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

n. Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See {{MS-DOS}}. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness (see {fear and loathing}). Also mess-loss',messy-dos', mess-dog',mess-dross', mush-dos', and various combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is even sometimes calledDomestos' after a brand of toilet cleanser.

:meta: /me't/ or /may't/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ [from analytic philosophy] adj.,pref. One level of description up. A metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language.

This is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See {{Humor, Hacker}}.

:meta bit: n. The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values 128--255. Also called {high bit}, {alt bit}, or {hobbit}. Some terminals and consoles (see {space-cadet keyboard}) have a META shift key. Others (including, mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have an ALT key. See also {bucky bits}.

Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of 8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit bytes. The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see {space-cadet keyboard}) generated hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.

:metasyntactic variable: n. A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word {foo} is the {canonical} example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a {scratch} file that may be deleted at any time.

To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures:

{foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT, {baz} dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts {qux} before {quux}. {foo}, {bar}, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include {gorp}. {foo}, {bar}, fum: This series is reported common at XEROX PARC. {fred}, {barney}: See the entry for {fred}. These tend to be Britishisms. {toto}, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic variables among francophones. {corge}, {grault}, {flarp}: Popular at Rutgers University and among {GOSMACS} hackers. zxc, spqr, {wombat}: Cambridge University (England).

Of all these, only foo' andbar' are universal (and {baz}

nearly so). The compounds {foobar} and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide currency.

Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; {barf}

and {mumble}, for example. See also {{Commonwealth Hackish}}

for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.

:MFTL: /M-F-T-L/ [abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1. adj.

Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see {content-free}). More broadly applied to talks --- even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL

talk". 2. n. Describes a language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL."

The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that cannot be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. See {break-even point}.

(On a related note, Dennis Ritchie has proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the operating system under which it is compiled: "Is the output of a program compiled under the language acceptable as input to the compiler?" In other words, can you write programs which write programs? (see {toolsmith}) Alarming numbers of (language, OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is Fortran; Ritchie is quick to point out that {UNIX} (even using Fortran) passes it handily.

That the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune only to have worked under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types".) :mickey: n. The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance.

:mickey mouse program: n. North American equivalent of a {noddy}

(that is, trivial) program. Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.

:micro-: pref. 1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix. 2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by 10^(-6) (see {{quantifiers}}). Neither of these uses is peculiar to hackers, but hackers tend to fling them both around rather more freely than is countenanced in standard English. It is recorded, for example, that one CS professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectures as a microcentury --- that is, about 52.6 minutes (see also {attoparsec}, {nanoacre}, and especially {microfortnight}). 3. Personal or human-scale --- that is, capable of being maintained or comprehended or manipulated by one human being. This sense is generalized from microcomputer', and is esp. used in contrast withmacro-' (the corresponding Greek prefix meaning `large'). 4. Local as opposed to global (or {macro-}). Thus a hacker might say that buying a smaller car to reduce pollution only solves a microproblem; the macroproblem of getting to work might be better solved by using mass transit, moving to within walking distance, or (best of all) telecommuting.

:microfloppies: n. 3.5-inch floppies, as opposed to 5.25-inch {vanilla} or mini-floppies and the now-obsolete 8-inch variety.

This term may be headed for obsolescence as 5.25-inchers pass out of use, only to be revived if anybody floats a sub-3-inch floppy standard. See {stiffy}, {minifloppies}.

:microfortnight: n. 1/1000000 of the fundamental unit of time in the Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of measurement; 1.2096 sec.

The VMS operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights!

Multiple uses of the millifortnight (about 20 minutes) and {nanofortnight} have also been reported.

:microLenat: /mi:-kroh-len'-*t/ n. See {bogosity}.

:microReid: /mi:'kroh-reed/ n. See {bogosity}.

:Microsloth Windows: /mi:'kroh-slothwin'dohz/ n. Hackerism forMicrosoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with {mess-dos} that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast 386. Compare {X}, {sun-stools}.

:microtape: /mi:'kroh-tayp/ n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a {macrotape}. A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. Unlike drivers for today's {macrotape}s, microtape drivers allow random access to the data, and therefore could be used to support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done purely for {hack value}, as they were far too slow for practical use). In their heyday they were used in pretty much the same ways one would now use a floppy disk: as a small, portable way to save and transport files and programs. Apparently the term microtape' was actually the official term used within DEC for these tapes until someone coined the wordDECtape', which, of course, sounded sexier to the {marketroid}s; another version of the story holds that someone discovered a conflict with another company's `microtape' trademark.

:middle-endian: adj. Not {big-endian} or {little-endian}.

Used of perverse byte 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 {NUXI problem}.

:milliLampson: /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n. A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. 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