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

>Pentagram Pro n.

A humorous corruption of "Pentium Pro", with a Satanic reference,

implying that the chip is inherently [10225]evil. Often used with "666

MHz"; there is a T-shirt. See [10226]Pentium

Node:Pentium, Next:[10227]peon, Previous:[10228]Pentagram Pro,

Up:[10229]= P =

Pentium n.

The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486. The

name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a

number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according to

Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like titanium". Among hackers,

the plural is frequently `pentia'. See also [10230]Pentagram Pro.

Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor

the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling a

chip with "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been called `Pentium

II' and `Pentium III'.

Node:peon, Next:[10231]percent-S, Previous:[10232]Pentium, Up:[10233]=

P =

peon n.

A person with no special ([10234]root or [10235]wheel) privileges on a

computer system. "I can't create an account on foovax for you; I'm

only a peon there."

Node:percent-S, Next:[10236]perf, Previous:[10237]peon, Up:[10238]= P

=

percent-S /per-sent' es'/ n.

[From the code in C's printf(3) library function used to insert an

arbitrary string argument] An unspecified person or object. "I was

just talking to some percent-s in administration." Compare

[10239]random.

Node:perf, Next:[10240]perfect programmer syndrome,

Previous:[10241]percent-S, Up:[10242]= P =

perf /perf/ n.

Syn. [10243]chad (sense 1). The term `perfory' /per'f*-ree/ is also

heard. The term [10244]perf may also refer to the perforations

themselves, rather than the chad they produce when torn (philatelists

use it this way).

Node:perfect programmer syndrome, Next:[10245]Perl,

Previous:[10246]perf, Up:[10247]= P =

perfect programmer syndrome n.

Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human

error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native ability

but relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their

perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at

solving [10248]toy problems). "Of course my program is correct, there

is no need to test it." "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here,

but I'll never type rm -r / while in [10249]root mode."

Node:Perl, Next:[10250]person of no account, Previous:[10251]perfect

programmer syndrome, Up:[10252]= P =

Perl /perl/ n.

[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically

Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry

Wall ([10253]larry@wall.org, author of patch(1) and rn(1)) and

distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles [10254]awk, but is

much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of sed(1) and

shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins,

who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one

of the [10255]languages of choice, and it is by far the most widely

used tool for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been

described, in a parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the

"Swiss-Army chainsaw" of Unix programming. Though Perl is very useful,

it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or [10256]elegant;

people who like clean, spare design generally prefer [10257]Python.

See also [10258]Camel Book, [10259]TMTOWTDI.

Node:person of no account, Next:[10260]pessimal, Previous:[10261]Perl,

Up:[10262]= P =

person of no account n.

[University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring to a

person with no [10263]network address, frequently to forestall

confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a

person of no account, but he used to be bill@random.com". Compare

[10264]return from the dead.

Node:pessimal, Next:[10265]pessimizing compiler,

Previous:[10266]person of no account, Up:[10267]= P =

pessimal /pes'im-l/ adj.

[Latin-based antonym for `optimal'] Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal

situation." Also `pessimize' vt. To make as bad as possible. These

words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for `optimal' and

`optimize', but for some reason they do not appear in most English

dictionaries, although `pessimize' is listed in the OED.

Node:pessimizing compiler, Next:[10268]peta-,

Previous:[10269]pessimal, Up:[10270]= P =

pessimizing compiler /pes'-mi:z`ing km-pi:l'r/ n.

A compiler that produces object [antonym of techspeak `optimizing

compiler'] code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand

translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying

to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the

opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose,

however, as pranks or burlesques.

Node:peta-, Next:[10271]PETSCII, Previous:[10272]pessimizing compiler,

Up:[10273]= P =

peta- /pe't*/ pref

[SI] See [10274]quantifiers.

Node:PETSCII, Next:[10275]PFY, Previous:[10276]peta-, Up:[10277]= P =

PETSCII /pet'skee/ n. obs.

[abbreviation of PET ASCII] The variation (many would say perversion)

of the [10278]ASCII character set used by the Commodore Business

Machines PET series of personal computers and the later Commodore C64,

C16, C128, and VIC20 machines. The PETSCII set used left-arrow and

up-arrow (as in old-style ASCII) instead of underscore and caret,

placed the unshifted alphabet at positions 65-90, put the shifted

alphabet at positions 193-218, and added graphics characters.

Node:PFY, Next:[10279]phage, Previous:[10280]PETSCII, Up:[10281]= P =

PFY n.

[Usenet; common] Abbreviation for `Pimply-Faced Youth'. A [10282]BOFH

in training, esp. one apprenticed to an elder BOFH aged in evil.

Node:phage, Next:[10283]phase, Previous:[10284]PFY, Up:[10285]= P =

phage n.

A program that modifies other programs or databases in unauthorized

ways; esp. one that propagates a [10286]virus or [10287]Trojan horse.

See also [10288]worm, [10289]mockingbird. The analogy, of course, is

with phage viruses in biology.

Node:phase, Next:[10290]phase of the moon, Previous:[10291]phage,

Up:[10292]= P =

phase

n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the

standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among people who often work

at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to

change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a regular basis.

"What's your phase?" "I've been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but

I'm going to [10293]wrap around to the day schedule by Friday." A

person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in

night mode'. (The termday mode' is also (but less frequently) used,

meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of

altering one's cycle is called changing phase';phase shifting' has

also been recently reported from Caltech. 2. `change phase the hard

way': To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a

different phase. 3. `change phase the easy way': To stay asleep, etc.

However, some claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping

longer is easy, and that it is shortening your day or night that is

really hard (see [10294]wrap around). The `jet lag' that afflicts

travelers who cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two

distinct causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of

changing phase. Hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase

drastically in a short period of time, particularly the hard way,

experience something very like jet lag without traveling.

Node:phase of the moon, Next:[10295]phase-wrapping,

Previous:[10296]phase, Up:[10297]= P =

phase of the moon n.

Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to

depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or

that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been

able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in

mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon."

See also [10298]heisenbug.

True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really did

depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that

had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an

approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine

into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a

timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first

line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next

line, and when the file was later read back in the program would

[10299]barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise

date and time and the length of the phase specification when the

timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase

of the moon!

The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an

example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the

typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been described as the

phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.

However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN

(European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors in

experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the

formidable amount of data generated by such devices is heavily

processed by computers before being seen by humans, many people

suggested the software was somehow sensitive to the phase of the moon.

A few desperate engineers discovered the truth; the error turned out

to be the result of a tiny change in the geometry of the 27km

circumference ring, physically caused by the deformation of the Earth

by the passage of the Moon! This story has entered physics folklore as

a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and as an example of the

relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to the most modern

science.

Node:phase-wrapping, Next:[10300]PHB, Previous:[10301]phase of the

moon, Up:[10302]= P =

phase-wrapping n.

[MIT] Syn. [10303]wrap around, sense 2.

Node:PHB, Next:[10304]phreaker, Previous:[10305]phase-wrapping,

Up:[10306]= P =

PHB /P-H-B/

[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss".

From the [10307]Dilbert character, the archetypal halfwitted

middle-[10308]management type. See also [10309]pointy-haired.

Node:phreaker, Next:[10310]phreaking, Previous:[10311]PHB, Up:[10312]=

P =

phreaker /freek'r/ n.

One who engages in [10313]phreaking. See also [10314]blue box.

Node:phreaking, Next:[10315]pico-, Previous:[10316]phreaker,

Up:[10317]= P =

phreaking /freek'ing/ n.

[from `phone phreak'] 1. The art and science of [10318]cracking the

phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls).

By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially,

but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see

[10319]cracking).

At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers;

there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual

game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services

was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker

community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground

networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP

Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider

dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less

responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone

network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of

hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts

such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of

gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time

hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most

these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other

paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.

Node:pico-, Next:[10320]pig-tail, Previous:[10321]phreaking,

Up:[10322]= P =

pico- pref.

[SI: a quantifier meaning * 10^-12] Smaller than [10323]nano-; used in

the same rather loose connotative way as [10324]nano- and micro-. This

usage is not yet common in the way [10325]nano- and [10326]micro- are,

but should be instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also

[10327]quantifiers, [10328]micro-.

Node:pig-tail, Next:[10329]pilot error, Previous:[10330]pico-,

Up:[10331]= P =

pig-tail

[radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on each end

for converting between one connector type and another. Common

pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables to connect

PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network cable.

Node:pilot error, Next:[10332]ping, Previous:[10333]pig-tail,

Up:[10334]= P =

pilot error n.

[Sun: from aviation] A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece of

software, producing apparently buglike results (compare [10335]UBD).

"Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate bogus

headers." "That's not a bug, that's pilot error. His sendmail.cf is

hosed."

Node:ping, Next:[10336]Ping O' Death, Previous:[10337]pilot error,

Up:[10338]= P =

ping

[from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse] 1. n. Slang term for a

small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the

presence and alertness of another. The