The New Hacker's Dictionary, Eric S. Raymond [bill gates book recommendations .txt] 📗

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return from the dead v.

To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare

[11297]person of no account.

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RFC /R-F-C/ n.

[Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of numbered

Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by

commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities.

Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet

mail-format standard). The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated

by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by

the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an

institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs

even once adopted as standards.

The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact

standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has

important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process

typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the

existence of a flourishing tradition of `joke' RFCs; usually at least

one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs

have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748

("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and

1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian

Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis

Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP-IP documentation

style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document

legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets

by carrier pigeon.

The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they manage to

have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal

specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often

haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to

truly worldwide proportions.

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RFE /R-F-E/ n.

[techspeak] Request For Enhancement (compare [11304]RFC). 2. [from

`Radio Free Europe', Bellcore and Sun] Radio Free Ethernet, a system

(originated by Peter Langston) for broadcasting audio among Sun

SPARCstations over the ethernet.

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rib site n.

[by analogy with [11308]backbone site] A machine that has an on-demand

high-speed link to a [11309]backbone site and serves as a regional

distribution point for lots of third-party traffic in email and Usenet

news. Compare [11310]leaf site, [11311]backbone site.

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rice box n.

[from ham radio slang] Any Asian-made commodity computer, esp. an

80x86-based machine built to IBM PC-compatible ISA or EISA-bus

standards.

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Right Thing n.

That which is compellingly the correct or appropriate thing to use,

do, say, etc. Often capitalized, always emphasized in speech as though

capitalized. Use of this term often implies that in fact reasonable

people may disagree. "What's the right thing for LISP to do when it

sees (mod a 0)? Should it return a, or give a divide-by-0 error?"

Oppose [11318]Wrong Thing.

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rip v.

To extract the digital representation of a piece of music from an

audio CD. Software that does this is often called a "CD ripper". 2.

[Amiga hackers] To extract sound or graphics from a program that they

have been compiled/assembled into, or which generates them at

run-time. In the case of older Amiga games this entails searching

through memory shortly after a reboot. This sense has been in use for

many years and probably gave rise to the (now more common) sense 1.

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ripoff n.

Synonym for [11325]chad, sense 1.

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RL // n.

[MUD community] Real Life. "Firiss laughs in RL" means that Firiss's

player is laughing. Compare [11329]meatspace; oppose [11330]VR.

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roach vt.

[Bell Labs] To destroy, esp. of a data structure. Hardware gets

[11334]toasted or [11335]fried, software gets roached.

Node:robocanceller, Next:[11336]robot, Previous:[11337]roach,

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robocanceller /roh-boh-kan'sel-*r/

A program that monitors Usenet feeds, attempting to detect and

eliminate [11339]spam by sending appropriate cancel messages .

Robocancellers may use the [11340]Breidbart Index as a trigger.

Programming them is not a game for amateurs; see [11341]ARMM. See also

[11342]Dave the Resurrector.

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robot n.

See [11346]bot.

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robust adj.

Said of a system that has demonstrated an ability to recover

gracefully from the whole range of exceptional inputs and situations

in a given environment. One step below [11350]bulletproof. Carries the

additional connotation of elegance in addition to just careful

attention to detail. Compare [11351]smart, oppose [11352]brittle.

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rococo adj.

Terminally [11356]baroque. Used to imply that a program has become so

encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues that

they have completely swamped the underlying design. Called after the

later and more extreme forms of Baroque architecture and decoration

prevalent during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis said: "Every

program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble." Compare

[11357]critical mass.

Node:rogue, Next:[11358]room-temperature IQ, Previous:[11359]rococo,

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rogue

[Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character

graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other Unix

systems. The original BSD curses(3) screen-handling package was hacked

together by Ken Arnold primarily to support games, and the development

of rogue(6) popularized its use; it has since become one of Unix's

most important and heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega,

Larn, Angband, and an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games (all

known as `roguelikes') all took off from the inspiration provided by

rogue(6); the popular Windows game Diablo, though graphics-intensive,

has very similar play logic. See also [11361]nethack. 2. [Usenet] adj.

An [11362]ISP which permits net abuse (usually in the form of

[11363]spamming) by its customers, or which itself engages in such

activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to [11364]IDPs or

[11365]UDPs. Sometimes deliberately mispelled as "rouge". See also

[11366]nethack, [11367]moria, [11368]Angband.

Node:room-temperature IQ, Next:[11369]root, Previous:[11370]rogue,

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room-temperature IQ quant.

[IBM] 80 or below (nominal room temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit,

22 degrees Celsius). Used in describing the expected intelligence

range of the [11372]luser. "Well, but how's this interface going to

play with the room-temperature IQ crowd?" See [11373]drool-proof

paper. This is a much more insulting phrase in countries that use

Celsius thermometers.

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root n.

[Unix] 1. The [11377]superuser account (with user name `root') that

ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a Unix system. The term

[11378]avatar is also used. 2. The top node of the system directory

structure; historically the home directory of the root user, but

probably named after the root of an (inverted) tree. 3. By extension,

the privileged system-maintenance login on any OS. See [11379]root

mode, [11380]go root, see also [11381]wheel.

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root mode n.

Syn. with [11385]wizard mode or `wheel mode'. Like these, it is often

generalized to describe privileged states in systems other than OSes.

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rot13 /rot ther'teen/ n.,v.

[Usenet: from `rotate alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher

encryption that replaces each English letter with the one 13 places

forward or back along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!"

becomes "Gur ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting

programs include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in a

sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open -- e.g., for

posting things that might offend some readers, or [11389]spoilers. A

major advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is that it is

self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding and decoding.

See also [11390]spoiler space, which has partly displaced rot13 since

non-Unix-based newsreaders became common.

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rotary debugger n.

[Commodore] Essential equipment for those late-night or early-morning

debugging sessions. Mainly used as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in

many decorator colors, such as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage. See

[11394]ANSI standard pizza.

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round tape n.

Industry-standard 1/2-inch magnetic tape (7- or 9-track) on

traditional circular reels. See [11398]macrotape, oppose [11399]square

tape.

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RSN /R-S-N/ adj.

See [11403]Real Soon Now.

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RTBM /R-T-B-M/ imp.

[Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant of [11407]RTFM; expands to `Read

The Bloody Manual'. RTBM is often the entire text of the first reply

to a question from a [11408]newbie; the second would escalate to

"RTFM".

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RTFAQ /R-T-F-A-Q/ imp.

[Usenet: primarily written, by analogy with [11412]RTFM] Abbrev. for

`Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person addressed ought to

read the newsgroup's [11413]FAQ list before posting questions.

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RTFB /R-T-F-B/ imp.

[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Binary'. Used when neither

documentation nor source for the problem at hand exists, and the only

thing to do is use some debugger or monitor and directly analyze the

assembler or even the machine code. "No source for the buggy port

driver? Aaargh! I hate proprietary operating systems. Time to RTFB."

Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative against

anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger here

is directed at the absence of both source and adequate documentation.

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RTFM /R-T-F-M/ imp.

[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1. Used by

[11420]gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying.

Compare [11421]Don't do that then!. 2. Used when reporting a problem

to indicate that you aren't just asking out of [11422]randomness. "No,

I can't figure out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I

have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also

[11423]FM, [11424]RTFAQ, [11425]RTFB, [11426]RTFS, [11427]STFW,

[11428]RTM, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare [11429]UTSL.

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RTFS /R-T-F-S/

[Unix] 1. imp. Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Source'. Variant

form of [11433]RTFM, used when the problem at hand is not necessarily

obvious and not answerable from the manuals -- or the manuals are not

yet written and maybe never will be. For even trickier situations, see

[11434]RTFB. Unlike RTFM, the anger inherent in RTFS is not usually

directed at the person asking the question, but rather at the people

who failed to provide adequate documentation. 2. imp. `Read The

Fucking Standard'; this oath can only be used when the problem area

(e.g., a language or operating system interface) has actually been

codified in a ratified standards document. The existence of these

standards documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically

mandated compromises that they inevitably contain, and the

impenetrable [11435]legalese in which they are invariably written, and

the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are

produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain

amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use.

(Hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long as the

[11436]Right Thing to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly,

this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when a

system becomes popular in the [11437]Real World.) Since a hacker is

likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and

technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be

directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought

to read it.

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RTI /R-T-I/ interj.

The mnemonic for the `return from interrupt' instruction on many

computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant `RETI' is found

among former Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these things in

assembler anymore). Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end a

conversational digression.