The Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

than toggling or tweaking it; see

[13752]frobnicate. To speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness,

and at best doesn't specify what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a

bit' has a more specific meaning (see [13753]bit twiddling,

[13754]toggle). 4. Uncommon name for the [13755]twirling baton prompt.

Node:twilight zone, Next:[13756]twink, Previous:[13757]twiddle,

Up:[13758]= T =

twilight zone n. //

[IRC] Notionally, the area of cyberspace where [13759]IRC operators

live. An [13760]op is said to have a "connection to the twilight

zone".

Node:twink, Next:[13761]twirling baton, Previous:[13762]twilight zone,

Up:[13763]= T =

twink /twink/ n.

[Berkeley] A clue-repellant user; the next step beyond a clueless

one. 2. [UCSC] A [13764]read-only user. Also reported on the Usenet

group soc.motss; may derive from gay slang for a cute young thing with

nothing upstairs (compare mainstream `chick').

Node:twirling baton, Next:[13765]two pi, Previous:[13766]twink,

Up:[13767]= T =

twirling baton n.

[PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|-/|- which produces an animated

twirling baton. If you output it with a single backspace between

characters, the baton spins in place. If you output the sequence BS SP

between characters, the baton spins from left to right. If you output

BS SP BS BS between characters, the baton spins from right to left.

This is also occasionally called a twiddle prompt.

The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature files

on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The archie

Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton program today; it

uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating that the program is

working on a query. The twirling baton is also used as a boot progress

indicator on several BSD variants of Unix; if it stops you're probably

going to have a long and trying day.

Node:two pi, Next:[13768]two-to-the-N, Previous:[13769]twirling baton,

Up:[13770]= T =

two pi quant.

The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in stories

in the following form: "He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later..."

Node:two-to-the-N, Next:[13771]twonkie, Previous:[13772]two pi,

Up:[13773]= T =

two-to-the-N quant.

An amount much larger than [13774]N but smaller than [13775]infinity.

"I have 2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means

you probably won't show up.

Node:twonkie, Next:[13776]u-, Previous:[13777]two-to-the-N,

Up:[13778]= T =

twonkie /twon'kee/ n.

The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk

food, or (in gay slang with a small t) the male equivalent of

chick'); a uselessfeature' added to look sexy and placate a

[13779]marketroid (compare [13780]Saturday-night special). The term

may also be related to "The Twonky", title menace of a classic SF

short story by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), first

published in the September 1942 "Astounding Science Fiction" and

subsequently much anthologized.

Node:= U =, Next:[13781]= V =, Previous:[13782]= T =, Up:[13783]The

Jargon Lexicon

= U =

[13784]u-:

[13785]UBD:

[13786]UBE:

[13787]UCE:

[13788]UDP:

[13789]UN*X:

[13790]undefined external reference:

[13791]under the hood:

[13792]undocumented feature:

[13793]uninteresting:

[13794]Unix:

[13795]Unix brain damage:

[13796]Unix conspiracy:

[13797]Unix weenie:

[13798]unixism:

[13799]unswizzle:

[13800]unwind the stack:

[13801]unwind-protect:

[13802]up:

[13803]upload:

[13804]upthread:

[13805]urchin:

[13806]URL:

[13807]Usenet:

[13808]Usenet Death Penalty:

[13809]user:

[13810]user-friendly:

[13811]user-obsequious:

[13812]userland:

[13813]USG Unix:

[13814]UTSL:

[13815]UUCPNET:

Node:u-, Next:[13816]UBD, Previous:[13817]twonkie, Up:[13818]= U =

u- pref.

Written shorthand for [13819]micro-; techspeak when applied to metric

units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from the Greek letter "mu",

the first letter of "micro" (and which letter looks a lot like the

English letter "u").

Node:UBD, Next:[13820]UBE, Previous:[13821]u-, Up:[13822]= U =

UBD /U-B-D/ n.

[abbreviation for `User Brain Damage'] An abbreviation used to close

out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's

part. Compare [13823]pilot error; oppose [13824]PBD; see also

[13825]brain-damaged.

Node:UBE, Next:[13826]UCE, Previous:[13827]UBD, Up:[13828]= U =

UBE // n.

[abbrev., Unsoliclited Bulk Email] A widespread, more formal term for

email [13829]spam. Compare [13830]UCE. The UBE term recognizes that

spam is uttered by nonprofit and advocacy groups whose motives are not

commercial.

Node:UCE, Next:[13831]UDP, Previous:[13832]UBE, Up:[13833]= U =

UCE n.

[abbrev., Unsolicited Commercial Email] A widespread, more formal term

for email [13834]spam. Compare [13835]UBE, which may be superseding

it.

Node:UDP, Next:[13836]UN*X, Previous:[13837]UCE, Up:[13838]= U =

UDP /U-D-P/ v.,n.

[Usenet] Abbreviation for [13839]Usenet Death Penalty. Common

(probably now more so than the full form), and frequently verbed.

Compare [13840]IDP.

Node:UN*X, Next:[13841]undefined external reference,

Previous:[13842]UDP, Up:[13843]= U =

UN*X n.

Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T, then

of Novell, then of SCO, and then of Caldera) in writing, but avoiding

the need for the ugly 13844 typography. Also used to refer to

any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers

now say that the requirement for the trademark postfix has no legal

force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been

suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in

certain religions (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity

is never written out in full, e.g., YHWH' orG-d' is used. See also

[13845]glob and [13846]splat out.

Node:undefined external reference, Next:[13847]under the hood,

Previous:[13848]UN*X, Up:[13849]= U =

undefined external reference excl.

[Unix] A message from Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends

or dangling references in an argument or discussion.

Node:under the hood, Next:[13850]undocumented feature,

Previous:[13851]undefined external reference, Up:[13852]= U =

under the hood adj.

[hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation

of a product (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the

implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the

speaker is about to enable the listener to [13853]grok it. "Let's now

look under the hood to see how ...." 2. Can also imply that the

implementation is much simpler than the appearance would indicate:

"Under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell." 3. Inside a

chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!"

Node:undocumented feature, Next:[13854]uninteresting,

Previous:[13855]under the hood, Up:[13856]= U =

undocumented feature n.

See [13857]feature.

Node:uninteresting, Next:[13858]Unix, Previous:[13859]undocumented

feature, Up:[13860]= U =

uninteresting adj.

Said of a problem that, although [13861]nontrivial, can be solved

simply by throwing sufficient resources at it. 2. Also said of

problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the

art nor be fun to design and code.

Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time,

to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. Real hackers (see

[13862]toolsmith) generalize uninteresting problems enough to make

them interesting and solve them -- thus solving the original problem

as a special case (and, it must be admitted, occasionally turning a

molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into a tectonic plate). See

[13863]WOMBAT, [13864]SMOP; compare [13865]toy problem, oppose

[13866]interesting.

Node:Unix, Next:[13867]Unix brain damage,

Previous:[13868]uninteresting, Up:[13869]= U =

Unix /yoo'niks/ n.

[In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was

UNICS'] (alsoUNIX') An interactive time-sharing system invented in

1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project,

originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis

Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system.

The turning point in Unix's history came when it was reimplemented

almost entirely in C during 1972-1974, making it the first

source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and

expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a

uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix

had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating

system in the world - and since 1996 the variiant called [13870]Linux

has been at the cutting edge of the [13871]open source movement. Many

people consider the success of Unix the most important victory yet of

hackerdom over industry opposition (but see [13872]Unix weenie and

[13873]Unix conspiracy for an opposing point of view). See

[13874]Version 7, [13875]BSD, [13876]USG Unix, [13877]Linux.

Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately

UNIX' orUnix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably.

Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling originally happened in

CACM's 1974 paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" because "we had a new

typesetter and [13878]troff had just been invented and we were

intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr tried to

get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell Labs papers, on

the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed, and eventually

(his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So, while the trademark today

is `UNIX', both capitalizations are grounded in ancient usage; the

Jargon File uses `Unix' in deference to dmr's wishes.

Node:Unix brain damage, Next:[13879]Unix conspiracy,

Previous:[13880]Unix, Up:[13881]= U =

Unix brain damage n.

Something that has to be done to break a network program (typically a

mailer) on a non-Unix system so that it will interoperate with Unix

systems. The hack may qualify as `Unix brain damage' if the program

conforms to published standards and the Unix program in question does

not. Unix brain damage happens because it is much easier for other

(minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming

behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of Unix

systems out there.

An example of Unix brain damage is a [13882]kluge in a mail server to

recognize bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to

the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by

a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened [13883]jock weep.

Node:Unix conspiracy, Next:[13884]Unix weenie, Previous:[13885]Unix

brain damage, Up:[13886]= U =

Unix conspiracy n.

[ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among [13887]ITS

and [13888]TOPS-20 fans, Unix's growth is the result of a plot,

hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble

AT&T's competitors by making them dependent upon a system whose future

evolution was to be under AT&T's control. This would be accomplished

by disseminating an operating system that is apparently inexpensive

and easily portable, but also relatively unreliable and insecure (so

as to require continuing upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a

substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in the [13889]back

door entry.

In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first computer

viruses (see [13890]virus) -- but a virus spread to computers

indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly through

disks and networks. Adherents of this `Unix virus' theory like to cite

the fact that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered

by [13891]DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began

actively promoting its own family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now

claims to have been misquoted.)

[If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the

plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its UNIX operation to Novell

around the same time [13892]Linux and other free-UNIX distributions

were beginning to make noise. --ESR]

Node:Unix weenie, Next:[13893]unixism, Previous:[13894]Unix

conspiracy, Up:[13895]= U =

Unix weenie n.

[ITS] 1. A derogatory play on `Unix wizard', common among hackers who

use Unix by necessity but would prefer alternatives. The implication

is that although the person in question may consider mastery of Unix

arcana to be a wizardly skill, the only real skill involved is the

ability to tolerate (and the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence

and needless complexity that is alleged to infest many Unix programs.

"This shell script tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous

ways. It must have been written by a real Unix weenie." 2. A

derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of Unix.

Often appearing in the context "stupid Unix weenie". See

[13896]Weenix, [13897]Unix conspiracy. See also [13898]weenie.

Node:unixism, Next:[13899]unswizzle, Previous:[13900]Unix weenie,

Up:[13901]= U =

unixism n.

A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected

multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead

that exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common [13902]unixisms

include: gratuitous use of fork(2); the assumption that certain

undocumented but well-known