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

any program that has gone

[3771]off the trolley. Esp. used of programs that just sit there

silently grinding long after either failure or some output is

expected. "Uh oh. I should have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. The

program's in deep space somewhere." Compare [3772]buzz,

[3773]catatonic, [3774]hyperspace. 2. The metaphorical location of a

human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of

[3775]bogosity that he or she no longer responds coherently to normal

communication. Compare [3776]page out.

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defenestration n.

[mythically from a traditional Czech assasination method, via SF

fandom] 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh,

ghod, that was awful!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of

exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a

full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of

`defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3. The act

of discarding something under the assumption that it will improve

matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well, why don't you

defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. Under a GUI,

the act of dragging something out of a window (onto the screen).

"Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon." 5. The act of completely

removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in favor of a better OS

(typically Linux).

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defined as adj.

In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete is

currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare [3783]logical.

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dehose /dee-hohz/ vt.

To clear a [3787]hosed condition.

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deletia n. /d*-lee'sha/

[USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the quote of

the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often appears as a

pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as "[deletia]" or

"".

Node:deliminator, Next:[3791]delint, Previous:[3792]deletia,

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deliminator /de-lim'-in-ay-t*r/ n.

[portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to

delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the

resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among

Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split() function; however, it

has been sighted in live use among Java and even Visual Basic

programmers.

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delint /dee-lint/ v. obs.

To modify code to remove problems detected when [3797]linting.

Confusingly, this process is also referred to as `linting' code. This

term is no longer in general use because ANSI C compilers typically

issue compile-time warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.

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delta n.

[techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or

incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I

just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program

size?" "About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his program, but

increased its size by only 30 percent.) 2. [Unix] A [3801]diff,

especially a [3802]diff stored under the set of version-control tools

called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision Control

System). 3. n. A small quantity, but not as small as [3803]epsilon.

The jargon usage of [3804]delta and [3805]epsilon stems from the

traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small

numerical quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit

theory (as in the differential calculus). The term [3806]delta is

often used, once [3807]epsilon has been mentioned, to mean a quantity

that is slightly bigger than [3808]epsilon but still very small. "The

cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally

negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common constructions

include within delta of --',within epsilon of --': that is, `close

to' and `even closer to'.

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demented adj.

Yet another term of disgust used to describe a malfunctioning program.

The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed,

but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that generates

large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying that it is on

the brink of imminent collapse. Compare [3812]wonky,

[3813]brain-damaged, [3814]bozotic.

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demigod n.

A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a

major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game

used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify

as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the

hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken

Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of [3818]Unix and [3819]C),

Richard M. Stallman (inventor of [3820]EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor of

[3821]Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of [3822]Linux), and most

recently James Gosling (inventor of Java, [3823]NeWS, and

[3824]GOSMACS) and Guido van Rossum (inventor of [3825]Python). In

their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming

demigods themselves, and more than one major software project has been

driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See

also [3826]net.god, [3827]true-hacker.

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demo /de'moh/

[short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a product or

prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than

any number of [3831]test runs, especially when important people are

watching. 2. n. The act of demoing. "I've gotta give a demo of the

drool-proof interface; how does it work again?" 3. n. Esp. as `demo

version', can refer either to an early, barely-functional version of a

program which can be used for demonstration purposes as long as the

operator uses exactly the right commands and skirts its numerous bugs,

deficiencies, and unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a

program (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed

at little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes. 4.

[[3832]demoscene] A sequence of [3833]demoeffects (usually) combined

with self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These

days (1997) usually built to attend a [3834]compo. Often called

`eurodemos' outside Europe, as most of the [3835]demoscene activity

seems to have gathered in northern Europe and especially Scandinavia.

See also [3836]intro, [3837]dentro.

Node:demo mode, Next:[3838]demoeffect, Previous:[3839]demo, Up:[3840]=

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demo mode n.

[Sun] The state of being [3841]heads down in order to finish code

in time for a [3842]demo, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which

video games sit by themselves running through a portion of the game,

also known as `attract mode'. Some serious [3843]apps have a demo mode

they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup

(for example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen -- which lets you

impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with

[3844]Microsloth Windows).

Node:demoeffect, Next:[3845]demogroup, Previous:[3846]demo mode,

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demoeffect n.

[[3848]demoscene] What among hackers is called a [3849]display hack.

Classical effects include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales"

(xx+yy and other similar patterns, usually combined with

color-cycling), realtime fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc.

Historically, demo effects have cheated as much as possible to gain

more speed and more complexity, using low-precision math and masses of

assembler code and building animation realtime are three common

tricks, but use of special hardware to fake effects is a [3850]Good

Thing on the demoscene (though this is becoming less common as

platforms like the Amiga fade away).

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demogroup n.

[[3854]demoscene] A group of [3855]demo (sense 4) composers. Job

titles within a group include coders (the ones who write programs),

graphicians (the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art),

musicians (the music composers), [3856]sysops, traders/swappers (the

ones who do the trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger

groups). It is not uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but it

has been observed that good coders are rarely good composers and vice

versa. [How odd. Musical talent seems common among Internet/Unix

hackers --ESR]

Node:demon, Next:[3857]demon dialer, Previous:[3858]demogroup,

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demon n.

[MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but

that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See

[3860]daemon. The distinction is that demons are usually processes

within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an

operating system. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to

[3861]daemon -- especially in the [3862]Unix world, where the latter

spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.

Demons in sense 1 are particularly common in AI programs. For example,

a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as

demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons

would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data)

and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their

respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces

could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down

through chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue

with whatever its primary task was.

Node:demon dialer, Next:[3863]demoparty, Previous:[3864]demon,

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demon dialer n.

A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number. Demon

dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications programs

contend for legitimate access to a [3866]BBS line) or malign (that is,

used as a prank or denial-of-service attack). This term dates from the

[3867]blue box days of the 1970s and early 1980s and is now

semi-obsolescent among [3868]phreakers; see [3869]war dialer for its

contemporary progeny.

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demoparty n.

[[3873]demoscene] Aboveground descendant of the [3874]copyparty, with

emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards [3875]compos.

Smaller demoparties, for 100 persons or less, are held quite often,

sometimes even once a month, and usually last for one to two days. On

the other end of the scale, huge demo parties are held once a year

(and four of these have grown very large and occur annually - Assembly

in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway, and NAID

somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for three to

five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party network

with connection to the internet.

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demoscene /dem'oh-seen/

[also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily

in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that

when old-time [3879]warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they

often added an advertisement of in the beginning, usually containing

colorful [3880]display hacks with greetings to other cracking groups.

The demoscene was born among people who decided building these display

hacks is more interesting than hacking and began to build

self-contained display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty

(within the culture such a hack is called a [3881]demo). The split

seems to have happened at the end of the 1980s. As more of these

[3882]demogroups emerged, they started to have [3883]compos at copying

parties (see [3884]copyparty), which later evolved to standalone

events (see [3885]demoparty). The demoscene has retained some traits

from the [3886]warez d00dz, including their style of handles and group

names and some of their jargon.

Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of

smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the like.

Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a couple

of years after that, they also started using Java.

Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original

platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out

and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While

deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the

mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the

commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceneers frown at

this, but the majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceneers

end up working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages

are available at [3887]http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and

[3888]http://www.scene.org/.

Node:dentro, Next:[3889]depeditate, Previous:[3890]demoscene,

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dentro /den'troh/

[[3892]demoscene] Combination of [3893]demo (sense 4) and [3894]intro.

Other name mixings include intmo, dentmo etc.