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

the master directory." 2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site.

"Last night I raped Simtel's dskutl directory."

:rare mode: [UNIX] adj. CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled). Distinguished from {raw mode} and {cooked mode}; the phrase "a sort of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode. Usage: rare.

:raster blaster: n. [Cambridge] Specialized hardware for {bitblt} operations (a {blitter}). Allegedly inspired by Rasta Blasta', British slang for the sort of portable stereo Americans call aboom box' or `ghetto blaster'.

:raster burn: n. Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See {terminal illness}.

:rat belt: n. A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable ties are `mouse belts'.

:rave: [WPI] vi. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject.

To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little. 3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person verbally. 5. To evangelize. See {flame}. 6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. Rave' differs slightly from {flame} in thatrave' implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while {flame} implies somewhat more strongly that the tone is offensive as well.

:rave on!: imp. Sarcastic invitation to continue a {rave}, often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely.

:ravs: /ravz/, also Chinese ravs' n. Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie (pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and (around Boston)Peking Ravioli'. The term rav' is short forravioli', which among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell, but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good ones include Chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." See also {{oriental food}}.

:raw mode: n. A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an I/O device (or, under {bogus} systems which make a distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or interpretation by the operating system. Compare {rare mode}, {cooked mode}. This is techspeak under UNIX, jargon elsewhere.

:rc file: /R-C fi:l/ [UNIX: from the startup script /etc/rc', but this is commonly believed to have been named after older scripts torun commands'] n. Script file containing startup instructions for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually a text file containing commands of the sort that might have been invoked manually once the system was running but are to be executed automatically each time the system starts up. See also {dot file}.

:RE: /R-E/ n. Common spoken and written shorthand for {regexp}.

:read-only user: n. Describes a {luser} who uses computers almost exclusively for reading USENET, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than writing code or purveying useful information. See {twink}, {terminal junkie}, {lurker}.

:README file: n. By convention, the top-level directory of a UNIX

source distribution always contains a file named `README' (or READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or some other variant), which is a hacker's-eye introduction containing a pointer to more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history notes, etc.

In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not usually distributed in source form and a README is more likely to contain user-oriented material like last-minute documentation changes, error workarounds, and restrictions. When asked, hackers invariably relate the README

convention to the famous scene in Lewis Carroll's `Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' in which Alice confronts magic munchies labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".

:real: adj. Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to {virtual} in any of its jargon senses.

:real estate: n. May be used for any critical resource measured in units of area. Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the area available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see also {nanoacre}). May also be used of floor space in a {dinosaur pen}, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic).

:real hack: n. A {crock}. This is sometimes used affectionately; see {hack}.

:real operating system: n. The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a real operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial UNIX sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a real

operating system?", and people from IBM object "UNIX? Why don't you use a real operating system?" See {holy wars}, {religious issues}, {proprietary}, {Get a real computer!}

:real programmer: [indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche'] n. A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The archetypalreal programmer' likes to program on the {bare metal} and is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been {bum}med into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture. Real Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers ---

because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their successors generally consider it a {Good Thing} that there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see "{The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}.

:Real Soon Now: [orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's column in `BYTE'] adv. 1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical. 2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated RSN.

:real time: 1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical plant is the classic example. Such applications often require special operating systems (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware. 2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling procedure's program counter on the stack and she came up with an algorithm in real time."

:real user: n. 1. A commercial user. One who is paying real

money for his computer usage. 2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See {user}. Hackers who are also students may also be real users. "I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user." See also {luser}.

:Real World: n. 1. Those institutions at which programming' may be used in the same sentence asFORTRAN', {COBOL}',RPG', {IBM}',DBASE', etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices. 2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see {code grinder}). 4. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is also noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in England, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label `REALITY CHECKPOINT'. It marks the boundary between university and the Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. See also {fear and loathing}, {mundane}, and {uninteresting}.

:reality check: n. 1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it