The Hacker's Dictionary, - [best reads of all time .txt] 📗

distressing frequency in standards documents when the committees which write them decide that a sufficient number of users have written code which depends on specific features which are out of favor.

:deserves to lose: adj. Said of someone who willfully does the {Wrong Thing}; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be {marginal}. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's {losing} actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use {mess-dos} deserves to {lose}!" ({{ITS}} fans used to say this of {{UNIX}}; many still do.) See also {screw}, {chomp}, {bagbiter}.

:desk check: n.,v. To {grovel} over hardcopy of source code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs.

No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers --- though some maintain stoutly that it ought to be. Compare {eyeball search}, {vdiff}, {vgrep}.

:Devil Book: n. `The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD

UNIX Operating System', by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, and John S. Quarterman (Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1989) --- the standard reference book on the internals of {BSD} UNIX. So called because the cover has a picture depicting a little devil (a visual play on {daemon}) in sneakers, holding a pitchfork (referring to one of the characteristic features of UNIX, the `fork(2)' system call).

:devo: /dee'voh/ [orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics] n. A person in a development group. See also {doco} and {mango}.

:dickless workstation: n. Extremely pejorative hackerism for `diskless workstation', a class of botches including the Sun 3/50

and other machines designed exclusively to network with an expensive central disk server. These combine all the disadvantages of time-sharing with all the disadvantages of distributed personal computers; typically, they cannot even {boot} themselves without help (in the form of some kind of {breath-of-life packet}) from the server.

:dictionary flame: [USENET] n. An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise.

A common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality.

:diddle: 1. vt. To work with or modify in a not particularly serious manner. "I diddled a copy of {ADVENT} so it didn't double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away." See {tweak} and {twiddle}.

n. The action or result of diddling. See also {tweak}, {twiddle}, {frob}.

:die: v. Syn. {crash}. Unlike {crash}, which is used primarily of hardware, this verb is used of both hardware and software. See also {go flatline}, {casters-up mode}.

:die horribly: v. The software equivalent of {crash and burn}, and the preferred emphatic form of {die}. "The converter choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".

:diff: /dif/ n. 1. A change listing, especially giving differences between (and additions to) source code or documents (the term is often used in the plural diffs'). "Send me your diffs for the Jargon File!" Compare {vdiff}. 2. Specifically, such a listing produced by thediff(1)' command, esp. when used as specification input to the `patch(1)' utility (which can actually perform the modifications; see {patch}). This is a common method of distributing patches and source updates in the UNIX/C world. See also {vdiff}, {mod}.

:digit: n. An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also {VAX}, {VMS}, {PDP-10}, {{TOPS-10}}, {DEChead}, {double DECkers}, {field circus}.

:dike: vt. To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.) The word dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to meandiagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike something out' means to use such cutters to remove something.

Indeed, the TMRC Dictionary defined dike as "to attack with dikes". Among hackers this term has been metaphorically extended to informational objects such as sections of code.

:ding: n.,vi. 1. Synonym for {feep}. Usage: rare among hackers, but commoner in the {Real World}. 2. `dinged': What happens when someone in authority gives you a minor bitching about something, esp. something trivial. "I was dinged for having a messy desk."

:dink: /dink/ n. Said of a machine that has the {bitty box}

nature; a machine too small to be worth bothering with ---

sometimes the system you're currently forced to work on. First heard from an MIT hacker working on a CP/M system with 64K, in reference to any 6502 system, then from fans of 32-bit architectures about 16-bit machines. "GNUMACS will never work on that dink machine." Probably derived from mainstream `dinky', which isn't sufficiently pejorative.

:dinosaur: n. 1. Any hardware requiring raised flooring and special power. Used especially of old minis and mainframes, in contrast with newer microprocessor-based machines. In a famous quote from the 1988 UNIX EXPO, Bill Joy compared the mainframe in the massive IBM display with a grazing dinosaur "with a truck outside pumping its bodily fluids through it". IBM was not amused. Compare {big iron}; see also {mainframe}. 2. [IBM] A very conservative user; a {zipperhead}.

:dinosaur pen: n. A traditional {mainframe} computer room complete with raised flooring, special power, its own ultra-heavy-duty air conditioning, and a side order of Halon fire extinguishers. See {boa}.

:dinosaurs mating: n. Said to occur when yet another {big iron}

merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the {mainframe} industry. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out early, and it wasIBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 ---

this was when the phrase `dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is written (early 1991) AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first six years in the hardware industry by absorbing NCR. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.

:dirtball: [XEROX PARC] n. A small, perhaps struggling outsider; not in the major or even the minor leagues. For example, "Xerox is not a dirtball company".

[Outsiders often observe in the PARC culture an institutional arrogance which usage of this term exemplifies. The brilliance and scope of PARC's contributions to computer science have been such that this superior attitude is not much resented. --- ESR]

:dirty power: n. Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, {drop-outs}, average voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all cause problems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectively known as {power hit}s).

:disclaimer: n. [USENET] n. Statement ritually appended to many USENET

postings (sometimes automatically, by the posting software) reiterating the fact (which should be obvious, but is easily forgotten) that the article reflects its author's opinions and not necessarily those of the organization running the machine through which the article entered the network.

:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of {Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers.

Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's `{Illuminatus!}' trilogy as a sort of self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners --- it should on no account be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes.

Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from `Principia Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati.

See {Religion} under {appendix B}, {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.

:disk farm: n. (also {laundromat}) A large room or rooms filled with disk drives (esp. {washing machine}s).

:display hack: n. A program with the same approximate purpose as a kaleidoscope: to make pretty pictures. Famous display hacks include {munching squares}, {smoking clover}, the BSD UNIX

rain(6)' program,worms(6)' on miscellaneous UNIXes, and the {X} `kaleid(1)' program. Display hacks can also be implemented without programming by creating text files containing numerous escape sequences for interpretation by a video terminal; one notable example displayed, on any VT100, a Christmas tree with twinkling lights and a toy train circling its base. The {hack value} of a display hack is proportional to the esthetic value of the images times the cleverness of the algorithm divided by the size of the code. Syn. {psychedelicware}.

:Dissociated Press: [play on `Associated Press'; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] n. An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a {marketroid}. You start by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step you search for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N

words (or letters) already printed and then print the next word or letter. {EMACS} has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied