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

upstairs, or both. As in "He's a no-op." 3. Any operation or

sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block

without finding a parking space, or putting money into a vending

machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or

asking someone for help and being told to go away. "Oh, well, that was

a no-op." Hot-and-sour soup (see [9477]great-wall) that is

insufficiently either is `no-op soup'; so is wonton soup if everybody

else is having hot-and-sour.

Node:noddy, Next:[9478]node, Previous:[9479]no-op, Up:[9480]= N =

noddy /nod'ee/ adj.

[UK: from the children's books] 1. Small and un-useful, but

demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people

learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is

[9481]hello world. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or

bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply

that it isn't worth using. "This editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program

that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does

not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a [9482]hack

sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while

carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll

just throw together a noddy [9483]awk script to dump all the first

fields." In North America this might be called a [9484]mickey mouse

program. See [9485]toy program.

Node:node, Next:[9486]Nominal Semidestructor, Previous:[9487]noddy,

Up:[9488]= N =

node n.

[Internet, UUCP] A host machine on the network. 2. [MS-DOS BBSes] A

dial-in line on a BBS. Thus an MS-DOS [9489]sysop might say that his

BBS has 4 nodes even though it has a single machine and no Internet

link, confusing an Internet hacker no end.

Node:Nominal Semidestructor, Next:[9490]non-optimal solution,

Previous:[9491]node, Up:[9492]= N =

Nominal Semidestructor n.

Soundalike slang for `National Semiconductor', found among other

places in the Networking/2 networking sources. During the late 1970s

to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors

including the NS16000 and NS32000 and several variants. At one point

early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made

them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and

Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were

notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set

promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't

get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually

sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more

obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.

Compare [9493]HP-SUX, [9494]AIDX, [9495]buglix, [9496]Macintrash,

[9497]Telerat, [9498]ScumOS, [9499]sun-stools, [9500]Slowlaris,

[9501]Internet Exploder.

Node:non-optimal solution, Next:[9502]nonlinear,

Previous:[9503]Nominal Semidestructor, Up:[9504]= N =

non-optimal solution n.

(also `sub-optimal solution') An astoundingly stupid way to do

something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its

impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious.

Compare [9505]stunning. See also [9506]Bad Thing.

Node:nonlinear, Next:[9507]nontrivial, Previous:[9508]non-optimal

solution, Up:[9509]= N =

nonlinear adj.

[scientific computation] 1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable

fashion; unstable. When used to describe the behavior of a machine or

program, it suggests that said machine or program is being forced to

run far outside of design specifications. This behavior may be induced

by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug

sends the computation far off from its expected course. 2. When

describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a

[9510]flame. "When you talk to Bob, don't mention the drug problem or

he'll go nonlinear for hours." In this context, `go nonlinear'

connotes `blow up out of proportion' (proportion connotes linearity).

Node:nontrivial, Next:[9511]not ready for prime time,

Previous:[9512]nonlinear, Up:[9513]= N =

nontrivial adj.

Requiring real thought or significant computing power. Often used as

an understated way of saying that a problem is quite difficult or

impractical, or even entirely unsolvable ("Proving P=NP is

nontrivial"). The preferred emphatic form is `decidedly nontrivial'.

See [9514]trivial, [9515]uninteresting, [9516]interesting.

Node:not ready for prime time, Next:[9517]notwork,

Previous:[9518]nontrivial, Up:[9519]= N =

not ready for prime time adj.

Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only. Said

of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be made

more solid [9520]Real Soon Now. This term comes from the ensemble name

of the original cast of "Saturday Night Live", the "Not Ready for

Prime Time Players". It has extra flavor for hackers because of the

special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of [9521]prime time.

Compare [9522]beta.

Node:notwork, Next:[9523]NP-, Previous:[9524]not ready for prime time,

Up:[9525]= N =

notwork /not'werk/ n.

A network, when it is acting [9526]flaky or is [9527]down. Compare

[9528]nyetwork. Said at IBM to have originally referred to a

particular period of flakiness on IBM's VNET corporate network ca.

1988; but there are independent reports of the term from elsewhere.

Node:NP-, Next:[9529]nroff, Previous:[9530]notwork, Up:[9531]= N =

NP- /N-P/ pref.

Extremely. Used to modify adjectives describing a level or quality of

difficulty; the connotation is often `more so than it should be' This

is generalized from the computer-science terms `NP-hard' and

`NP-complete'; NP-complete problems all seem to be very hard, but so

far no one has found a proof that they are. NP is the set of

Nondeterministic-Polynomial algorithms, those that can be completed by

a nondeterministic Turing machine in an amount of time that is a

polynomial function of the size of the input; a solution for one

NP-complete problem would solve all the others. "Coding a BitBlt

implementation to perform correctly in every case is NP-annoying."

Note, however, that strictly speaking this usage is misleading; there

are plenty of easy problems in class NP. NP-complete problems are hard

not because they are in class NP, but because they are the hardest

problems in class NP.

Node:nroff, Next:[9532]NSA line eater, Previous:[9533]NP-, Up:[9534]=

N =

nroff /N'rof/

n. [Unix, from "new roff" (see [9535]troff)] A companion program to

the Unix typesetter [9536]troff, accepting identical input but

preparing output for terminals and line printers.

Node:NSA line eater, Next:[9537]NSP, Previous:[9538]nroff, Up:[9539]=

N =

NSA line eater n.

The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes assumed to be

reading the net for the U.S. Government's spooks. Most hackers used to

think it was mythical but believed in acting as though existed just in

case. since the mid-1990s it has gradually become known that the NSA

actually does this, quite illegaly, through its Echelon program.

The standard countermeasure is to put loaded phrases like `KGB',

Uzi',nuclear materials', Palestine',cocaine', and

`assassination' in their [9540]sig blocks in a (probably futile)

attempt to confuse and overload the creature. The [9541]GNU version of

[9542]EMACS actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of

insidious anarcho-verbiage into your edited text.

As far back as the 1970s there was a mainstream variant of this myth

involving a `Trunk Line Monitor', which supposedly used speech

recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This is much

harder than noticing keywords in email, and most of the people who

originally propagated it had no idea of then-current technology or the

storage, signal-processing, or speech recognition needs of such a

project. On the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have been

cheaper to hire 50 high-school students and just let them listen in.

Twenty years and several orders of technological magnitude later,

however, there are clear indications that the NSA has actually

deployed such filtering (again, very much against U.S. law).

Node:NSP, Next:[9543]nude, Previous:[9544]NSA line eater, Up:[9545]= N

=

NSP /N-S-P/ n.

Common abbreviation for `Network Service Provider', one of the big

national or regional companies that maintains a portion of the

Internet backbone and resells connectivity to [9546]ISPs. In 1996,

major NSPs include ANS, MCI, UUNET, and Sprint. An Internet

wholesaler.

Node:nude, Next:[9547]nugry, Previous:[9548]NSP, Up:[9549]= N =

nude adj.

Said of machines delivered without an operating system (compare

[9550]bare metal). "We ordered 50 systems, but they all arrived nude,

so we had to spend a an extra weekend with the installation disks."

This usage is a recent innovation reflecting the fact that most IBM-PC

clones are now delivered with an operating system pre-installed at the

factory. Other kinds of hardware are still normally delivered without

OS, so this term is particular to PC support groups.

Node:nugry, Next:[9551]nuke, Previous:[9552]nude, Up:[9553]= N =

nugry /n[y]oo'gree/

[Usenet, 'newbie' + '-gry'] `. n. A [9554]newbie who posts a [9555]FAQ

in the rec.puzzles newsgroup, especially if it is a variant of the

notorious and unanswerable "What, besides angry' andhungry', is the

third common English word that ends in -GRY?". In the newsgroup, the

canonical answer is of course nugry' itself. Plural isnusgry'

/n[y]oos'gree/. 2. adj. Having the qualities of a nugry.

Node:nuke, Next:[9556]number-crunching, Previous:[9557]nugry,

Up:[9558]= N =

nuke /n[y]ook/ vt.

[common] 1. To intentionally delete the entire contents of a given

directory or storage volume. "On Unix, rm -r /usr will nuke everything

in the usr filesystem." Never used for accidental deletion; contrast

[9559]blow away. 2. Syn. for [9560]dike, applied to smaller things

such as files, features, or code sections. Often used to express a

final verdict. "What do you want me to do with that 80-meg

[9561]wallpaper file?" "Nuke it." 3. Used of processes as well as

files; nuke is a frequent verbal alias for kill -9 on Unix. 4. On IBM

PCs, a bug that results in [9562]fandango on core can trash the

operating system, including the FAT (the in-core copy of the disk

block chaining information). This can utterly scramble attached disks,

which are then said to have been `nuked'. This term is also used of

analogous lossages on Macintoshes and other micros without memory

protection.

Node:number-crunching, Next:[9563]numbers, Previous:[9564]nuke,

Up:[9565]= N =

number-crunching n.

[common] Computations of a numerical nature, esp. those that make

extensive use of floating-point numbers. The only thing [9566]Fortrash

is good for. This term is in widespread informal use outside hackerdom

and even in mainstream slang, but has additional hackish connotations:

namely, that the computations are mindless and involve massive use of

[9567]brute force. This is not always [9568]evil, esp. if it involves

ray tracing or fractals or some other use that makes [9569]pretty

pictures, esp. if such pictures can be used as [9570]wallpaper. See

also [9571]crunch.

Node:numbers, Next:[9572]NUXI problem,

Previous:[9573]number-crunching, Up:[9574]= N =

numbers n.

[scientific computation] Output of a computation that may not be

significant results but at least indicate that the program is running.

May be used to placate management, grant sponsors, etc. `Making

numbers' means running a program because output -- any output, not

necessarily meaningful output -- is needed as a demonstration of

progress. See [9575]pretty pictures, [9576]math-out, [9577]social

science number.

Node:NUXI problem, Next:[9578]nybble, Previous:[9579]numbers,

Up:[9580]= N =

NUXI problem /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n.

Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with

differing byte-order. The string UNIX' might look likeNUXI' on a

machine with a different `byte sex' (e.g., when transferring data from

a [9581]little-endian to a [9582]big-endian, or vice-versa). See also

[9583]middle-endian, [9584]swab, and [9585]bytesexual.

Node:nybble, Next:[9586]nyetwork, Previous:[9587]NUXI problem,

Up:[9588]= N =

nybble /nib'l/ (alt. `nibble') n.

[from v. nibble' by analogy withbite' => `byte'] Four bits; one

[9589]hex digit; a half-byte. Though `byte' is now techspeak, this

useful relative is still jargon. Compare [9590]byte; see also

[9591]bit. The more mundane spelling "nibble" is also commonly used.

Apparently the `nybble' spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish,

as British orthography would suggest the pronunciation /ni:'bl/.

Following bit',byte' and `nybble' there have been quite a few

analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of

other sizes. All of these are strictly jargon, not techspeak, and not

very common jargon at that (most hackers would recognize them in

context but not use them spontaneously). We collect them here for

reference together with the ambiguous techspeak terms `word',

half-word' anddouble word'; some (indicated) have substantial

information separate entries.

2 bits:

[9592]crumb, [9593]quad, [9594]quarter, tayste, tydbit

4 bits:

nybble

5 bits:

[9595]nickle

10 bits:

[9596]deckle

16 bits: