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

unwanted mail responses: "Flames about this

article to the bit bucket." Such a request is guaranteed to overflow

one's mailbox with flames. 4. Excuse for all mail that has not been

sent. "I mailed you those figures last week; they must have landed in

the bit bucket." Compare [1380]black hole.

This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion

that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This

appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term `bit box', about

which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that

trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it

was actually pulling them `out of the bit box'. See also [1381]chad

box.

Another variant of this legend has it that, as a consequence of the

`parity preservation law', the number of 1 bits that go to the bit

bucket must equal the number of 0 bits. Any imbalance results in bits

filling up the bit bucket. A qualified computer technician can empty a

full bit bucket as part of scheduled maintenance.

Node:bit decay, Next:[1382]bit rot, Previous:[1383]bit bucket,

Up:[1384]= B =

bit decay n.

See [1385]bit rot. People with a physics background tend to prefer

this variant for the analogy with particle decay. See also

[1386]computron, [1387]quantum bogodynamics.

Node:bit rot, Next:[1388]bit twiddling, Previous:[1389]bit decay,

Up:[1390]= B =

bit rot n.

[common] Also [1391]bit decay. Hypothetical disease the existence of

which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or

features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed,

even if `nothing has changed'. The theory explains that bits decay as

if they were radioactive. As time passes, the contents of a file or

the code in a program will become increasingly garbled.

There actually are physical processes that produce such effects (alpha

particles generated by trace radionuclides in ceramic chip packages,

for example, can change the contents of a computer memory

unpredictably, and various kinds of subtle media failures can corrupt

files in mass storage), but they are quite rare (and computers are

built with error-detecting circuitry to compensate for them). The

notion long favored among hackers that cosmic rays are among the

causes of such events turns out to be a myth; see the [1392]cosmic

rays entry for details.

The term [1393]software rot is almost synonymous. Software rot is the

effect, bit rot the notional cause.

Node:bit twiddling, Next:[1394]bit-paired keyboard, Previous:[1395]bit

rot, Up:[1396]= B =

bit twiddling n.

[very common] 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see [1397]tune)

in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little

noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code becomes

incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for

some pointless goal. 3. Approx. syn. for [1398]bit bashing; esp. used

for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in

an attempt to get it back to a known state.

Node:bit-paired keyboard, Next:[1399]bitblt, Previous:[1400]bit

twiddling, Up:[1401]= B =

bit-paired keyboard n.,obs.

(alt. `bit-shift keyboard') A non-standard keyboard layout that seems

to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for

several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical

device (see [1402]EOU), so the only way to generate the character

codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the

ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be

modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In

order to avoid making the thing even more of a kluge than it already

was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit

pattern on one key.

Looking at the ASCII chart, we find:

high low bits

bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001

010 ! " # $ % & ' ( )

011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a

Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). The Teletype

Model 33 was actually designed before ASCII existed, and was

originally intended to use a code that contained these two rows:

low bits

high 0000 0010 0100 0110 1000 1010 1100 1110

bits 0001 0011 0101 0111 1001 1011 1101 1111

10 ) ! bel # $ % wru & * ( " : ? --- , .

11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ' ; / - esc del

The result would have been something closer to a normal keyboard. But

as it happened, Teletype had to use a lot of persuasion just to keep

ASCII, and the Model 33 keyboard, from looking like this instead:

! " ? $ ' & - ( ) ; : * / , .

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 + ~ < > x |

Teletype's was not the weirdest variant of the [1403]QWERTY layout

widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of

several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029

card punches.

When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there

was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid

out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others

used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product

look like an office typewriter. Either choice was supported by the

ANSI computer keyboard standard, X4.14-1971, which referred to the

alternatives as logical bit pairing' andtypewriter pairing'. These

alternatives became known as bit-paired' andtypewriter-paired'

keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more

logical -- and because most hackers in those days had never learned to

touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to

adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard.

The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction

of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where

out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The

`typewriter-paired' standard became universal, X4.14 was superseded by

X4.23-1982, `bit-paired' hardware was quickly junked or relegated to

dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.

However, in countries without a long history of touch typing, the

argument against the bit-paired keyboard layout was weak or

nonexistent. As a result, the standard Japanese keyboard, used on PCs,

Unix boxen etc. still has all of the !"#$%&'() characters above the

numbers in the ASR-33 layout.

Node:bitblt, Next:[1404]BITNET, Previous:[1405]bit-paired keyboard,

Up:[1406]= B =

bitblt /bit'blit/ n.

[from [1407]BLT, q.v.] 1. [common] Any of a family of closely related

algorithms for moving and copying rectangles of bits between main and

display memory on a bit-mapped device, or between two areas of either

main or display memory (the requirement to do the [1408]Right Thing in

the case of overlapping source and destination rectangles is what

makes BitBlt tricky). 2. Synonym for [1409]blit or [1410]BLT. Both

uses are borderline techspeak.

Node:BITNET, Next:[1411]bits, Previous:[1412]bitblt, Up:[1413]= B =

BITNET /bit'net/ n., obs.

[acronym: Because It's Time NETwork] Everybody's least favorite piece

of the network (see [1414]the network) - until AOL happened. The

BITNET hosts were a collection of IBM dinosaurs and VAXen (the latter

with lobotomized comm hardware) that communicate using 80-character

[1415]EBCDIC card images (see [1416]eighty-column mind); thus, they

tend to mangle the headers and text of third-party traffic from the

rest of the ASCII/[1417]RFC-822 world with annoying regularity. BITNET

was also notorious as the apparent home of [1418]B1FF. By 1995 it had,

much to everyone's relief, been obsolesced and absorbed into the

Internet. Unfortunately, around this time we also got AOL.

Node:bits, Next:[1419]bitty box, Previous:[1420]BITNET, Up:[1421]= B =

bits pl.n.

Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I

need to know about file formats.") Compare [1422]core dump, sense 4.

Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as

contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon File;

does anyone know where I can get the bits?". See [1423]softcopy,

[1424]source of all good bits See also [1425]bit.

Node:bitty box, Next:[1426]bixen, Previous:[1427]bits, Up:[1428]= B =

bitty box /bit'ee boks/ n.

A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause

a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software on

or for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only

personal machines such as the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20,

TRS-80, or IBM PC. 2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of

`real computer' (see [1429]Get a real computer!). See also

[1430]mess-dos, [1431]toaster, and [1432]toy.

Node:bixen, Next:[1433]bixie, Previous:[1434]bitty box, Up:[1435]= B =

bixen pl.n.

Users of BIX (the BIX Information eXchange, formerly the Byte

Information eXchange). Parallels other plurals like boxen,

[1436]VAXen, oxen.

Node:bixie, Next:[1437]black art, Previous:[1438]bixen, Up:[1439]= B =

bixie /bik'see/ n.

Variant [1440]emoticons used on BIX (the BIX Information eXchange).

The most common ([1441]smiley) bixie is @---@, representing two

cartoon eyes and a mouth. These were originally invented in an SF

fanzine called APA-L and imported to BIX by one of the earliest users.

Node:black art, Next:[1442]black hole, Previous:[1443]bixie,

Up:[1444]= B =

black art n.

[common] A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication)

mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or

systems area (compare [1445]black magic). VLSI design and compiler

code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic

examples of black art; as theory developed they became [1446]deep

magic, and once standard textbooks had been written, became merely

[1447]heavy wizardry. The huge proliferation of formal and informal

channels for spreading around new computer-related technologies during

the last twenty years has made both the term `black art' and what it

describes less common than formerly. See also [1448]voodoo

programming.

Node:black hole, Next:[1449]black magic, Previous:[1450]black art,

Up:[1451]= B =

black hole n.,vt.

[common] What data (a piece of email or netnews, or a stream of TCP/IP

packets) has fallen into if it disappears mysteriously between its

origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a

[1452]bounce message). "I think there's a black hole at foovax!"

conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on

the floor lately (see [1453]drop on the floor). The implied metaphor

of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself. Readily

verbed as `blackhole': "That router is blackholing IDP packets."

Compare [1454]bit bucket and see [1455]RBL.

Node:black magic, Next:[1456]Black Screen of Death,

Previous:[1457]black hole, Up:[1458]= B =

black magic n.

[common] A technique that works, though nobody really understands why.

More obscure than [1459]voodoo programming, which may be done by

cookbook. Compare also [1460]black art, [1461]deep magic, and

[1462]magic number (sense 2).

Node:Black Screen of Death, Next:[1463]Black Thursday,

Previous:[1464]black magic, Up:[1465]= B =

Black Screen of Death n.

[prob. related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous "Far Side"

cartoon.] A failure mode of [1466]Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to

launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the

screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold [1467]boot

to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of

Death. See also [1468]Blue Screen of Death, which has become rather

more common.