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

A

good example is the `fuzz' typically allowed in floating-point

calculations: two numbers being compared for equality must be allowed

to differ by a small amount; if that amount is too small, a

computation may never terminate, while if it is too large, results

will be needlessly inaccurate. Fudge factors are frequently adjusted

incorrectly by programmers who don't fully understand their import.

See also [5651]coefficient of X.

Node:fuel up, Next:[5652]Full Monty, Previous:[5653]fudge factor,

Up:[5654]= F =

fuel up vi.

To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking. "Food-p?"

"Yeah, let's fuel up." "Time for a [5655]great-wall!" See also

[5656]oriental food.

Node:Full Monty, Next:[5657]fum, Previous:[5658]fuel up, Up:[5659]= F

=

Full Monty n.

See [5660]monty, sense 2.

Node:fum, Next:[5661]functino, Previous:[5662]Full Monty, Up:[5663]= F

=

fum n.

[XEROX PARC] At PARC, often the third of the standard

[5664]metasyntactic variables (after [5665]foo and [5666]bar).

Competes with [5667]baz, which is more common outside PARC.

Node:functino, Next:[5668]funky, Previous:[5669]fum, Up:[5670]= F =

functino n.

[uncommon, U.K.; originally a serendipitous typo in 1994] A pointer to

a function in C and C++. By association with sub-atomic particles such

as the neutrino, it accurately conveys an impression of smallness (one

pointer is four bytes on most systems) and speed (hackers can and do

use arrays of functinos to replace a switch() statement).

Node:funky, Next:[5671]funny money, Previous:[5672]functino,

Up:[5673]= F =

funky adj.

Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey

way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious

non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe interfaces. The

more bugs something has that nobody has bothered to fix because

workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. [5674]TECO and UUCP are

funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is extraordinarily funky.

Most standards acquire funkiness as they age. "The new mailer is

installed, but is still somewhat funky; if it bounces your mail for no

reason, try resubmitting it." "This UART is pretty funky. The data

ready line is active-high in interrupt mode and active-low in DMA

mode."

Node:funny money, Next:[5675]furrfu, Previous:[5676]funky, Up:[5677]=

F =

funny money n.

Notional `dollar' units of computing time and/or storage handed to

students at the beginning of a computer course; also called `play

money' or purple money' (in implicit opposition to real orgreen'

money). In New Zealand and Germany the odd usage `paper money' has

been recorded; in Germany, the particularly amusing synonym `transfer

ruble' commemmorates the funny money used for trade between COMECON

countries back when the Soviet Bloc still existed. When your funny

money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor

to get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has

made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably

too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with

minimum work. In extreme cases, the practice led to small-scale black

markets in bootlegged computer accounts. 2. By extension, phantom

money or quantity tickets of any kind used as a resource-allocation

hack within a system. Antonym: `real money'.

Node:furrfu, Next:[5678]fuzzball, Previous:[5679]funny money,

Up:[5680]= F =

furrfu excl.

[Usenet; written, only rarely spoken] Written-only equivalent of

"Sheesh!"; it is, in fact, "sheesh" modified by [5681]rot13. Evolved

in mid-1992 as a response to notably silly postings repeating urban

myths on the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, after some posters

complained that "Sheesh!" as a response to [5682]newbies was being

overused. See also [5683]FOAF.

Node:fuzzball, Next:[5684]G, Previous:[5685]furrfu, Up:[5686]= F =

fuzzball n.

[TCP/IP hackers] A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite of homebrewed

software written by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators, used in

the early 1980s for Internet protocol testbedding and experimentation.

These were used as NSFnet backbone sites in its early 56kb-line days;

a few were still active on the Internet as late as mid-1993, doing odd

jobs such as network time service.

Node:= G =, Next:[5687]= H =, Previous:[5688]= F =, Up:[5689]The

Jargon Lexicon

= G =

[5690]G:

[5691]g-file:

[5692]gabriel:

[5693]gag:

[5694]gang bang:

[5695]garbage collect:

[5696]garply:

[5697]gas:

[5698]gaseous:

[5699]Gates's Law:

[5700]gawble:

[5701]GC:

[5702]GCOS:

[5703]GECOS:

[5704]gedanken:

[5705]geef:

[5706]geek code:

[5707]geek out:

[5708]gen:

[5709]gender mender:

[5710]General Public Virus:

[5711]generate:

[5712]Genius From Mars Technique:

[5713]gensym:

[5714]Get a life!:

[5715]Get a real computer!:

[5716]GFR:

[5717]gib:

[5718]GIFs at 11:

[5719]gig:

[5720]giga-:

[5721]GIGO:

[5722]gilley:

[5723]gillion:

[5724]ginger:

[5725]GIPS:

[5726]glark:

[5727]glass:

[5728]glass tty:

[5729]glassfet:

[5730]glitch:

[5731]glob:

[5732]glork:

[5733]glue:

[5734]gnarly:

[5735]GNU:

[5736]gnubie:

[5737]GNUMACS:

[5738]go flatline:

[5739]go root:

[5740]go-faster stripes:

[5741]GoAT:

[5742]gobble:

[5743]Godwin's Law:

[5744]Godzillagram:

[5745]golden:

[5746]golf-ball printer:

[5747]gonk:

[5748]gonkulator:

[5749]gonzo:

[5750]Good Thing:

[5751]gopher:

[5752]gopher hole:

[5753]gorets:

[5754]gorilla arm:

[5755]gorp:

[5756]GOSMACS:

[5757]Gosperism:

[5758]gotcha:

[5759]GPL:

[5760]GPV:

[5761]grault:

[5762]gray goo:

[5763]Great Renaming:

[5764]Great Runes:

[5765]Great Worm:

[5766]great-wall:

[5767]Green Book:

[5768]green bytes:

[5769]green card:

[5770]green lightning:

[5771]green machine:

[5772]Green's Theorem:

[5773]greenbar:

[5774]grep:

[5775]gribble:

[5776]grilf:

[5777]grind:

[5778]grind crank:

[5779]gripenet:

[5780]gritch:

[5781]grok:

[5782]gronk:

[5783]gronk out:

[5784]gronked:

[5785]grovel:

[5786]grue:

[5787]grunge:

[5788]gubbish:

[5789]Guido:

[5790]guiltware:

[5791]gumby:

[5792]gun:

[5793]gunch:

[5794]gunpowder chicken:

[5795]gurfle:

[5796]guru:

[5797]guru meditation:

[5798]gweep:

Node:G, Next:[5799]g-file, Previous:[5800]fuzzball, Up:[5801]= G =

G pref.,suff.

[SI] See [5802]quantifiers.

Node:g-file, Next:[5803]gabriel, Previous:[5804]G, Up:[5805]= G =

g-file n.

[Commodore BBS culture] Any file that is written with the intention of

being read by a human rather than a machine, such as the Jargon File,

documentation, humor files, hacker lore, and technical materials.

This term survives from the nearly forgotten Commodore 64 underground

and BBS community. In the early 80s, C-Net had emerged as the most

popular C64 BBS software for systems which encouraged messaging (as

opposed to file transfer). There were three main options for files:

Program files (p-files), which served the same function as `doors' in

today's systems, UD files (the user upload/download section), and

g-files. Anything that was meant to be read was included in g-files.

Node:gabriel, Next:[5806]gag, Previous:[5807]g-file, Up:[5808]= G =

gabriel /gay'bree-*l/ n.

[for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and volleyball fanatic] An

unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g.,

tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the

time, etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics.

Also, pulling a Gabriel',Gabriel mode'.

Node:gag, Next:[5809]gang bang, Previous:[5810]gabriel, Up:[5811]= G =

gag vi.

Equivalent to [5812]choke, but connotes more disgust. "Hey, this is

FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler gagged." See also [5813]barf.

Node:gang bang, Next:[5814]garbage collect, Previous:[5815]gag,

Up:[5816]= G =

gang bang n.

The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt

to wedge a great many features into a product in a short time. Though

there have been memorable gang bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend

assembler port mentioned in Steven Levy's "Hackers"), most are

perpetrated by large companies trying to meet deadlines; the

inevitable result is enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in

[5817]orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all

the features the competition has and assign one programmer to

implement each, the probability of maintaining a coherent (or even

functional) design goes infinitesimal. See also [5818]firefighting,

[5819]Mongolian Hordes technique, [5820]Conway's Law.

Node:garbage collect, Next:[5821]garply, Previous:[5822]gang bang,

Up:[5823]= G =

garbage collect vi.

(also `garbage collection', n.) See [5824]GC.

Node:garply, Next:[5825]gas, Previous:[5826]garbage collect,

Up:[5827]= G =

garply /gar'plee/ n.

[Stanford] Another metasyntactic variable (see [5828]foo); once

popular among SAIL hackers.

Node:gas, Next:[5829]gaseous, Previous:[5830]garply, Up:[5831]= G =

gas

[as in `gas chamber'] 1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred,

implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby

exterminating the source of irritation. "Some loser just reloaded the

system for no reason! Gas!" 2. interj. A suggestion that someone or

something ought to be flushed out of mercy. "The system's getting

[5832]wedged every few minutes. Gas!" 3. vt. To [5833]flush (sense 1).

"You should gas that old crufty software." 4. [IBM] n. Dead space in

nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by data that has

since been deleted; the compression operation that removes it is

called `degassing' (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term

in vacuum technology). 5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a disk that has been

clandestinely allocated against future need.

Node:gaseous, Next:[5834]Gates's Law, Previous:[5835]gas, Up:[5836]= G

=

gaseous adj.

Deserving of being [5837]gassed. Disseminated by Geoff Goodfellow

while at SRI; became particularly popular after the Moscone-Milk

killings in San Francisco, when it was learned that the defendant Dan

White (a politician who had supported Proposition 7) would get the gas

chamber under Proposition 7 if convicted of first-degree murder (he

was eventually convicted of manslaughter).

Node:Gates's Law, Next:[5838]gawble, Previous:[5839]gaseous,

Up:[5840]= G =

Gates's Law

"The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited law is

an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace the

every-18-month doubling in hardware caopacity per dollar predicted by

[5841]Moore's Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely

considered among the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators of

bloat.

Node:gawble, Next:[5842]GC, Previous:[5843]Gates's Law, Up:[5844]= G =

gawble /gaw'bl/ n.

See [5845]chawmp.

Node:GC, Next:[5846]GCOS, Previous:[5847]gawble, Up:[5848]= G =

GC /G-C/

[from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect'] 1. vt. To clean up and

throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my desk today."

When said of files, this is equivalent to [5849]GFR. 2. vt. To

recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the

garbage collector process.

`Garbage collection' is computer-science techspeak for a particular

class of strategies for dynamically but transparently reallocating

computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit allocation and

deallocation by higher-level software). One such strategy involves

periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is

no longer accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that

the memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose.

Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage collection.

In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the [5850]abbrev GC

is more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there is an

ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going to

garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but

it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself.

Node:GCOS, Next:[5851]GECOS, Previous:[5852]GC, Up:[5853]= G =

GCOS /jee'kohs/ n.

A [5854]quick-and-dirty [5855]clone of System/360 DOS that emerged

from GE around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General Electric

Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support primitive

timesharing and transaction processing. After the buyout of GE's

computer division by Honeywell, the name was changed to General

Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other OS groups at Honeywell

began referring to it as `God's Chosen Operating System', allegedly in

reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the

superiority of their product. All this might be of zero interest,

except for two facts: (1) The GCOS people won the political war, and

this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell

[5856]Multics, and (2) GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on Unix.

Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print

spooling and various other services; the field added to /etc/passwd to

carry GCOS ID information was called the `GECOS field' and survives

today as the pw---gecos member used for the user's full name and other

human-ID information. GCOS later played a major role in keeping

Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market, and was itself

mostly ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when Honeywell began to

retire its aging [5857]big iron designs.