The New Hacker's Dictionary by Eric S. Raymond (each kindness read aloud TXT) 📖

supported by Unix, ITS, and some other OSes that allows two

or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It

combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and

verbosity) that written language entails. It is difficult to

communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of

these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for

details).

Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing,

which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to (and

probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs

since the 1920s.

AFAIAC

as far as I am concerned

AFAIK

as far as I know

BCNU

be seeing you

BTW

by the way

BYE?

are you ready to unlink? (this is the standard way to end a talk-mode conversation; the other person types BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation)

CUL

see you later

ENQ?

are you busy? (expects ACK or NAK in return)

FOO?

are you there? (often used on unexpected links, meaning also "Sorry if I butted in ..." (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee))

FWIW

for what it's worth

FYI

for your information

FYA

for your amusement

GA

go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other)

GRMBL

grumble (expresses disquiet or disagreement)

HELLOP

hello? (an instance of the `-P' convention)

IIRC

if I recall correctly

JAM

just a minute (equivalent to SEC....)

MIN

same as JAM

NIL

no (see [13097]NIL)

NP

no problem

O

over to you

OO

over and out

/

another form of "over to you" (from x/y as "x over y")

lambda (used in discussing LISPy things)

OBTW

oh, by the way

OTOH

on the other hand

R U THERE?

are you there?

SEC

wait a second (sometimes written SEC...)

SYN

Are you busy? (expects ACK, SYN|ACK, or RST in return; this is modeled on the TCP/IP handshake sequence)

T

yes (see the main entry for [13098]T)

TNX

thanks

TNX 1.0E6

thanks a million (humorous)

TNXE6

another form of "thanks a million"

WRT

with regard to, or with respect to.

WTF

the universal interrogative particle; WTF knows what it means?

WTH

what the hell?

When the typing party has finished, he/she types two newlines to signal that he/she is done; this leaves a blank line between `speeches' in the conversation, making it easier to reread the preceding text.

:

When three or more terminals are linked, it is conventional for each typist to [13099]prepend his/her login name or handle and a colon (or a hyphen) to each line to indicate who is typing (some conferencing facilities do this automatically). The login name is often shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a single letter) during a very long conversation.

///

A giggle or chuckle. On a MUD, this usually means `earthquake fault'.

Most of the above sub-jargon is used at both Stanford and MIT. Several

of these expressions are also common in [13100]email, esp. FYI, FYA,

BTW, BCNU, WTF, and CUL. A few other abbreviations have been reported

from commercial networks, such as GEnie and CompuServe, where on-line

`live' chat including more than two people is common and usually

involves a more `social' context, notably the following:

grin

grinning, ducking, and running

BBL

be back later

BRB

be right back

HHOJ

ha ha only joking

HHOK

ha ha only kidding

HHOS

[13101]ha ha only serious

IMHO

in my humble opinion (see [13102]IMHO)

LOL

laughing out loud

NHOH

Never Heard of Him/Her (often used in [13103]initgame)

ROTF

rolling on the floor

ROTFL

rolling on the floor laughing

AFK

away from keyboard

b4

before

CU l8tr

see you later

MORF

male or female?

TTFN

ta-ta for now

TTYL

talk to you later

OIC

oh, I see

rehi

hello again

Most of these are not used at universities or in the Unix world,

though ROTF and TTFN have gained some currency there and IMHO is

common; conversely, most of the people who know these are unfamiliar

with FOO?, BCNU, HELLOP, [13104]NIL, and [13105]T.

The [13106]MUD community uses a mixture of Usenet/Internet emoticons,

a few of the more natural of the old-style talk-mode abbrevs, and some

of the `social' list above; specifically, MUD respondents report use

of BBL, BRB, LOL, b4, BTW, WTF, TTFN, and WTH. The use of `rehi' is

also common; in fact, mudders are fond of re- compounds and will

frequently rehug' orrebonk' (see [13107]bonk/oif) people. The word

re' by itself is taken asregreet'. In general, though, MUDders

express a preference for typing things out in full rather than using

abbreviations; this may be due to the relative youth of the MUD

cultures, which tend to include many touch typists and to assume

high-speed links. The following uses specific to MUDs are reported:

CU l8er

see you later (mutant of CU l8tr)

FOAD

fuck off and die (use of this is generally OTT)

OTT

over the top (excessive, uncalled for)

ppl

abbrev for "people"

THX

thanks (mutant of TNX; clearly this comes in batches of 1138 (the Lucasian K)).

UOK?

are you OK?

Some [13108]B1FFisms (notably the variant spelling d00d) appear to be

passing into wider use among some subgroups of MUDders.

One final note on talk mode style: neophytes, when in talk mode, often

seem to think they must produce letter-perfect prose because they are

typing rather than speaking. This is not the best approach. It can be

very frustrating to wait while your partner pauses to think of a word,

or repeatedly makes the same spelling error and backs up to fix it. It

is usually best just to leave typographical errors behind and plunge

forward, unless severe confusion may result; in that case it is often

fastest just to type "xxx" and start over from before the mistake.

See also [13109]hakspek, [13110]emoticon.

Node:talker system, Next:[13111]tall card, Previous:[13112]talk mode,

Up:[13113]= T =

talker system n.

British hackerism for software that enables real-time chat or

[13114]talk mode.

Node:tall card, Next:[13115]tanked, Previous:[13116]talker system,

Up:[13117]= T =

tall card n.

A PC/AT-size expansion card (these can be larger than IBM PC or XT

cards because the AT case is bigger). See also [13118]short card. When

IBM introduced the PS/2 model 30 (its last gasp at supporting the ISA)

they made the case lower and many industry-standard tall cards

wouldn't fit; this was felt to be a reincarnation of the

[13119]connector conspiracy, done with less style.

Node:tanked, Next:[13120]TANSTAAFL, Previous:[13121]tall card,

Up:[13122]= T =

tanked adj.

Same as [13123]down, used primarily by Unix hackers. See also

[13124]hosed. Popularized as a synonym for `drunk' by Steve Dallas in

the late lamented "Bloom County" comic strip.

Node:TANSTAAFL, Next:[13125]tape monkey, Previous:[13126]tanked,

Up:[13127]= T =

TANSTAAFL /tan'stah-fl/

[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic "The Moon is a Harsh

Mistress".] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often invoked

when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly

[13128]heavyweight technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of

software, or at the [13129]signal-to-noise ratio of unmoderated Usenet

newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a database back

end to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you

know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high

concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in

hackerdom (see [13130]Appendix B for discussion).

Node:tape monkey, Next:[13131]tar and feather,

Previous:[13132]TANSTAAFL, Up:[13133]= T =

tape monkey n.

A junior system administrator, one who might plausibly be assigned to

do physical swapping of tapes and subsequent storage. When a backup

needs to be restored, one might holler "Tape monkey!" (Compare

[13134]one-banana problem) Also used to dismiss jobs not worthy of a

highly trained sysadmin's ineffable talents: "Cable up her PC? You

must be joking - I'm no tape monkey."

Node:tar and feather, Next:[13135]tarball, Previous:[13136]tape

monkey, Up:[13137]= T =

tar and feather vi.

[from Unix tar(1)] To create a transportable archive from a group of

files by first sticking them together with tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver)

and then compressing the result (see [13138]compress). The latter

action is dubbed `feathering' partly for euphony and (if only for

contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with an airplane propeller

to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water

resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more

easily. Compare the more common [13139]tarball.

Node:tarball, Next:[13140]tardegy, Previous:[13141]tar and feather,

Up:[13142]= T =

tarball n.

[very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk

tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing

myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the whole

project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around

source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it seems

odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late 1990s.

Node:tardegy, Next:[13143]taste, Previous:[13144]tarball, Up:[13145]=

T =

tardegy

n. [deliberate mangling of `tragedy'] An incident in which someone who

clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool on grounds of

extreme stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on the Darwin list,

which is dedicated to chronicling such incidents; but almost all

hackers would instantly recognize the intention of the term and laugh.

Node:taste, Next:[13146]tayste, Previous:[13147]tardegy, Up:[13148]= T

=

taste [primarily MIT] n.

The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to

the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also

tasty',tasteful', `tastefulness'. "This feature comes in N tasty

flavors." Although tasty' andflavorful' are essentially synonyms,

`taste' and [13149]flavor are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on

the part of the creator; a program or feature can exhibit taste but

cannot have taste. On the other hand, a feature can have

[13150]flavor. Also, [13151]flavor has the additional meaning of

kind' orvariety' not shared by `taste'. The marked sense of

[13152]flavor is more popular than `taste', though both are widely

used. See also [13153]elegant. 2. Alt. sp. of [13154]tayste.

Node:tayste, Next:[13155]TCB, Previous:[13156]taste, Up:[13157]= T =

tayste /tayst/

n. Two bits; also as [13158]taste. Syn. [13159]crumb, [13160]quarter.

See [13161]nybble.

Node:TCB, Next:[13162]TCP/IP, Previous:[13163]tayste, Up:[13164]= T =

TCB /T-C-B/ n.

[IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce

problem that has failed to respond to neglect or [13165]shotgun

debugging. Compare [13166]heisenbug. Not to be confused with: 2.

Trusted Computing Base, an `official' jargon term from the

[13167]Orange Book.

Node:TCP/IP, Next:[13168]TechRef, Previous:[13169]TCB, Up:[13170]= T =

TCP/IP /T'C-P I'P/ n.

[Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The

wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the

only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or

retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as X.25,

DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by

actually