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

>[from automotive slang] Verb used to describe the performance of a

machine, especially sustained performance. "This box cranks (or,

cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of twice that on

vectorized operations."

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crapplet n.

[portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget

attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes your browser.

Also spelled `craplet'.

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CrApTeX /krap'tekh/ n.

[University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe TeX and

LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or all the time

(by everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts generally dislike it

because it is more verbose than other formatters (e.g. [3196]troff)

and because (particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are

used) it generates vast output files. See [3197]religious issues,

[3198]TeX.

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crash

n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the

[3202]system (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term

originally described what happens when the air gap of a hard disk

collapses). "Three [3203]lusers lost their files in last night's disk

crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping onto

the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be

referred to as a head crash', whereas the termsystem crash'

usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or other

software was at fault. 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just

crashed?" "Something crashed the OS!" See [3204]down. Also used

transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a

program, or both). "Those idiots playing [3205]SPACEWAR crashed the

system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long

[3206]hacking run; see [3207]gronk out.

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crash and burn vi.,n.

A spectacular crash, in the mode of the conclusion of the car-chase

scene in the movie "Bullitt" and many subsequent imitators (compare

[3211]die horribly). Sun-3 monitors losing the flyback transformer and

lightning strikes on VAX-11/780 backplanes are notable crash and burn

generators. The construction `crash-and-burn machine' is reported for

a computer used exclusively for alpha or [3212]beta testing, or

reproducing bugs (i.e., not for development). The implication is that

it wouldn't be such a disaster if that machine crashed, since only the

testers would be inconvenienced.

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crawling horror n.

Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive by

forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like [3216]dusty

deck or [3217]gonkulator, but connotes that the thing described is not

just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity. "Mostly

we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II

application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...."

Compare [3218]WOMBAT.

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horror, Up:[3221]= C =

cray /kray/ n.

(properly, capitalized) One of the line of supercomputers designed

by Cray Research. 2. Any supercomputer at all. 3. The [3222]canonical

[3223]number-crunching machine.

The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a noted

computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous vivid

legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented by Cray

Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image.

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cray instability n.

A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only

when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine (see

[3227]cray). Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in

smaller problems running on a workstation or mini. 2. More

specifically, a shortcoming of algorithms which are well behaved when

run on gentle floating point hardware (such as IEEE-standard or

PDP-series machines) but which break down badly when exposed to a

Cray's unique `rounding' rules.

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instability, Up:[3230]= C =

crayola /kray-oh'l*/ n.

A super-mini or -micro computer that provides some reasonable

percentage of supercomputer performance for an unreasonably low price.

Might also be a [3231]killer micro.

Node:crayola books, Next:[3232]crayon, Previous:[3233]crayola,

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crayola books n.

The [3235]rainbow series of National Computer Security Center (NCSC)

computer security standards (see [3236]Orange Book). Usage: humorous

and/or disparaging.

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crayon n.

Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically, it

implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and

almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Systems types

who have a Unix background tend not to be described as crayons. 2.

Formerly, anyone who worked for Cray Research; since the buyout by

SGI, anyone they inherited from Cray. 3. A [3240]computron (sense 2)

that participates only in [3241]number-crunching. 4. A unit of

computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a

standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola crayon

promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener.

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creationism n.

The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can be

completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of

the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented

programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good

designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction between

one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able designer(s) and

an active user population -- and that the first try at a big new idea

is always wrong. Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the

planning models beloved of [3245]management, they are generally

ignored.

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Up:[3248]= C =

creep v.

To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage this verb

has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the creeping horrors of

low-budget monster movies.

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creeping elegance n.

Describes a tendency for parts of a design to become [3252]elegant

past the point of diminishing return, something which often happens at

the expense of the less interesting parts of the design, the schedule,

and other things deemed important in the [3253]Real World. See also

[3254]creeping featurism, [3255]second-system effect, [3256]tense.

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creeping featurism /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n.

[common] 1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more [3260]chrome

and [3261]features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance

they may have possessed when originally designed. See also

[3262]feeping creaturism. "You know, the main problem with [3263]BSD

Unix has always been creeping featurism." 2. More generally, the

tendency for anything complicated to become even more complicated

because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had

this feature too". (See [3264]feature.) The result is usually a

patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being

planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one

extra little feature to help someone ... and then another ... and

another.... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a

cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but

it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form,

and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious

redesigns; see [3265]second-system effect. See also [3266]creeping

elegance.

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featurism, Up:[3269]= C =

creeping featuritis /kree'ping fee'-chr-i:`t*s/ n.

Variant of [3270]creeping featurism, with its own spoonerization:

`feeping creaturitis'. Some people like to reserve this form for the

disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as opposed

to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds. (After all, -ism

means condition' orpursuit of', whereas -itis usually means

`inflammation of'.)

Node:cretin, Next:[3271]cretinous, Previous:[3272]creeping featuritis,

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cretin /kret'in/ or /kree'tn/ n.

Congenital [3274]loser; an obnoxious person; someone who can't do

anything right. It has been observed that many American hackers tend

to favor the British pronunciation /kret'in/ over standard American

/kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic

influence of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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cretinous /kret'n-s/ or /kreet'n-s/ adj.

Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used

pejoratively of people. See [3278]dread high-bit disease for an

example. Approximate synonyms: [3279]bletcherous, [3280]bagbiting

[3281]losing, [3282]brain-damaged.

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crippleware n.

[common] Software that has some important functionality

deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a

working version. 2. [Cambridge] Variety of [3286]guiltware that

exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare [3287]careware,

[3288]nagware). 3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can be

upgraded to a more expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting

a jumper).

An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX chip,

which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor diked out (in

some early versions it was present but disabled). To upgrade, you buy

a complete 486DX chip with working co-processor (its identity thinly

veiled by a different pinout) and plug it into the board's expansion

socket. It then disables the SX, which becomes a fancy power sink.

Don't you love Intel?

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critical mass n.

In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to

sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a condition

of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus

[3292]epsilon bugs. (This malady has many causes: [3293]creeping

featurism, ports to too many disparate environments, poor initial

design, etc.) When software achieves critical mass, it can never be

fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten.

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crlf /ker'lf/, sometimes /kru'lf/ or /C-R-L-F/ n.

(often capitalized as `CRLF') A carriage return (CR, ASCII 0001101)

followed by a line feed (LF, ASCII 0001010). More loosely, whatever it

takes to get you from the end of one line of text to the beginning of

the next line. See [3297]newline, [3298]terpri. Under [3299]Unix

influence this usage has become less common (Unix uses a bare line

feed as its `CRLF').

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crock n.

[from the American scatologism `crock of shit'] 1. An awkward feature

or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. For example,

using small integers to represent error codes without the program

interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, Unix make(1), which

returns code 139 for a process that dies due to [3303]segfault). 2. A

technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure

if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever programmer might

write an assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric

opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on

the particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of

programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see [3304]The

Story of Mel in Appendix A.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, almost

completely unmodifiable structure. See [3305]kluge, [3306]brittle. The

adjectives crockish' andcrocky', and the nouns `crockishness' and

`crockitude', are also used.

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cross-post vi.

[Usenet; very common] To post a single article simultaneously to

several newsgroups. Distinguished from posting the article repeatedly,

once to each newsgroup, which causes people to see it multiple times

(which is very bad form). Gratuitous cross-posting without a

Followup-To line directing responses to a single followup group is

frowned upon, as it tends to cause [3310]followup articles to go to

inappropriate newsgroups when people respond to only one part of the

original posting.

Node:crossload, Next:[3311]crudware, Previous:[3312]cross-post,

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crossload v.,n.

[proposed, by analogy with [3314]upload and [3315]download] To move

files between machines on a peer-to-peer network of nodes that act as

both servers and clients for a distributed file store. Esp.

appropriate for ananonymized networks like Gnutella and Freenet.

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crudware /kruhd'weir/ n.

Pejorative term for