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

>is working, sort of -- enough that you are tempted to try to use it --

but fails frequently enough that the odds in favor of finishing what

you start are low. Commonwealth hackish prefers [5200]dodgy or

[5201]wonky.

Node:flamage, Next:[5202]flame, Previous:[5203]flaky, Up:[5204]= F =

flamage /flay'm*j/ n.

[very common] Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings

to [5205]Usenet or other electronic [5206]fora. Often in the phrase

the usual flamage'.Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the

content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. See [5207]flame, also

[5208]dahmum.

Node:flame, Next:[5209]flame bait, Previous:[5210]flamage, Up:[5211]=

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flame

[at MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole'] 1. vi. To post an

email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To speak

incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or

with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2,

directed with hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An

instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless

controversy, one might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming"

or "Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to

speak).

The term may have been independently invented at several different

places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI (among

many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the University

of Virginia in the early 1960s.

It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than

that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his

time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced

computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida",

Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular

mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's

called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been

intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but

was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of

wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right

at home on Usenet.

Node:flame bait, Next:[5212]flame on, Previous:[5213]flame, Up:[5214]=

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flame bait n.

[common] A posting intended to trigger a [5215]flame war, or one that

invites flames in reply. See also [5216]troll.

Node:flame on, Next:[5217]flame war, Previous:[5218]flame bait,

Up:[5219]= F =

flame on vi.,interj.

To begin to [5220]flame. The punning reference to Marvel Comics's

Human Torch is no longer widely recognized. 2. To continue to flame.

See [5221]rave, [5222]burble.

Node:flame war, Next:[5223]flamer, Previous:[5224]flame on, Up:[5225]=

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flame war n.

[common] (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when

conducted on a public electronic forum such as [5226]Usenet.

Node:flamer, Next:[5227]flap, Previous:[5228]flame war, Up:[5229]= F =

flamer n.

[common] One who habitually [5230]flames. Said esp. of obnoxious

[5231]Usenet personalities.

Node:flap, Next:[5232]flarp, Previous:[5233]flamer, Up:[5234]= F =

flap vt.

[obs.] To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...).

Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0

and DEC microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would

instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. 2. By

extension, to unload any magnetic tape. See also [5235]macrotape.

Modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has

remained. (The term could well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge

tape drive, a spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a

loud flapping sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of

its many tape-eating failure modes.)

Node:flarp, Next:[5236]flash crowd, Previous:[5237]flap, Up:[5238]= F

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flarp /flarp/ n.

[Rutgers University] Yet another [5239]metasyntactic variable (see

[5240]foo). Among those who use it, it is associated with a legend

that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not

work. The legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs

which do contain the magic word.

Node:flash crowd, Next:[5241]flat, Previous:[5242]flarp, Up:[5243]= F

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flash crowd

Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story "Flash Crowd" predicted that one

consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds materializing

almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty

years later the term passed into common use on the Internet to

describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when one passes

a certain threshold of popular interest (this may also be called

[5244]slashdot effect).

Node:flat, Next:[5245]flat-ASCII, Previous:[5246]flash crowd,

Up:[5247]= F =

flat adj.

[common] Lacking any complex internal structure. "That [5248]bitty

box has only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form

is [5249]flatten. 2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the

VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear address space (typically with

each possible value of a processor register corresponding to a unique

core address), as opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of

the 80x86) in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset

pair (segmented designs are generally considered [5250]cretinous).

Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually

used pejoratively, while sense 2 is a [5251]Good Thing.

Node:flat-ASCII, Next:[5252]flat-file, Previous:[5253]flat, Up:[5254]=

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flat-ASCII adj.

[common] Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII characters

and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is, has no

embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter markup

language, or output device, and no [5255]meta-characters). Syn.

[5256]plain-ASCII. Compare [5257]flat-file.

Node:flat-file, Next:[5258]flatten, Previous:[5259]flat-ASCII,

Up:[5260]= F =

flat-file adj.

A [5261]flattened representation of some database or tree or network

structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly

be rebuilt, esp. one in [5262]flat-ASCII form. See also

[5263]sharchive.

Node:flatten, Next:[5264]flavor, Previous:[5265]flat-file, Up:[5266]=

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flatten vt.

[common] To remove structural information, esp. to filter something

with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also

tends to imply mapping to [5267]flat-ASCII. "This code flattens an

expression with parentheses into an equivalent [5268]canonical form."

Node:flavor, Next:[5269]flavorful, Previous:[5270]flatten, Up:[5271]=

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flavor n.

[common] Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors."

"These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones."

"Linux is a flavor of Unix" See [5272]vanilla. 2. The attribute that

causes something to be [5273]flavorful. Usually used in the phrase

"yields additional flavor". "This convention yields additional flavor

by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down."

See [5274]vanilla. This usage was certainly reinforced by the

terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the

constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down,

strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) --

however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The term for

`class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors

system. Though the Flavors design has been superseded (notably by the

Common LISP CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is still used as a

general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.

Node:flavorful, Next:[5275]flippy, Previous:[5276]flavor, Up:[5277]= F

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flavorful adj.

Full of [5278]flavor (sense 2); esthetically pleasing. See

[5279]random and [5280]losing for antonyms. See also the entries for

[5281]taste and [5282]elegant.

Node:flippy, Next:[5283]flood, Previous:[5284]flavorful, Up:[5285]= F

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flippy /flip'ee/ n.

A single-sided floppy disk altered for double-sided use by addition of

a second write-notch, so called because it must be flipped over for

the second side to be accessible. No longer common.

Node:flood, Next:[5286]flowchart, Previous:[5287]flippy, Up:[5288]= F

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flood v.

[common] 1. To overwhelm a network channel with mechanically-generated

traffic; especially used of IP, TCP/IP, UDP, or ICMP denial-of-service

attacks. 2. To dump large amounts of text onto an [5289]IRC channel.

This is especially rude when the text is uninteresting and the other

users are trying to carry on a serious conversation. Also used in a

similar sense on Usenet. 3. [Usenet] To post an unusually large number

or volume of files on a related topic.

Node:flowchart, Next:[5290]flower key, Previous:[5291]flood,

Up:[5292]= F =

flowchart n.

[techspeak] An archaic form of visual control-flow specification

employing arrows and `speech balloons' of various shapes. Hackers

never use flowcharts, consider them extremely silly, and associate

them with [5293]COBOL programmers, [5294]card wallopers, and other

lower forms of life. This attitude follows from the observations that

flowcharts (at least from a hacker's point of view) are no easier to

read than code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with

the code (so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it,

or require extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code).

See also [5295]PDL, sense 1.

Node:flower key, Next:[5296]flush, Previous:[5297]flowchart,

Up:[5298]= F =

flower key n.

[Mac users] See [5299]feature key.

Node:flush, Next:[5300]flypage, Previous:[5301]flower key, Up:[5302]=

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flush v.

[common] To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an

operation. "All that nonsense has been flushed." 2. [Unix/C] To force

buffered I/O to disk, as with an fflush(3) call. This is not an abort

or deletion as in sense 1, but a demand for early completion! 3. To

leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal).

"I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 4. To exclude someone from

an activity, or to ignore a person.

`Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output operation;

one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but was not, as

having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose from a

vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the

internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they could

be printed. The Unix/C usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the

fflush(3) call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to

have been in use among BLISS programmers at [5303]DEC and on Honeywell

and IBM machines as far back as 1965). Unix/C hackers found the ITS

usage confusing, and vice versa.

Node:flypage, Next:[5304]Flyspeck 3, Previous:[5305]flush, Up:[5306]=

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flypage /fli:'payj/ n.

(alt. `fly page') A [5307]banner, sense 1.

Node:Flyspeck 3, Next:[5308]flytrap, Previous:[5309]flypage,

Up:[5310]= F =

Flyspeck 3 n.

Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable (by

analogy with names like `Helvetica 10' for 10-point Helvetica). Legal

boilerplate is usually printed in Flyspeck 3.

Node:flytrap, Next:[5311]FM, Previous:[5312]Flyspeck 3, Up:[5313]= F =

flytrap n.

[rare] See [5314]firewall machine.

Node:FM, Next:[5315]fnord, Previous:[5316]flytrap, Up:[5317]= F =

FM /F-M/ n.

[common] Not `Frequency Modulation' but rather an abbreviation for

`Fucking Manual', the back-formation from [5318]RTFM. Used to refer to

the manual itself in the [5319]RTFM. "Have you seen the Networking FM

lately?" 2. Abbreviation for "Fucking Magic", used in the sense of

[5320]black magic.

Node:fnord, Next:[5321]FOAF, Previous:[5322]FM, Up:[5323]= F =

fnord n.

[from the "Illuminatus Trilogy"] 1. A word used in email and news

postings to tag utterances as surrealist mind-play or humor, esp. in

connection with [5324]Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy theories.

"I heard that David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with

Hitler. (Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the Principia Discordia

from?" 2. A [5325]metasyntactic variable, commonly used by hackers

with ties to [5326]Discordianism or the [5327]Church of the SubGenius.

Node:FOAF, Next:[5328]FOD, Previous:[5329]fnord, Up:[5330]= F =

FOAF // n.

[Usenet; common] Acronym for `Friend Of A Friend'. The source of an

unverified, possibly untrue story. This term was not originated by

hackers (it is used in Jan Brunvand's books on urban folklore), but is

much better recognized on Usenet and elsewhere than in mainstream

English.

Node:FOD, Next:[5331]fold case, Previous:[5332]FOAF, Up:[5333]= F =

FOD /fod/ v.

[Abbreviation for `Finger of Death', originally a spell-name from

fantasy gaming] To terminate with extreme prejudice and with no regard

for other people. From [5334]MUDs where the wizard command `FOD

' results in the immediate and total death of ,

usually as punishment for obnoxious behavior. This usage migrated to

other circumstances, such as "I'm going to fod the process that is

burning all the cycles." Compare [5335]gun.

In aviation, FOD means Foreign Object Damage, e.g., what happens when

a jet engine sucks up a rock on the runway or a bird in flight. Finger