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

Second (also possibly `Gillions of Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). In 1991, this is used of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected to change. Compare {KIPS}.

:glark: /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January 1981Scientific American'). It is conjectured that hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was already an established jargon term. Compare {grok}, {zen}.

:glass: [IBM] n. Synonym for {silicon}.

:glass tty: /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (appendix A) for an interesting true story about a glass tty.

:glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn.

{firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.

:glitch: /glich/ [from German glitschen' to slip, via Yiddishglitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.

Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}). This is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers.

In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say, "Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See {gritch}. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp.

several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.

All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).

:glob: /glob/, not /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the following:

* wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X}) ? wildcard for any character (generally read this way only at the beginning or in the middle of a word) [] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters {} alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, `foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'

Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}.

Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the UNIX shell.

:glork: /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. vt. Similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked itself." See also {glark}.

:glue: n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.

:gnarly: /nar'lee/ adj. Both {obscure} and {hairy} in the sense of complex. "{Yow!} --- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.

:GNU: /gnoo/, not /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not UNIX!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX hacker John Gilmore gnu@toad.com, founder of USENET's anarchic alt.*

hierarchy.

:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}.

Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.

:go flatline: [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG

traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To {die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

:go root: [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.

:go-faster stripes: [UK] Syn. {chrome}.

:gobble: vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase gobble up' tends to implyconsume', while gobble down' tends to implyobtain'.

"The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer."

"I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow."

See also {snarf}.

:Godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero]

A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this! 2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets.

:golden: adj. [prob. from folklore's golden egg'] When used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g.,golden disk', `golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.

:golf-ball printer: n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter.

The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridians of latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a different golf ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.

:gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German the term is (mythically) gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomesgonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.

:gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV

series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.

:gonzo: /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but without the implication of obscurity or complexity.

:Good Thing: n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relaying netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects