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

turistic scum'.

:toy: n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers.

nice toy': One that supports the speaker's hacking style adequately. 2.just a toy': A machine that yields insufficient {computron}s for the speaker's preferred uses. This is not condemnatory, as is {bitty box}; toys can at least be fun.

It is also strongly conditioned by one's expectations; Cray XMP

users sometimes consider the Cray-1 a `toy', and certainly all RISC

boxes and mainframes are toys by their standards. See also {Get a real computer!}.

:toy language: n. A language useful for instructional purposes or as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but inadequate for general-purpose programming. {Bad Thing}s can result when a toy language is promoted as a general purpose solution for programming (see {bondage-and-discipline language}); the classic example is {{Pascal}}. Several moderately well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such as programming Turing machines also qualify as toy languages in a less negative sense.

See also {MFTL}.

:toy problem: [AI] n. A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See also {gedanken}, {toy program}.

:toy program: n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended; hence, a trivial program (compare {noddy}). 2. One for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle.

See also {noddy}.

:trampoline: n. An incredibly {hairy} technique, found in some {HLL} and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code sections. These pieces of {live data} are called `trampolines'. Trampolines are notoriously difficult to understand in action; in fact, it is said by those who use this term that the trampoline that doesn't bend your brain is not the true trampoline. See also {snap}.

:trap: 1. n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.

vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."

This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt'

or `exception' is more common among {HLL} programmers) and appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers (see {system}, sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).

:trap door: alt. trapdoor' n. 1. Syn. {back door} --- a {Bad Thing}. 2. [techspeak] Atrap-door function' is one which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such functions are {Good Thing}s with important applications in cryptography, specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems.

:trash: vt. To destroy the contents of (said of a data structure).

The most common of the family of near-synonyms including {mung}, {mangle}, and {scribble}.

:trawl: v. To sift through large volumes of data (e.g. USENET

postings or FTP archives) looking for something of interest.

:tree-killer: [Sun] n. 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper.

This should be interpreted in a broad sense; `wasting paper'

includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free}

documents. Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers. The negative loading of this term may reflect the epithet `tree-killer'

applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien's `Lord of the Rings' trilogy (see also {elvish}, {elder days}).

:trit: /trit/ [by analogy with bit'] n. One base-3 digit; the amount of information conveyed by a selection among one of three equally likely outcomes (see also {bit}). These arise, for example, in the context of a {flag} that should actually be able to assume *three* values --- such as yes, no, or unknown. Trits are sometimes jokingly called3-state bits'. A trit may be semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half', although it is linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is, log2(3)

bits).

:trivial: adj. 1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not worth the speaker's time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not utterly {cretinous} would have thought of them already. 4. Any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish trivial' usually evaluates toI've seen it before').

Hackers' notions of triviality may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See {nontrivial}, {uninteresting}.

:troff: /tee'rof/ or /trof/ [UNIX] n. The gray eminence of UNIX

text processing; a formatting and phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11 assembler and then in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossana, modeled after the earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after Multics' RUNOFF. A companion program, `nroff', formats output for terminals and line printers.

In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified TROFF so that it could drive phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent TROFF," AT&T CSTR

#97) explains `troff''s durability. After discussing the program's "obvious deficiencies --- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious and undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:

None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating Ossana's accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably robust tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors and being forced into uses that were never conceived of in the original design, all with considerable grace under fire.

The success of TeX and desktop publishing systems have reduced troff''s relative importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the strengths that securedtroff' a place in hacker folklore; indeed, it could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of good programs which, in the long run, hackers most admire.

:troglodyte: [Commodore] n. 1. A hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combinationITS troglodyte' was flung around some during the USENET and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended to describe adopted it with pride.

:troglodyte mode: [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see {raster burn}). Loud music blaring from a stereo stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. See {larval stage}, {hack mode}.

:Trojan horse: [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards]

n. A program designed to break security or damage a system that is disguised as something else benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, a game, or (in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! See {back door}, {virus}, {worm}.

:tron: [NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie Tron'] v. To become inaccessible except via email ortalk(1)', especially when one is normally available via telephone or in person. Frequently used in the past tense, as in: "Ran seems to have tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were able to un-tron yourself". One may also speak of `tron mode'.

:true-hacker: [analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] n. One who exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp. competence and helpfulness to other hackers. A high compliment. "He spent 6 hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my FOOBAR 4000

last week --- manifestly the act of a true-hacker." Compare {demigod}, oppose {munchkin}.

:tty: /T-T-Y/ [UNIX], /tit'ee/ [ITS, but some UNIX people say it this way as well; this pronunciation is not considered to have sexual undertones] n. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See also {bit-paired keyboard}.

[especially UNIX] Any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal controlling a given job. 3. [UNIX] Any serial port, whether or not the device connected to it is a terminal; so called because under UNIX such devices have names of the form tty*. Ambiguity between senses 2 and 3 is common but seldom bothersome.

:tube: 1. n. A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream sense of TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons, Rocky &

Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional cheesy old swashbuckler movie (see {appendix B}). 2. [IBM] To send a copy of something to someone else's terminal. "Tube me that note?"

:tube time: n. Time spent at a terminal or console. More inclusive than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what parts of one's environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm spending too much of my tube time reading mail since I started this revision."

:tunafish: n. In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of tunefs(8)' in the original {BSD} 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed in later releases once commercial sites started using 4.2. Tunefs relates to thetuning' of file-system parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `BUGS' section consisting of the line "You