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

startup time.

[6749]EMACS is a heavyweight editor; [6750]X is an extremely

heavyweight window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one

hacker's heavyweight is another's [6751]elephantine and a third's

[6752]monstrosity. Oppose `lightweight'. Usage: now borders on

techspeak, especially in the compound `heavyweight process'.

Node:heisenbug, Next:[6753]Helen Keller mode,

Previous:[6754]heavyweight, Up:[6755]= H =

heisenbug /hi:'zen-buhg/ n.

[from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] A bug

that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or

isolate it. (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of

a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment

significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the

values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of

[6756]Bohr bug; see also [6757]mandelbug, [6758]schroedinbug. In C,

nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables,

[6759]fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption

of the malloc [6760]arena) or errors that [6761]smash the stack.

Node:Helen Keller mode, Next:[6762]hello sailor!,

Previous:[6763]heisenbug, Up:[6764]= H =

Helen Keller mode n.

State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and

blind, i.e., accepting no input and generating no output, usually due

to an infinite loop or some other excursion into [6765]deep space.

(Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was

triumphant.) See also [6766]go flatline, [6767]catatonic. 2. On IBM

PCs under DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen

saver has kicked in over an [6768]ill-behaved application which

bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity.

Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state

through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what

you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly

speaking) a crash.

Node:hello sailor!, Next:[6769]hello wall!, Previous:[6770]Helen

Keller mode, Up:[6771]= H =

hello sailor! interj.

Occasional West Coast equivalent of [6772]hello world; seems to have

originated at SAIL, later associated with the game [6773]Zork (which

also included "hello, aviator" and "hello, implementor"). Originally

from the traditional hooker's greeting to a swabbie fresh off the

boat, of course. The standard response is "Nothing happens here."; of

all the Zork/Dungeon games, only in Infocom's Zork 3 is "Hello,

Sailor" actually useful (excluding the unique situation where

---knowing--- this fact is important in Dungeon...).

Node:hello wall!, Next:[6774]hello world, Previous:[6775]hello

sailor!, Up:[6776]= H =

hello, wall! excl.

See [6777]wall.

Node:hello world, Next:[6778]hex, Previous:[6779]hello wall!,

Up:[6780]= H =

hello world interj.

The canonical minimal test message in the C/Unix universe. 2. Any

of the minimal programs that emit this message. Traditionally, the

first program a C coder is supposed to write in a new environment is

one that just prints "hello, world" to standard output (and indeed it

is the first example program in [6781]K&R). Environments that generate

an unreasonably large executable for this trivial test or which

require a [6782]hairy compiler-linker invocation to generate it are

considered to [6783]lose (see [6784]X). 3. Greeting uttered by a

hacker making an entrance or requesting information from anyone

present. "Hello, world! Is the LAN back up yet?"

Node:hex, Next:[6785]hexadecimal, Previous:[6786]hello world,

Up:[6787]= H =

hex n.

Short for [6788]hexadecimal, base 16. 2. A 6-pack of anything

(compare [6789]quad, sense 2). Neither usage has anything to do with

[6790]magic or [6791]black art, though the pun is appreciated and

occasionally used by hackers. True story: As a joke, some hackers once

offered some surplus ICs for sale to be worn as protective amulets

against hostile magic. The chips were, of course, hex inverters.

Node:hexadecimal, Next:[6792]hexit, Previous:[6793]hex, Up:[6794]= H =

hexadecimal n.

Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier `sexadecimal',

which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by

the rest of the industry.

Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take `binary' to

be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base 10, for

example, is denary', which comes fromdeni' (ten at a time, ten

each), a Latin `distributive' number; the corresponding term for

base-16 would be something like sendenary'.Decimal' is from an

ordinal number; the corresponding prefix for 6 would imply something

like sextidecimal'. Thesexa-' prefix is Latin but incorrect in this

context, and hexa-' is Greek. The wordoctal' is similarly

incorrect; a correct form would be `octaval' (to go with decimal), or

`octonary' (to go with binary). If anyone ever implements a base-3

computer, computer scientists will be faced with the unprecedented

dilemma of a choice between two correct forms; both `ternary' and

`trinary' have a claim to this throne.

Node:hexit, Next:[6795]HHOK, Previous:[6796]hexadecimal, Up:[6797]= H

=

hexit /hek'sit/ n.

A hexadecimal digit (0-9, and A-F or a-f). Used by people who claim

that there are only ten digits, dammit; sixteen-fingered human beings

are rather rare, despite what some keyboard designs might seem to

imply (see [6798]space-cadet keyboard).

Node:HHOK, Next:[6799]HHOS, Previous:[6800]hexit, Up:[6801]= H =

HHOK

See [6802]ha ha only serious.

Node:HHOS, Next:[6803]hidden flag, Previous:[6804]HHOK, Up:[6805]= H =

HHOS

See [6806]ha ha only serious.

Node:hidden flag, Next:[6807]high bit, Previous:[6808]HHOS, Up:[6809]=

H =

hidden flag n.

[scientific computation] An extra option added to a routine without

changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an

explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic

output, the programmer might just add a test for some otherwise

meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a negative mass.

The use of hidden flags can make a program very hard to debug and

understand, but is all too common wherever programs are hacked on in a

hurry.

Node:high bit, Next:[6810]high moby, Previous:[6811]hidden flag,

Up:[6812]= H =

high bit n.

[from `high-order bit'] 1. The most significant bit in a byte. 2.

[common] By extension, the most significant part of something other

than a data byte: "Spare me the whole [6813]saga, just give me the

high bit." See also [6814]meta bit, [6815]hobbit, [6816]dread high-bit

disease, and compare the mainstream slang `bottom line'.

Node:high moby, Next:[6817]highly, Previous:[6818]high bit, Up:[6819]=

H =

high moby /hi:' mohb'ee/ n.

The high half of a 512K [6820]PDP-10's physical address space; the

other half was of course the low moby. This usage has been generalized

in a way that has outlasted the [6821]PDP-10; for example, at the 1990

Washington D.C. Area Science Fiction Conclave (Disclave), when a

miscommunication resulted in two separate wakes being held in

commemoration of the shutdown of MIT's last [6822]ITS machines, the

one on the upper floor was dubbed the `high moby' and the other the

`low moby'. All parties involved [6823]grokked this instantly. See

[6824]moby.

Node:highly, Next:[6825]hing, Previous:[6826]high moby, Up:[6827]= H =

highly adv.

[scientific computation] The preferred modifier for overstating an

understatement. As in: `highly nonoptimal', the worst possible way to

do something; `highly nontrivial', either impossible or requiring a

major research project; `highly nonlinear', completely erratic and

unpredictable; `highly nontechnical', drivel written for [6828]lusers,

oversimplified to the point of being misleading or incorrect (compare

[6829]drool-proof paper). In other computing cultures, postfixing of

[6830]in the extreme might be preferred.

Node:hing, Next:[6831]hired gun, Previous:[6832]highly, Up:[6833]= H =

hing // n.

[IRC] Fortuitous typo for `hint', now in wide intentional use among

players of [6834]initgame. Compare [6835]newsfroup, [6836]filk.

Node:hired gun, Next:[6837]hirsute, Previous:[6838]hing, Up:[6839]= H

=

hired gun n.

A contract programmer, as opposed to a full-time staff member. All the

connotations of this term suggested by innumerable spaghetti Westerns

are intentional.

Node:hirsute, Next:[6840]HLL, Previous:[6841]hired gun, Up:[6842]= H =

hirsute adj.

Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for [6843]hairy.

Node:HLL, Next:[6844]hoarding, Previous:[6845]hirsute, Up:[6846]= H =

HLL /H-L-L/ n.

[High-Level Language (as opposed to assembler)] Found primarily in

email and news rather than speech. Rarely, the variants `VHLL' and

MLL' are found. VHLL stands forVery-High-Level Language' and is

used to describe a [6847]bondage-and-discipline language that the

speaker happens to like; Prolog and Backus's FP are often called

VHLLs. MLL' stands forMedium-Level Language' and is sometimes used

half-jokingly to describe [6848]C, alluding to its

`structured-assembler' image. See also [6849]languages of choice.

Node:hoarding, Next:[6850]hobbit, Previous:[6851]HLL, Up:[6852]= H =

hoarding n.

See [6853]software hoarding.

Node:hobbit, Next:[6854]hog, Previous:[6855]hoarding, Up:[6856]= H =

hobbit n.

[rare] The High Order BIT of a byte; same as the [6857]meta bit or

[6858]high bit. 2. The non-ITS name of [6859]vad@ai.mit.edu

(Hobbit), master of lasers.

Node:hog, Next:[6860]hole, Previous:[6861]hobbit, Up:[6862]= H =

hog n.,vt.

Favored term to describe programs or hardware that seem to eat far

more than their share of a system's resources, esp. those which

noticeably degrade interactive response. Not used of programs that are

simply extremely large or complex or that are merely painfully slow

themselves. More often than not encountered in qualified forms, e.g.,

memory hog',core hog', hog the processor',hog the disk'. "A

controller that never gives up the I/O bus gets killed after the

bus-hog timer expires." 2. Also said of people who use more than their

fair share of resources (particularly disk, where it seems that 10% of

the people use 90% of the disk, no matter how big the disk is or how

many people use it). Of course, once disk hogs fill up one filesystem,

they typically find some other new one to infect, claiming to the

sysadmin that they have an important new project to complete.

Node:hole, Next:[6863]hollised, Previous:[6864]hog, Up:[6865]= H =

hole n.

A region in an otherwise [6866]flat entity which is not actually

present. For example, some Unix filesystems can store large files with

holes so that unused regions of the file are never actually stored on

disk. (In techspeak, these are referred to as `sparse' files.) As

another example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved for

memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be present is called

`the I/O hole', since memory-management systems must skip over this

area when filling user requests for memory.

Node:hollised, Next:[6867]holy wars, Previous:[6868]hole, Up:[6869]= H

=

hollised /hol'ist/ adj.

[Usenet: sci.space] To be hollised is to have been ordered by one's

employer not to post any even remotely job-related material to Usenet

(or, by extension, to other Internet media). The original and most

notorious case of this involved one Ken Hollis, a Lockheed employee

and space-program enthusiast who posted publicly available material on

access to Space Shuttle launches to sci.space. He was gagged under

threat of being fired in 1994 at the behest of NASA public-relations

officers. The result was, of course, a huge publicity black eye for

NASA. Nevertheless several other NASA contractor employees were

subsequently hollised for similar activities. Use of this term carries

the strong connotation that the persons doing the gagging are

bureaucratic idiots blinded to their own best interests by territorial

reflexes.

Node:holy wars, Next:[6870]home box, Previous:[6871]hollised,

Up:[6872]= H =

holy wars n.

[from [6873]Usenet, but may predate it; common] n. [6874]flame wars

over [6875]religious issues. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized

the terms [6876]big-endian and [6877]little-endian in connection with

the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a

Plea for Peace".

Great holy wars of the past have included [6878]ITS vs. [6879]Unix,

[6880]Unix vs. [6881]VMS, [6882]BSD Unix vs. [6883]USG Unix, [6884]C

vs. [6885]Pascal, [6886]C vs. FORTRAN, etc. In the year 2000, popular

favorites of the day are KDE vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux vs.

[Free|Net|Open]BSD. Hardy perennials include [6887]EMACS vs. [6888]vi,

my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, ad

nauseam. The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal

technical disputes is that in a holy war most of the participants

spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and

cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. This happens

precisely because in a true holy war, the actual substantive

differences between the sides are relatively minor. See also

[6889]theology.

Node:home box, Next:[6890]home machine, Previous:[6891]holy wars,

Up:[6892]= H =

home box n.

A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah?

Well, my home box runs a full 4.4 BSD, so there!"

Node:home machine, Next:[6893]home page, Previous:[6894]home box,

Up:[6895]= H =

home machine