The New Hacker's Dictionary, Eric S. Raymond [bill gates book recommendations .txt] 📗

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Up:[13661]= T =

troll v.,n.

[From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on

[13662]Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or

[13663]flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling

for [13664]newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a

style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping

for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of

newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than

they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and

experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall

for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also [13665]YHBT. 2. An

individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious

arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list,

or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a

discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real

interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to

utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they

exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized

as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just

a troll." 3. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for

CS students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab

policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking

in dark cavelike corners.

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower

category than [13666]flame bait, that a troll is categorized by

containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.

See also [13667]Troll-O-Meter.

The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that readily

produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one not

infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of a

followup to troll postings.

Node:Troll-O-Meter, Next:[13668]tron, Previous:[13669]troll,

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Troll-O-Meter n.

Common Usenet jargon for a notional instrument used to measure the

quality of a Usenet [13671]troll. "Come on, everyone! If the above

doesn't set off the Troll-O-Meter, we're going to have to get him to

run around with a big blinking sign saying `I am a troll, I'm only in

it for the controversy and flames' and shooting random gobs of

Jell-O(tm) at us before the point is proven." Mentions of the

Troll-O-Meter are often accompanied by an ASCII picture of an arrow

pointing at a numeric scale. Compare [13672]bogometer.

Node:tron, Next:[13673]true-hacker, Previous:[13674]Troll-O-Meter,

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tron v.

[NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie "Tron"] To become inaccessible except

via email or talk(1), especially when one is normally available via

telephone or in person. Frequently used in the past tense, as in: "Ran

seems to have tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were

able to un-tron yourself". One may also speak of `tron mode'; compare

[13676]spod.

Note that many dialects of BASIC have a TRON/TROFF command pair that

enables/disables line number tracing; this has no obvious relationship

to the slang usage.

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true-hacker n.

[analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] One who exemplifies the primary

values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to other

hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me bring up UUCP

and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000 last week -- manifestly the act of a

true-hacker." Compare [13680]demigod, oppose [13681]munchkin.

Node:tty, Next:[13682]tube, Previous:[13683]true-hacker, Up:[13684]= T

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tty /T-T-Y/, /tit'ee/ n.

The latter pronunciation was primarily ITS, but some Unix people say

it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have

sexual undertones. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety,

characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character

set, and poor print quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs

themselves). See also [13685]bit-paired keyboard. 2. [especially Unix]

Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to the particular

terminal controlling a given job. 3. [Unix] Any serial port, whether

or not the device connected to it is a terminal; so called because

under Unix such devices have names of the form tty*. Ambiguity between

senses 2 and 3 is common but seldom bothersome.

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tube

n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real

hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky & Bullwinkle,

Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler

movie. 2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to someone else's

terminal. "Tube me that note?"

Node:tube time, Next:[13689]tunafish, Previous:[13690]tube,

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tube time n.

Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking time;

commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's environment one

uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too much of my tube time

reading mail since I started this revision."

Node:tunafish, Next:[13692]tune, Previous:[13693]tube time,

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tunafish n.

In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke to

be found at the bottom of the manual pages of tunefs(8) in the

original [13695]BSD 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in later

releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but apparently

restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs relates

to the `tuning' of file-system parameters for optimum performance, and

at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `BUGS'

section consisting of the line "You can tune a file system, but you

can't tunafish". Variants of this can be seen in other BSD versions,

though it has been excised from some versions by humorless management

[13696]droids. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1 contains a comment

apparently designed to prevent this: "Take this out and a Unix Demon

will dog your steps from now until the time---t's wrap around."

[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually

at a canning factory... --ESR]

Node:tune, Next:[13697]turbo nerd, Previous:[13698]tunafish,

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tune vt.

[from automotive or musical usage] To optimize a program or system for

a particular environment, esp. by adjusting numerical parameters

designed as [13700]hooks for tuning, e.g., by changing #define lines

in C. One may tune for time' (fastest execution),tune for space'

(least memory use), or `tune for configuration' (most efficient use of

hardware). See [13701]bum, [13702]hot spot, [13703]hand-hacking.

Node:turbo nerd, Next:[13704]Turing tar-pit, Previous:[13705]tune,

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turbo nerd n.

See [13707]computer geek.

Node:Turing tar-pit, Next:[13708]turist, Previous:[13709]turbo nerd,

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Turing tar-pit n.

A place where anything is possible but nothing of interest is

practical. Alan Turing helped lay the foundations of computer science

by showing that all machines and languages capable of expressing a

certain very primitive set of operations are logically equivalent in

the kinds of computations they can carry out, and in principle have

capabilities that differ only in speed from those of the most powerful

and elegantly designed computers. However, no machine or language

exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other

than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly

slow and far too painful to use. A `Turing tar-pit' is any computer

language or other tool that shares this property. That is, it's

theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder you struggle to

get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in.

Compare [13711]bondage-and-discipline language. 2. The perennial

[13712]holy wars over whether language A or B is the "most powerful".

Node:turist, Next:[13713]Tux, Previous:[13714]Turing tar-pit,

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turist /too'rist/ n.

Var. sp. of [13716]tourist, q.v. Also in adjectival form, `turistic'.

Poss. influenced by [13717]luser and `Turing'.

Node:Tux, Next:[13718]tweak, Previous:[13719]turist, Up:[13720]= T =

Tux

Tux the Penguin is the official emblem of [13721]Linux, This

eventuated after a logo contest in 1996, during which Linus Torvalds

endorsed the idea of a penguin logo in a couple of famously funny

[13722]postings. Linus explained that he was once bitten by a killer

penguin in Australia and has felt a special affinity for the species

ever since. (Linus has since admitted that he was also thinking of

Feathers McGraw, the evil-genius penguin jewel thief who appeared in a

Wallace & Grommit feature cartoon, "The Wrong Trousers".)

Larry Ewing [13723]designed the official Tux logo. It has proved a

wise choice, amenable to hundreds of recognizable variations used as

emblems of Linux-related projects, products, and user groups. In fact,

Tux has spawned an entire mythology, of which the [13724]Gospel

According to Tux and the mock-epic poem "Tuxowolf" are among the

best-known examples.

There is a `real' Tux - a black-footed penguin resident at the Bristol

Zoo. Several friends of Linux bought a zoo sponsorship for Linus as a

birthday present in 1996.

Node:tweak, Next:[13725]tweeter, Previous:[13726]Tux, Up:[13727]= T =

tweak vt.

To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used

synonymously with [13728]twiddle. If a program is almost correct,

rather than figure out the precise problem you might just keep

tweaking it until it works. See [13729]frobnicate and [13730]fudge

factor; also see [13731]shotgun debugging. 2. To [13732]tune or

[13733]bum a program; preferred usage in the U.K.

Node:tweeter, Next:[13734]TWENEX, Previous:[13735]tweak, Up:[13736]= T

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tweeter n.

[University of Waterloo] Syn. [13737]perf, [13738]chad (sense 1). This

term (like [13739]woofer) has been in use at Waterloo since 1972 but

is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers to the treble

speaker(s) on a hi-fi.

Node:TWENEX, Next:[13740]twiddle, Previous:[13741]tweeter, Up:[13742]=

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TWENEX /twe'neks/ n.

The TOPS-20 operating system by [13743]DEC -- the second proprietary

OS for the PDP-10 -- preferred by most PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10

(that is, by those who were not [13744]ITS or [13745]WAITS partisans).

TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt, Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating

system using special paging hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all

of the systems on the ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to

TENEX from BBN and began work to make it their own. The first in-house

code name for the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating

System); when customers started asking questions, the name was changed

to SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any project

called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was briefly

reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when someone

objected that krans' meantfuneral wreath' in Swedish (though some

Swedish speakers have since said it means simply `wreath'; this part

of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20 as the

name of the operating system, and it was as TOPS-20 that it was

marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly dubbed

it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty TENEX'), even though by this point

very little of the original TENEX code remained (analogously to the

differences between AT&T V6 Unix and BSD). DEC people cringed when

they heard "TWENEX", but the term caught on nevertheless (the written

abbreviation `20x' was also used). TWENEX was successful and very

popular; in fact, there was a period in the early 1980s when it

commanded as fervent a culture of partisans as Unix or ITS -- but

DEC's decision to scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX

architecture and its relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and

put a sad end to TWENEX's brief day in the sun. DEC attempted to

convince TOPS-20 users to convert to [13746]VMS, but instead, by the

late 1980s, most of the TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix.

Node:twiddle, Next:[13747]twilight zone, Previous:[13748]TWENEX,

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twiddle n.

Tilde (ASCII 1111110, ~). Also called squiggle',sqiggle' (sic --

pronounced /skig'l/), and `twaddle', but twiddle is the most common

term. 2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes

one bug and generates several new ones (see also [13750]shotgun

debugging). 3. vt. To change something in a small way. Bits, for

example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or [13751]knobs

implies much less sense of purpose