XGP output files spool them automagically.

1. n. Equipment or program that fails, usually intermittently. 2. BAGBITING: adj. Failing hardware or software. "This bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS, CHOMPER, CHOMPING.

Common alternate name for EXCL (q.v.), especially at CMU. See SHRIEK.

1. The second metasyntactic variable, after FOO. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR..." 2. Often appended to FOO to produce FOOBAR.

1. interj. Term of disgust. See BLETCH. 2. v. Choke, as on input. May mean to give an error message. "The function compares two fixnums or two flonums, and barfs on anything else." 3. BARFULOUS, BARFUCIOUS: adj. Said of something which would make anyone barf, if only for aesthetic reasons.

Unnecessary but useful (or amusing) features of a program. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." Nobody seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle.

1. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice. 2. Multiple-precision (sometimes infinitely extendable) integers and, through analogy, any very large numbers. 3. EL CAMINO BIGNUM: El Camino Real, a street through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way to Mexico City. It was termed "El Camino Double Precision" when someone noted it was a very long street, and then "El Camino Bignum" when it was pointed out that it was hundreds of miles long.

1. n. Short for BINARY; used as a second file name on ITS. 2. BIN FILE: A file containing the BIN for a program. Usage: used at MIT, which runs on ITS. The equivalent term at Stanford is DMP (pronounced "dump") FILE. Other names used include SAV ("save") FILE (DEC and Tenex), SHR ("share") and LOW FILES (DEC), and EXE ("ex'ee") FILE (DEC and Twenex). Also in this category are the input files to the various flavors of linking loaders (LOADER, LINK-10, STINK), called REL FILES.

The object code for a program.

1. The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question. "Bits" is often used simply to mean information, as in "Give me bits about DPL replicators". 2. [By extension from "interrupt bits" on a computer] A reminder that something should be done or talked about eventually. Upon seeing someone that you haven't talked to for a while, it's common for one or both to say, "I have a bit set for you."

1. v. To perform a complex operation on a large block of bits, usually involving the bits being displayed on a bitmapped raster screen. See BLT. 2. n. The operation itself.

1. A receptacle used to hold the runoff from the computer's shift registers. 2. Mythical destination of deleted files, GC'ed memory, and other no-longer-accessible data. 3. The physical device associated with "NUL:".

1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. BLETCHEROUS: adj. Disgusting in design or function. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" Usage: slightly comic.

[based on the PDP-10 block transfer instruction; confusing to users of the PDP-11] 1. v. To transfer a large contiguous package of information from one place to another. 2. THE BIG BLT: n. Shuffling operation on the PDP-10 under some operating systems that consumes a significant amount of computer time. 3. (usually pronounced B-L-T) n. Sandwich containing bacon, lettuce, and tomato.

The degree to which something is BOGUS (q.v.). At CMU, bogosity is measured with a bogometer; typical use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say, "My bogometer just triggered." The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (μL).

1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of RANDOM.) [Etymological note from Lehman/Reid at CMU: "Bogus" was originally used (in this sense) at Princeton, in the late 60's. It was used not particularly in the CS department, but all over campus. It came to Yale, where one of us (Lehman) was an undergraduate, and (we assume) elsewhere through the efforts of Princeton alumni who brought the word with them from their alma mater. In the Yale case, the alumnus is Michael Shamos, who was a graduate student at Yale and is now a faculty member here. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (e.g., autobogophobia: the fear of becoming bogotified).]

To play volleyball. "Bounce, bounce! Stop wasting time on the computer and get out to the court!"

[generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Multics] Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable.

1. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to the system broke the TELNET server." 2. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may be examined for debugging purposes. The place where it stops is a BREAKPOINT.

1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving strangely; especially (of people), exhibiting extreme depression.

[by analogy with "bracket": a "broken bracket" (primarily Stanford)] Either of the characters "<" and ">". (At MIT, and apparently in The Real World (q.v.) as well, these are usually called ANGLE BRACKETS.)

The bits produced by the CTRL and META shift keys on a Stanford (or Knight) keyboard. Rumor has it that the idea for extra bits for characters came from Niklaus Wirth, and that his nickname was 'Bucky'. DOUBLE BUCKY: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F."

[from telephone terminology, "bugs in a telephone cable", blamed for noisy lines; however, Jean Sammet has repeatedly been heard to claim that the use of the term in CS comes from a story concerning actual bugs found wedged in an early malfunctioning computer] An unwanted and unintended property of a program. (People can have bugs too (even winners) as in "PHW is a super winner, but he has some bugs.") See FEATURE.

1. v. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. The object of the verb is usually what was removed ("I managed to bum three more instructions.") but can be the program being changed ("I bummed the inner loop down to seven microseconds.") 2. n. A small change to an algorithm to make it more efficient.

To run in a very tight loop, perhaps without guarantee of getting out.

The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "He just used 'canonical' in the canonical way."

A condition of suspended animation in which the system is in a wedged (CATATONIC) state.

With "down", to trace down a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly.

The Lisp Machine Manual, so called because the title is wrapped around the cover so only those letters show.

To lose; to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See BAGBITER. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting of the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet, and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a biting action. The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb Doubling).

Abbreviation for "close (or right) parenthesis", used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. See OPEN.

Any very unusual character. MIT people complain about the "control-meta-cokebottle" commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complain about the "altmode-altmode-cokebottle" commands at MIT.

[from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally:

Abbreviation	Meaning
BCNU	Be seeing you.
BTW	By the way...
BYE?	Are you ready to unlink? (Standard way to end a conversation; confirmation is BYE).
CUL	See you later.
FOO?	A greeting, also meaning RU THERE? Often used in the case of unexpected links.
FYI	For your information...
GA	Go ahead (used when two people try to type simultaneously; cedes control).
HELLOP	A greeting, also meaning RU THERE? (An instance of the "-P" convention.)
MtFBWY	May the Force be with you. (From Star Wars.)
NIL	No.
OBTW	Oh, by the way....
RU THERE?	Are you there?
SEC	Wait a second.
T	Yes.
TNX	Thanks.
TNX 1.0E6	Thanks a million (humorous).

• <double CRLF> When the typing party has finished, he types two CRLF's to signal that he is done; this leaves a blank line between individual "speeches".
• <name>: When three or more terminals are linked, each speech is preceded by the typist's login name and a colon (or a hyphen) to indicate who is typing.
• \M The equivalent of a giggle.

At Stanford, where the link feature is implemented by "talk loops", the term TALK MODE is used in place of COM MODE. Most of the above "sub-jargon" is used at both Stanford and MIT.

[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices.

1. To add a new element to a list. 2. CONS UP: v. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an example".

1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the system, sometimes of magnetic disk drives. "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash which entails the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a "head crash". 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?" Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the crash. "Those idiots playing spacewar crashed the system." Sometimes said of people. See GRONK OUT.

1. n. Congenital loser (q.v.). 2. CRETINOUS: adj. See BLETCHEROUS and BAGBITING. Usage: somewhat ad hominem.

A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). See TERPRI.

[probably from "layman" slang] An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Example: Using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user is a crock. Also, a technique that works acceptably but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least; a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure.

1. Poorly built, possibly overly complex. "This is standard old crufty DEC software". Hence CRUFT, n. shoddy construction. Also CRUFT, v. [from hand cruft, pun on hand craft] to write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Hence CRUFT, n. disgusting mess. 3. Generally unpleasant. CRUFTY or CRUFTIE n. A small crufty object (see FROB). "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or, random cruft)." [Note: Does CRUFT have anything to do with the Cruft Lab at Harvard? I don't know, though I was a Harvard student. - GLS]

1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation which is nonetheless painful to perform. "FORTRAN programs do mostly number crunching." 2. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code ("file crunching"). 3. n. The character "#". Usage: used at Xerox and CMU. Other names include SHARP, NUMBER, HASH, PIG-PEN, POUND-SIGN, and MESH. GLS adds: The name for the sign itself is "octothorp".

The terminal physically associated with a computer's operating console.

1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. See RUDE.

[archaic form of "demon"] A program which is not invoked explicitly, but which lays dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. For example, writing a file on the lpt spooler's directory will invoke the spooling daemon, which prints the file. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system. Usage: DAEMON and DEMON (q.v.) are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. DAEMON was introduced by CTSS people and referred to what is now called a DRAGON or PHANTOM (q.v.).

1. A surprising property of a program. Occasionally documented. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it. 2. A well-known and beloved property; a facility. An approximately correct spectrum: (The last is never actually attained.)

1. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. The result of that job. 3. NEAT HACK: A clever technique or brilliant practical joke. 4. REAL HACK: A crock. 5. Throw something together quickly. 6. To bear emotionally or physically. 7. To work on something (typically a program). "I'm hacking TECO." 11. HACK VALUE: Reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. HAPPY HACKING: A farewell. HOW'S HACKING?: A friendly greeting. HACK HACK: A temporary farewell. [The word HACK doesn't really have 69 different meanings. In fact, HACK has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation... - Agre]

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch their capabilities. 2. One who programs enthusiastically. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 6. A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around ("password hacker", "network hacker").

1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 5. Anywhere outside a university. Used pejoratively by those not in residence there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pseudo-teletype, which is a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty on the other. Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline from its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to another tty, thereby providing a "sub-tty"). This is MIT terminology; the SAIL and DEC equivalent is PTY.

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

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

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

1. Yes. Usage: used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the "-P" convention). See NIL. 2. See TIME T.

See TAIL RECURSION.

See COM MODE.

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

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

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

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

To output a CRLF (q.v.).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plural of VAX (a DEC machine).

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

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

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

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

1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone. "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A location in a monitor which contains the address of a routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a different routine. The following quote comes from "Polymorphic Systems", vol. 2, p. 54: "Any type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing its address in one of the monitor's `wormholes.'*"

See EXCL.

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

See PLUGH.

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

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

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

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