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

scientific

theories (see [6533]quantum bogodynamics, [6534]computron).

Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,

ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.

Fascination with puns and wordplay.

A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents

of intelligence in it -- for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky &

Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty

Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements

of high camp and slapstick is especially favored.

References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in

Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See [6535]has the X nature,

[6536]Discordianism, [6537]zen, [6538]ha ha only serious, [6539]koan,

[6540]AI koans.

See also [6541]filk, [6542]retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J.

Random Hacker in [6543]Appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that

all six of these traits are really aspects of one thing that is

incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and

(b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable

(though in a less marked form) throughout [6544]science-fiction

fandom.

Node:Hackers (the movie), Next:[6545]hacking run,

Previous:[6546]hacker humor, Up:[6547]= H =

Hackers (the movie) n.

A notable bomb from 1995. Should have been titled "Crackers", because

cracking is what the movie was about. It's understandable that they

didn't however; titles redolent of snack food are probably a tough

sell in Hollywood.

Node:hacking run, Next:[6548]Hacking X for Y, Previous:[6549]Hackers

(the movie), Up:[6550]= H =

hacking run n.

[analogy with bombing run' orspeed run'] A hack session extended

long outside normal working times, especially one longer than 12

hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard way' (see [6551]phase).

Node:Hacking X for Y, Next:[6552]Hackintosh, Previous:[6553]hacking

run, Up:[6554]= H =

Hacking X for Y n.

[ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made

publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR

record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various

fields. On display, two of these fields were always combined into a

project description of the form "Hacking X for Y" (e.g., "Hacking

perceptrons for Minsky"). This form of description became traditional

and has since been carried over to other systems with more general

facilities for self-advertisement (such as Unix [6555]plan files).

Node:Hackintosh, Next:[6556]hackish, Previous:[6557]Hacking X for Y,

Up:[6558]= H =

Hackintosh n.

An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a Macintosh (also

called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled from parts theoretically

belonging to different models in the line.

Node:hackish, Next:[6559]hackishness, Previous:[6560]Hackintosh,

Up:[6561]= H =

hackish /hak'ish/ adj.

(also [6562]hackishness n.) 1. Said of something that is or involves a

hack. 2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture. See

also [6563]true-hacker.

Node:hackishness, Next:[6564]hackitude, Previous:[6565]hackish,

Up:[6566]= H =

hackishness n.

The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered

mildly silly. Syn. [6567]hackitude.

Node:hackitude, Next:[6568]hair, Previous:[6569]hackishness,

Up:[6570]= H =

hackitude n.

Syn. [6571]hackishness; this word is considered sillier.

Node:hair, Next:[6572]hairball, Previous:[6573]hackitude, Up:[6574]= H

=

hair n.

[back-formation from [6575]hairy] The complications that make

something hairy. "Decoding [6576]TECO commands requires a certain

amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite hair', which

connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous' (tending to promote

hair growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers to write complex

editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous all right." (or just:

"Hair squared!")

Node:hairball, Next:[6577]hairy, Previous:[6578]hair, Up:[6579]= H =

hairball n.

[Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward

network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the phrase

"Fido coughed up a hairball today", meaning that the stuck messages

have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where there had

previously been drought. 2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code.

"JWZ thought the Mozilla effort bogged down because the code was a

huge hairball." 3. Any large amount of garbage coming out suddenly.

"Sendmail is coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing

the Internet."

Node:hairy, Next:[6580]HAKMEM, Previous:[6581]hairball, Up:[6582]= H =

hairy adj.

Annoyingly complicated. "[6583]DWIM is incredibly hairy." 2.

Incomprehensible. "[6584]DWIM is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people,

high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible.

Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who

says there's nothing to worry about." See also [6585]hirsute.

A well-known result in topology called the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem

states that any continuous transformation of a 2-sphere into itself

has at least one fixed point. Mathematically literate hackers tend to

associate the term `hairy' with the informal version of this theorem;

"You can't comb a hairy ball smooth."

The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in slang use

among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it was

equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very likely

ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun `long-hair' was at the

time used to describe a person satisfying sense 3. Both senses

probably passed out of use when long hair was adopted as a signature

trait by the 1960s counterculture, leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort

of stunted mutant relic.

In British mainstream use, "hairy" means "dangerous", and

consequently, in British programming terms, "hairy" may be used to

denote complicated and/or incomprehensible code, but only if that

complexity or incomprehesiveness is also considered dangerous.

Node:HAKMEM, Next:[6586]hakspek, Previous:[6587]hairy, Up:[6588]= H =

HAKMEM /hak'mem/ n.

MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of neat

mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT

and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a

6-letterism for `hacks memo'.) Some of them are very useful

techniques, powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but

most fall into the category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here

is a sampling of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:

Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less

than 2^(18).

Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most probable suit distribution in

bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3, which is the most

evenly distributed. This is because the world likes to have unequal

numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not be in the state

of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered energy.

Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5 (that

is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such that

all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). There are

about 320 million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and

reflection.

Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming language

is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of

powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1 with sign +, you are

on a sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops with period = 1 at

-1, you are on a twos-complement machine. If the result loops with

period greater than 1, including the beginning, you are on a

ones-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater than

1, not including the beginning, your machine isn't binary -- the

pattern should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you are on

a string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error,

some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine

independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine

dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more

precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 = ...111111

(base 2). Now add X to itself: X + X = ...111110. Thus, 2X = X - 1, so

X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is

two's-complement.

Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only

number such that if you represent it on the [6589]PDP-10 as both an

integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two

representations are identical.

Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when

processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed out,

searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text, taking

the letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and iterating.

This ensures that every 4-letter string output occurs in the original.

The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We note an ambiguity in the

phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one sense, there are five 00's in

0000000000; in another, there are nine. The editing program TECO finds

five. Thus it finds only the first ANA in BANANA, and is thus

obligated to type N next. By Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus

forcing A, and thus a loop. An option to find overlapped instances

would be useful, although it would require backing up N - 1 characters

before seeking the next N-character string.

Note: This last item refers to a [6590]Dissociated Press

implementation. See also [6591]banana problem.

HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and

technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.

An HTML transcription of the entire document is available at

[6592]http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.

Node:hakspek, Next:[6593]Halloween Documents, Previous:[6594]HAKMEM,

Up:[6595]= H =

hakspek /hak'speek/ n.

A shorthand method of spelling found on many British academic bulletin

boards and [6596]talker systems. Syllables and whole words in a

sentence are replaced by single ASCII characters the names of which

are phonetically similar or equivalent, while multiple letters are

usually dropped. Hence, for' becomes4'; two',too', and `to'

become 2';ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4

i c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably

caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which operated on

archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no standard

methods of communication. Has become rarer since. See also [6597]talk

mode.

Node:Halloween Documents, Next:[6598]hammer, Previous:[6599]hakspek,

Up:[6600]= H =

Halloween Documents n.

A pair of Microsoft internal strategy memoranda leaked to ESR in late

1998 that confirmed everybody's paranoia about the current [6601]Evil

Empire. [6602]These documents praised the technical excellence of

[6603]Linux and outlined a counterstrategy of attempting to lock in

customers by "de-commoditizing" Internet protocols and services. They

were extensively cited on the Internet and in the press and proved so

embarrassing that Microsoft PR barely said a word in public for six

months afterwards.

Node:hammer, Next:[6604]hamster, Previous:[6605]Halloween Documents,

Up:[6606]= H =

hammer vt.

Commonwealth hackish syn. for [6607]bang on.

Node:hamster, Next:[6608]HAND, Previous:[6609]hammer, Up:[6610]= H =

hamster n.

[Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of code that does one

thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The image is of a hamster

[6611]happily spinning its exercise wheel. 2. A tailless mouse; that

is, one with an infrared link to a receiver on the machine, as opposed

to the conventional cable. 3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by

Amstrad, a company famous for its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.

Node:HAND, Next:[6612]hand cruft, Previous:[6613]hamster, Up:[6614]= H

=

HAND //

[Usenet: very common] Abbreviation: Have A Nice Day. Typically used to

close a [6615]Usenet posting, but also used to informally close

emails; often preceded by [6616]HTH.

Node:hand cruft, Next:[6617]hand-hacking, Previous:[6618]HAND,

Up:[6619]= H =

hand cruft vt.

[pun on `hand craft'] See [6620]cruft, sense 3.

Node:hand-hacking, Next:[6621]hand-roll, Previous:[6622]hand cruft,

Up:[6623]= H =

hand-hacking n.

[rare] The practice of translating [6624]hot spots from an

[6625]HLL into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce

the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and the

practice are becoming uncommon. See [6626]tune, [6627]bum, [6628]by

hand; syn. with v. [6629]cruft. 2. [common] More generally, manual

construction or patching of data sets that would normally be generated

by a translation utility and interpreted by another program, and

aren't really designed to be read or modified by humans.

Node:hand-roll, Next:[6630]handle, Previous:[6631]hand-hacking,

Up:[6632]= H =

hand-roll v.

[from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in opposition to

`ready-made', referring to cigarettes] To perform a normally automated

software installation or configuration process [6633]by hand; implies

that the normal process failed due to bugs