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

>Abbreviation for [15054]Your mileage may vary common on Usenet.

Node:You are not expected to understand this, Next:[15055]You know

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=

You are not expected to understand this [Unix] cav.

The canonical comment describing something [15058]magic or too

complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment in

the context-switching code of the V6 Unix kernel. Dennis Ritchie has

[15059]explained this in detail.

Node:You know you've been hacking too long when, Next:[15060]Your

mileage may vary, Previous:[15061]You are not expected to understand

this, Up:[15062]= Y =

You know you've been hacking too long when

The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about

themselves. These include the following:

not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail,

but you remember your [15063]network address faster than your

postal one.

your [15064]SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing you

think is "Uh, oh, [15065]priority interrupt."

you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing it

in octal.

your computers have a higher street value than your car.

in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10.

more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream in some

programming language.

you realize you have never seen half of your best friends.

A [15066]list list of these can be found by searching for this phrase

on the web.

[An early version of this entry said "All but one of these have been

reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even

hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." The ringer was

balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up out of whole

cloth. Although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than

any of the others, I also received multiple independent reports of its

actually happening, most famously to Grace Hopper while she was

working with BINAC in 1949. --ESR]

Node:Your mileage may vary, Next:[15067]Yow!, Previous:[15068]You know

you've been hacking too long when, Up:[15069]= Y =

Your mileage may vary cav.

[from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by

American car manufacturers] 1. A ritual warning often found in Unix

freeware distributions. Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried to write

this portably, but who knows what'll happen on your system?" 2. More

generally, a qualifier attached to advice. "I find that sending

flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."

Node:Yow!, Next:[15070]yoyo mode, Previous:[15071]Your mileage may

vary, Up:[15072]= Y =

Yow! /yow/ interj.

[from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] A favored hacker expression of

humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out what happens when you

twiddle the foo option on this display hack!" Compare [15073]gurfle.

Node:yoyo mode, Next:[15074]Yu-Shiang Whole Fish,

Previous:[15075]Yow!, Up:[15076]= Y =

yoyo mode n.

The state in which the system is said to be when it rapidly alternates

several times between being up and being down. Interestingly (and

perhaps not by coincidence), many hardware vendors give out free yoyos

at Usenix exhibits.

Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists

staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were subsequently

treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top computer scientists

testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.

Node:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish, Next:[15077]zap, Previous:[15078]yoyo mode,

Up:[15079]= Y =

Yu-Shiang Whole Fish /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs.

The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop

in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term

is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole

(not [15080]parsed) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce.

Usage: primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could

display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from

people who hear about it second-hand.

Node:= Z =, Previous:[15081]= Y =, Up:[15082]The Jargon Lexicon

= Z =

[15083]zap:

[15084]zapped:

[15085]Zawinski's Law:

[15086]zbeba:

[15087]zen:

[15088]zero:

[15089]zero-content:

[15090]Zero-One-Infinity Rule:

[15091]zeroth:

[15092]zigamorph:

[15093]zip:

[15094]zipperhead:

[15095]zombie:

[15096]zorch:

[15097]Zork:

[15098]zorkmid:

Node:zap, Next:[15099]zapped, Previous:[15100]Yu-Shiang Whole Fish,

Up:[15101]= Z =

zap

n. Spiciness. 2. vt. To make food spicy. 3. vt. To make someone

`suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love spicy food.

Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes you wipe your

nose for the rest of the meal.) See [15102]zapped. 4. vt. To modify,

usually to correct; esp. used when the action is performed with a

debugger or binary patching tool. Also implies surgical precision.

"Zap the debug level to 6 and run it again." In the IBM mainframe

world, binary patches are applied to programs or to the OS with a

program called superzap', whose file name isIMASPZAP' (possibly

contrived from I M A SuPerZAP). 5. vt. To erase or reset. 6. To

[15103]fry a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh -- I think that

lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."

Node:zapped, Next:[15104]Zawinski's Law, Previous:[15105]zap,

Up:[15106]= Z =

zapped adj.

Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in

temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For example, the Chinese

appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold but

zapped; by contrast, [15107]vanilla wonton soup is hot but not zapped.

See also [15108]oriental food, [15109]laser chicken. See [15110]zap,

senses 1 and 2.

Node:Zawinski's Law, Next:[15111]zbeba, Previous:[15112]zapped,

Up:[15113]= Z =

Zawinski's Law

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those

programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of Software

Envelopment") to express his belief that all truly useful programs

experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application platforms

(the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of that). It is

commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.

Node:zbeba, Next:[15114]zen, Previous:[15115]Zawinski's Law,

Up:[15116]= Z =

zbeba n.

[USENET] The word `moron' in [15117]rot13. Used to describe newbies

who are behaving with especial cluelessness.

Node:zen, Next:[15118]zero, Previous:[15119]zbeba, Up:[15120]= Z =

zen vt.

To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of

enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to

problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer

allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast [15121]grok, which

connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare

[15122]hack mode. See also [15123]guru.

Node:zero, Next:[15124]zero-content, Previous:[15125]zen, Up:[15126]=

Z =

zero vt.

To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or

words (esp. in the construction `zero out'). 2. To erase; to discard

all data from. Said of disks and directories, where `zeroing' need not

involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One

may speak of something being `logically zeroed' rather than being

`physically zeroed'. See [15127]scribble.

Node:zero-content, Next:[15128]Zero-One-Infinity Rule,

Previous:[15129]zero, Up:[15130]= Z =

zero-content adj.

Syn. [15131]content-free.

Node:Zero-One-Infinity Rule, Next:[15132]zeroth,

Previous:[15133]zero-content, Up:[15134]= Z =

Zero-One-Infinity Rule prov.

"Allow none of [15135]foo, one of [15136]foo, or any number of

[15137]foo." A rule of thumb for software design, which instructs one

to not place [15138]random limits on the number of instances of a

given entity (such as: windows in a window system, letters in an OS's

filenames, etc.). Specifically, one should either disallow the entity

entirely, allow exactly one instance (an "exception"), or allow as

many as the user wants - address space and memory permitting.

The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations where it

makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of none. However,

if one decides to go further and allow N (for N > 1), then why not

N+1? And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so on? Once above 1, there's no

excuse not to allow any N; hence, [15139]infinity.

Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel "The

Gods Themselves" in which a character announces that the number 2 is

impossible - if you're going to believe in more than one universe, you

might as well believe in an infinite number of them.

Node:zeroth, Next:[15140]zigamorph, Previous:[15141]Zero-One-Infinity

Rule, Up:[15142]= Z =

zeroth /zee'rohth/ adj.

First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based

indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0

instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits

correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital

devices known as `counters' count in this way.

Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter

of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an introductory

nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition of

[15143]K&R). In recent years this trait has also been observed among

many pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of

numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce

[15144]fencepost errors, though it cannot eliminate them entirely.

Node:zigamorph, Next:[15145]zip, Previous:[15146]zeroth, Up:[15147]= Z

=

zigamorph /zig'*-morf/ n.

Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or [15148]fence

character. Usage: primarily at IBM shops. 2. [proposed] n. The Unicode

non-character U+FFFF (1111111111111111), a character code which is not

assigned to any character, and so is usable as end-of-string. (Unicode

is a 16-bit character code intended to cover all of the world's

writing systems, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, hiragana,

katakana, Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and many other scripts - support

for [15149]elvish is planned for a future release).

Node:zip, Next:[15150]zipperhead, Previous:[15151]zigamorph,

Up:[15152]= Z =

zip vt.

[primarily MS-DOS] To create a compressed archive from a group of

files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is

spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been

written. Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and send it to

you." See [15153]tar and feather.

Node:zipperhead, Next:[15154]zombie, Previous:[15155]zip, Up:[15156]=

Z =

zipperhead n.

[IBM] A person with a closed mind.

Node:zombie, Next:[15157]zorch, Previous:[15158]zipperhead,

Up:[15159]= Z =

zombie n.

[Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its

process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a

wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings occasionally.

Compare [15160]orphan.

Node:zorch, Next:[15161]Zork, Previous:[15162]zombie, Up:[15163]= Z =

zorch /zorch/

[TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink. 2. [TMRC] v. To

travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity approaching

lightspeed --ESR]. 3. [MIT] v. To propel something very quickly. "The

new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the

network." 4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The

intangible and fuzzy currency in which favors are measured. "I'd

rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of

zorch with him for the week." 5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability.

"I think I'll [15164]punt that change for now; I've been up for 30

hours and I've run out of zorch." 6. [MIT] v. To flunk an exam or

course.

Node:Zork, Next:[15165]zorkmid, Previous:[15166]zorch, Up:[15167]= Z =

Zork /zork/ n.

The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy gaming;

see [15168]ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DM during 1977-1979,

later distributed with BSD Unix (as a patched, sourceless RT-11

FORTRAN binary; see [15169]retrocomputing) and commercialized as `The

Zork Trilogy' by [15170]Infocom. The FORTRAN source was later

rewritten for portability and released to Usenet under the name

"Dungeon". Both FORTRAN "Dungeon" and translated C versions are

available at many FTP sites. See also [15171]grue.

Node:zorkmid, Previous:[15172]Zork, Up:[15173]= Z =

zorkmid /zork'mid/ n.

The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This

originated in [15174]Zork but has spread to [15175]nethack and is

referred to in several other games.

(Lexicon Entries End Here)

Node:Appendix A, Next:[15176]Appendix B, Previous:[15177]The Jargon

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