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

sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb. See {bogon}, {computron}, {suit}, {psyton}.

:quarter: n. Two bits. This in turn comes from the pieces of eight' famed in pirate movies --- Spanish silver crowns that could be broken into eight pie-slice-shapedbits' to make change.

Early in American history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each of these `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. {tayste}, {crumb}, {quad}. Usage: rare. See also {nickle}, {nybble}, {{byte}}, {dynner}.

:ques: /kwes/ 1. n. The question mark character (`?', ASCII 0111111). 2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See {wall}.

:quick-and-dirty: adj. Describes a {crock} put together under time or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to convey that you think the fast way might lead to trouble further down the road. "I can have a quick-and-dirty fix in place tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the whole module to solve the underlying design problem."

See also {kluge}.

:quine: [from the name of the logician Willard V. Quine, via Douglas Hofstadter] n. A program which generates a copy of its source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some given programming language is a common hackish amusement. Here is one classic quine: ((lambda (x)

(list x (list (quote quote) x))) (quote (lambda (x) (list x (list (quote quote) x))))) This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to write quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily handle programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!) in languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine: char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c"; main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}

For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the line break after the second semicolon. Some infamous {Obfuscated C Contest}

entries have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways.

:quote chapter and verse: [by analogy with the mainstream phrase]

v. To cite a relevant excerpt from an appropriate {bible}. "I don't care if rn' gets it wrong;Followup-To: poster' is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you don't believe me."

:quotient: n. See {coefficient of X}.

:quux: /kwuhks/ [Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare, quuxandum iri; noun form variously quux' (pluralquuces', anglicized to quuxes') andquuxu' (genitive plural is quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all theu' letters in Scrabble).] 1. Originally, a {metasyntactic variable} like {foo} and {foobar}.

Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and na"ive and not yet interacting with the real computing community. Many people invent such words; this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a little. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned to the originator in the form of a nickname. 2. interj. See {foo}; however, denotes very little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. 3. Guy Steele in his persona as The Great Quux', which is somewhat infamous for light verse and for theCrunchly' cartoons.

In some circles, quux is used as a punning opposite of `crux'.

"Ah, that's the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is not crucial (compare {tip of the ice-cube}). 5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining to a quux.

:qux: /kwuhks/ The fourth of the standard {metasyntactic variable}, after {baz} and before the quu(u...)x series.

See {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}. This appears to be a recent mutation from {quux}, and many versions of the standard series just run {foo}, {bar}, {baz}, {quux}, ....

:QWERTY: /kwer'tee/ [from the keycaps at the upper left] adj.

Pertaining to a standard English-language typewriter keyboard (sometimes called the Sholes keyboard after its inventor), as opposed to Dvorak or foreign-language layouts or a {space-cadet keyboard} or APL keyboard.

Historical note: The QWERTY layout is a fine example of a {fossil}.

It is sometimes said that it was designed to slow down the typist, but this is wrong; it was designed to allow faster typing --- under a constraint now long obsolete. In early typewriters, fast typing using nearby type-bars jammed the mechanism. So Sholes fiddled the layout to separate the letters of many common digraphs (he did a far from perfect job, though; th',tr', ed', ander', for example, each use two nearby keys). Also, putting the letters of `typewriter' on one line allowed it to be typed with particular speed and accuracy for {demo}s. The jamming problem was essentially solved soon afterward by a suitable use of springs, but the keyboard layout lives on.

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:rain dance: n. 1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished.

This especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables, etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance." 2. Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals that include both an {incantation} or two and physical activity or motion. Compare {magic}, {voodoo programming}, {black art}.

:rainbow series: n. Any of several series of technical manuals distinguished by cover color. The original rainbow series was the NCSC security manuals (see {Orange Book}); the term has also been commonly applied to the PostScript reference set (see {Red Book}, {Green Book}, {Blue Book}, {White Book}). Which books are meant by "`the' rainbow series" unqualified is thus dependent on one's local technical culture.

:random: adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly." 2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a bunch of random business types."

(pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "He's just a random loser." 4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized. "The program has a random set of misfeatures."

"That's a random name for that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly." 5. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly." 6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file." 7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What {randomness}!

n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way. 9. n.

Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2. "I went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".

n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also {J. Random}, {some random X}.

:random numbers:: n. When one wishes to specify a large but random number of things, and the context is inappropriate for {N}, certain numbers are preferred by hacker tradition (that is, easily recognized as placeholders). These include the following: 17

Long described at MIT as `the least random number'; see 23. 23 Sacred number of Eris, Goddess of Discord (along with 17 and 5). 42 The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Note that this answer is completely fortuitous. `:-)') 69 From the sexual act. This one was favored in MIT's ITS culture. 105 69 hex = 105 decimal, and 69 decimal = 105 octal. 666 The Number of the Beast.

For further enlightenment, study the Principia Discordia',{The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}', `The Joy of Sex', and the Christian Bible (Revelation 13:8). See also {Discordianism} or consult your pineal gland. See also {for values of}.

:randomness: n. 1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance. 2. A {hack} or {crock} that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction).

"This hack can output characters 40--57 by putting the character in the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits --- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!" 3. Of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. The connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."

:rape: vt. 1. To {screw} someone or something, violently; in particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably.

Often used in describing file-system damage. "So-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping