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

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Node:meg, Next:[8556]mega-, Previous:[8557]meeces, Up:[8558]= M =

meg /meg/ n.

See [8559]quantifiers.

Node:mega-, Next:[8560]megapenny, Previous:[8561]meg, Up:[8562]= M =

mega- /me'g*/ pref.

[SI] See [8563]quantifiers.

Node:megapenny, Next:[8564]MEGO, Previous:[8565]mega-, Up:[8566]= M =

megapenny /meg'*-pen`ee/ n.

$10,000 (1 cent * 10^6). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing

computer cost and performance figures.

Node:MEGO, Next:[8567]meltdown network, Previous:[8568]megapenny,

Up:[8569]= M =

MEGO /me'goh/ or /mee'goh/

[My Eyes Glaze Over', oftenMine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over',

attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also `MEGO factor'. 1. n.

A [8570]handwave intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce

agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not

understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior

management by engineers and contains a high proportion of [8571]TLAs.

excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among

non-hackers, often refers not to behavior that causes the eyes to

glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be triggered

by the mere threat of technical detail as effectively as by an actual

excess of it.

Node:meltdown network, Next:[8572]meme, Previous:[8573]MEGO,

Up:[8574]= M =

meltdown, network n.

See [8575]network meltdown.

Node:meme, Next:[8576]meme plague, Previous:[8577]meltdown network,

Up:[8578]= M =

meme /meem/ n.

[coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] An idea considered

as a [8579]replicator, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize

people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the

phrase `meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes

that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon

is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme

complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is

often misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes

acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and

language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive

ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary

traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious

reasons.

Node:meme plague, Next:[8580]memetics, Previous:[8581]meme, Up:[8582]=

M =

meme plague n.

The spread of a successful but pernicious [8583]meme, esp. one that

parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it.

Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered to

be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that

`joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian

Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth

followed by collapses to small reservoir populations.

Node:memetics, Next:[8584]memory farts, Previous:[8585]meme plague,

Up:[8586]= M =

memetics /me-met'iks/ n.

[from [8587]meme] The study of memes. As of early 1999, this is still

an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps

towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson

and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers,

who like to see themselves as the architects of the new information

ecologies in which memes live and replicate.

Node:memory farts, Next:[8588]memory leak, Previous:[8589]memetics,

Up:[8590]= M =

memory farts n.

The flatulent sounds that some DOS box BIOSes (most notably AMI's)

make when checking memory on bootup.

Node:memory leak, Next:[8591]memory smash, Previous:[8592]memory

farts, Up:[8593]= M =

memory leak n.

An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it

to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due

to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called [8594]core leak. These

problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address

spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were commonly written to

root them out. With the advent of virtual memory, it is unfortunately

easier to be sloppy about wasting a bit of memory (although when you

run out of memory on a VM machine, it means you've got a real leak!).

See [8595]aliasing bug, [8596]fandango on core, [8597]smash the stack,

[8598]precedence lossage, [8599]overrun screw, [8600]leaky heap,

[8601]leak.

Node:memory smash, Next:[8602]menuitis, Previous:[8603]memory leak,

Up:[8604]= M =

memory smash n.

[XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what you

think it does. This occasionally reduces your machine to a rubble of

bits. Note that this is subtly different from (and more general than)

related terms such as a [8605]memory leak or [8606]fandango on core

because it doesn't imply an allocation error or overrun condition.

Node:menuitis, Next:[8607]mess-dos, Previous:[8608]memory smash,

Up:[8609]= M =

menuitis /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n.

Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively

simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this

intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line

or language-style interfaces, especially those customizable via macros

or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks.

See [8610]user-obsequious, [8611]drool-proof paper, [8612]WIMP

environment, [8613]for the rest of us.

Node:mess-dos, Next:[8614]meta, Previous:[8615]menuitis, Up:[8616]= M

=

mess-dos /mes-dos/ n.

[semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS. Often

followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See [8617]MS-DOS. Most

hackers (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathed MS-DOS for its

single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty

primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness and Microsoftness (see

[8618]fear and loathing). Also mess-loss',messy-dos', `mess-dog',

mess-dross',mush-dos', and various combinations thereof. In Ireland

and the U.K. it is even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of

toilet cleanser.

Node:meta, Next:[8619]meta bit, Previous:[8620]mess-dos, Up:[8621]= M

=

meta /me't/ or /may't/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ adj.,pref.

[from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A

metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe

syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language. This

is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on

deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See [8622]hacker humor.

Node:meta bit, Next:[8623]metasyntactic variable, Previous:[8624]meta,

Up:[8625]= M =

meta bit n.

The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values

128-255. Also called [8626]high bit, [8627]alt bit, or (rarely)

[8628]hobbit. Some terminals and consoles (see [8629]space-cadet

keyboard) have a META shift key. Others (including, mirabile dictu,

keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have an ALT key. See also

[8630]bucky bits.

Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe of

8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200), things

were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and 9-bit bytes.

The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see [8631]space-cadet keyboard)

generated hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.

Node:metasyntactic variable, Next:[8632]MFTL, Previous:[8633]meta bit,

Up:[8634]= M =

metasyntactic variable n.

A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is

under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under

discussion. The word [8635]foo is the [8636]canonical example. To

avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other

words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common

convention is that any filename beginning with a

metasyntactic-variable name is a [8637]scratch file that may be

deleted at any time.

Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables

in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are

variables whose values are often variables (as in usages usages like

"the value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar"). However, it has

been plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term

"metasyntactic variable" is that it sounds good.

To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is

a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related

groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few

common signatures:

[8638]foo, [8639]bar, [8640]baz, [8641]quux, quuux, quuuux...:

MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), [8642]baz dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts [8643]qux before [8644]quux.

bazola, ztesch:

Stanford (from mid-'70s on).

[8645]foo, [8646]bar, thud, grunt:

This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include [8647]gorp.

[8648]foo, [8649]bar, fum:

This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC.

[8650]fred, jim, sheila, [8651]barney:

See the entry for [8652]fred. These tend to be Britishisms.

[8653]corge, [8654]grault, [8655]flarp:

Popular at Rutgers University and among [8656]GOSMACS hackers.

zxc, spqr, wombat:

Cambridge University (England).

shme

Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/.

foo, bar, baz, bongo

Yale, late 1970s.

spam

[8657]Python programmers.

snork

Brown University, early 1970s.

[8658]foo, [8659]bar, zot

Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.

blarg, wibble

New Zealand.

toto, titi, tata, tutu

France.

pippo, pluto, paperino

Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.

aap, noot, mies

The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.

oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork

These two series (which may be continued with other initial consonents) are reportedly common in England, and said to go back to Lewis Carroll.

Of all these, only foo' andbar' are universal (and [8660]baz nearly

so). The compounds [8661]foobar and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide

currency.

Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; [8662]barf and

[8663]mumble, for example. See also [8664]Commonwealth Hackish for

discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain

and the Commonwealth.

Node:MFTL, Next:[8665]mickey, Previous:[8666]metasyntactic variable,

Up:[8667]= M =

MFTL /M-F-T-L/

[abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1. adj. Describes a talk on

a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots

of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems),

but rarely, if ever, has any content (see [8668]content-free). More

broadly applied to talks -- even when the topic is not a programming

language -- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary

and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content.

"Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. n. Describes a language about

which the developers are passionate (often to the point of proselytic

zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those

outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution

in his MFTL."

The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually

to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from

contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in

itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has

it been used for anything besides its own compiler?" On the other

hand, a (compiled) language that cannot even be used to write its own

compiler is beneath contempt. (The qualification has become necessary

because of the increasing popularity of interpreted languages like

[8669]Perl and [8670]Python. See [8671]break-even point.

(On a related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the

generality and utility of a language and the operating system under

which it is compiled: "Is the output of a FORTRAN program acceptable

as input to the FORTRAN compiler?" In other words, can you write

programs that write programs? (See [8672]toolsmith.) Alarming numbers

of (language, OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language

is FORTRAN; aficionados are quick to point out that [8673]Unix (even

using FORTRAN) passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed

is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have

worked only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed

"file types".)

Node:mickey, Next:[8674]mickey mouse program, Previous:[8675]MFTL,

Up:[8676]= M =

mickey n.

The resolution unit of mouse movement. It has been suggested that the

`disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics

performance.

Node:mickey mouse program, Next:[8677]micro-, Previous:[8678]mickey,

Up:[8679]= M =

mickey mouse program n.

North American equivalent of a [8680]noddy (that is, trivial) program.

Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream

slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial

programs can be very useful.

Node:micro-, Next:[8681]MicroDroid,