Chapter V: Rare: book (7)

Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation.
It is said of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence
research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D.
thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a
project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good
hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A
`gedanken thesis' is usually marked by an obvious lack of
intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about
what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an
algorithm. See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.

:geef: v. [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken'] vt. Syn. {mung}. See
also {blinkenlights}.

:geek out: vi. To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in a
non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer
equipment. Especially used when you need to do something highly
technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while I geek
out for a moment." See {computer geek}.

:gen: /jen/ n.,v. Short for {generate}, used frequently in both spoken
and written contexts.

:gender mender: n. A cable connector shell with either two male or two
female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches that result
when some {loser} didn't understand the RS232C specification and
the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used esp. for RS-232C
parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM PC's bogus D-9 format.
Also called `gender bender', `gender blender', `sex
changer', and even `homosexual adapter'; however, there appears
to be some confusion as to whether a `male homosexual adapter' has
pins on both sides (is male) or sockets on both sides (connects two
males).

:General Public Virus: n. Pejorative name for some versions of the
{GNU} project {copyleft} or General Public License (GPL), which
requires that any tools or {app}s incorporating copylefted code
must be source-distributed on the same counter-commercial terms as
GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft `infects' software
generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software
that reuses any of its code. The Free Software Foundation's
official position as of January 1991 is that copyright law limits
the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating
significant amounts of GNU code", and that the `infection' is not
passed on to third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted
(as in, for example, use of the Bison parser skeleton).
Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the {copyleft} language
is `boobytrapped' has caused many developers to avoid using GNU
tools and the GPL. Recent (July 1991) changes in the language of
the version 2.00 license may eliminate this problem.

:generate: vt. To produce something according to an algorithm or
program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side effect
of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite of
{parse}. This term retains its mechanistic connotations (though
often humorously) when used of human behavior. "The guy is
rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him
and he'll generate {infinite} flamage."

:gensym: /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol'] 1. v.
To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way that
the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already in
use. 2. n. The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym is
`Gnnnn' where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would
recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated
data structure with a gensymmed name. These are useful for storing
or uniquely identifying crufties (see {cruft}).

:Get a life!: imp. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person
to whom you are speaking has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see
{computer geek}). Often heard on {USENET}, esp. as a way of
suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of
{theology} too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by
William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that
ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to
have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among
hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream
currency around early 1992.

:Get a real computer!: imp. Typical hacker response to news that
somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that
(a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address
space smaller than 4 megabytes. This is as of mid-1991; note that
the threshold for `real computer' rises with time, and it may well
be (for example) that machines with character-only displays will be
generally considered `unreal' in a few years (GLS points out that
they already are in some circles). See {essentials}, {bitty
box}, and {toy}.

:GFR: /G-F-R/ vt. [ITS] From `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and Lisp
Machine utility. To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space
clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). Often
generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have
his phone number, but I guess I {GFR}ed it." See also
{prowler}, {reaper}. Compare {GC}, which discards only
provably worthless stuff.

:gig: /jig/ or /gig/ [SI] n. See {{quantifiers}}.

:giga-: /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ [SI] pref. See {{quantifiers}}.

:GIGO: /gi:'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' ---
usually said in response to {luser}s who complain that a program
didn't complain about faulty data. Also commonly used to describe
failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or
imprecise data. 2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent
expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have
to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.

:gilley: [USENET] n. The unit of analogical bogosity. According to
its originator, the standard for one gilley was "the act of
bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines for a
day with the killing of one person". The milligilley has been
found to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.

:gillion: /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ [formed from {giga-} by analogy
with mega/million and tera/trillion] n. 10^9. Same as an
American billion or a British `milliard'. How one pronounces
this depends on whether one speaks {giga-} with a hard or
soft `g'.

:GIPS: /gips/ or /jips/ [analogy with {MIPS}] n.
Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of
Instructions per Second'; see {gillion}). In 1991, this is used
of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected
to change. Compare {KIPS}.

:glark: /glark/ vt. To figure something out from context. "The
System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally glark the
meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was originally
`glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many
nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be
glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas
Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the
January 1981 `Scientific American'). It is conjectured that
hackish usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was
already an established jargon term. Compare {grok},
{zen}.

:glass: [IBM] n. Synonym for {silicon}.

:glass tty: /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ n. A terminal that
has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software
limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing
terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a
printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a
display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the
early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor
control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart
terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (appendix A) for an
interesting true story about a glass tty.

:glassfet: /glas'fet/ [by analogy with MOSFET, the acronym for
`Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor'] n. Syn.
{firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.

:glitch: /glich/ [from German `glitschen' to slip, via Yiddish
`glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. n. A sudden interruption in
electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}). This
is of grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers.
In jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say,
"Sorry, I just glitched". 2. vi. To commit a glitch. See
{gritch}. 3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp.
several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in
order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the
eye. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.

All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is
now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit
change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some
very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If
another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading
the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to
debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).

:glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand
special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing
(the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for
filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many
hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or
news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the
following:

*
wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})

?
wildcard for any character (generally read this way only at
the beginning or in the middle of a word)

[]
delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters

{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'

Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the
talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given
under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}.

Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the
name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne
versions of the UNIX shell.

:glork: /glork/ 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with
outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of
editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a
name for just about anything. See {foo}. 3. vt. Similar to
{glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked
itself." See also {glark}.

:glue: n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that
connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue
Glue} is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything
used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.

:gnarly: /nar'lee/ adj. Both {obscure} and {hairy} in the
sense of complex. "{Yow!} --- the tuned assembler
implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but
less specific usage in surfer slang.

:GNU: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not UNIX!',
see {{recursive acronym}}] A UNIX-workalike development effort of
the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<[email protected]>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools
designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom
and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize
for RMS's position that information is community property and all
software source should be shared. One of its slogans is "Help
stamp out software hoarding!" Though this remains controversial
(because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own,
assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who
disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large
amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the
Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See {EMACS},
{copyleft}, {General Public Virus}. 2. Noted UNIX hacker
John Gilmore <[email protected]>, founder of USENET's anarchic alt.*
hierarchy.

:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ [contraction of `GNU EMACS'] Often-heard
abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship tool, {EMACS}.
Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.

:go flatline: [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG
traces upon brain-death] vi., also adjectival `flatlined'. 1. To
{die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker
parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
UNIX but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a
video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

:go root: [UNIX] vi. To temporarily enter {root mode} in order
to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in
Australia, where v. `root' refers to animal sex.

:go-faster stripes: [UK] Syn. {chrome}.

:gobble: vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase `gobble up' tends to
imply `consume', while `gobble down' tends to imply `obtain'.
"The output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer."
"I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow."
See also {snarf}.

:Godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ n. [from Japan's national hero]
1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine
in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose
destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few
gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this! 2. A
network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has
65,536 octets.

:golden: adj. [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When used to
describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk', `golden tape'),
describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec, ready-to-ship
software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.

:golf-ball printer: n. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality
printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter.
The `golf ball' was a round object bearing reversed embossed
images of 88 different characters arranged on four meridians of
latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a different golf
ball. This was the technology that enabled APL to use a
non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard
character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it
stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character displays
gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to
support other character sets.

:gonk: /gonk/ vt.,n. 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the truth
beyond any reasonable recognition. It is alleged that in German
the term is (mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes
`gonkar'. "You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a
bunch of gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're
pulling my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some
sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.

:gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ [from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV
series] n. A pretentious piece of equipment that actually serves no
useful purpose. Usually used to describe one's least favorite
piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.

:gonzo: /gon'zoh/ [from Hunter S. Thompson] adj. Overwhelming;
outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of collections of
source code, source files, or individual functions. Has some of
the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but without the
implication of obscurity or complexity.

:Good Thing: n.,adj. Often capitalized; always pronounced as if
capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position
to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly
Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relaying
netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill
side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the
self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good
Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC
is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has
drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad
Thing}.

:gorilla arm: n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a
mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early
1980s. It seems the designers of all those {spiffy} touch-menu
systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their
arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than
a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and
oversized; hence `gorilla arm'. This is now considered a classic
cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla
arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in *real*
use?".

:gorp: /gorp/ [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good
Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another {metasyntactic variable}, like
{foo} and {bar}.

:GOSMACS: /goz'maks/ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS'] n. The first
{EMACS}-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by
{GNUMACS}. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now
modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author (James Gosling)
went on to invent {NeWS}.

:Gosperism: /gos'p*r-izm/ A hack, invention, or saying by
arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own
term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in
{HAKMEM} are Gosperisms; see also {life}.

:gotcha: n. A {misfeature} of a system, especially a programming
language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes
because it behaves in an unexpected way. For example, a classic
gotcha in {C} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}' is
syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the value
of `b' into `a' and then executes `code' if
`a' is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was
`if (a==b) {code;}', which executes `code' if
`a' and `b' are equal.

:GPL: /G-P-L/ n. Abbrev. for `General Public License' in
widespread use; see {copyleft}.

:GPV: /G-P-V/ n. Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in
widespread use.

:grault: /grawlt/ n. Yet another {metasyntactic variable}, invented by
Mike Gallaher and propagated by the {GOSMACS} documentation. See
{corge}.

:gray goo: n. A hypothetical substance composed of {sagan}s of
sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed to make copies
of themselves out of whatever is available. The image that goes
with the term is one of the entire biosphere of Earth being
eventually converted to robot goo. This is the simplest of the
{{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily refuted by arguments
from energy requirements and elemental abundances. Compare {blue
goo}.

:Great Renaming: n. The {flag day} on which all of the non-local
groups on the {USENET} had their names changed from the net.-
format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.

:Great Runes: n. Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some
archaic operating systems still emit these. See also {runes},
{smash case}, {fold case}.

Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of
long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the Teletype
Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code
lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been
decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER
or all lower. The question was, which one to choose. A study was
conducted on readability under various conditions of bad ribbon,
worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won; it is less dense and has
more distinctive letterforms, and is thus much easier to read both
under ideal conditions and when the letters are mangled or partly
obscured. The results were filtered up through {management}.
The chairman of Teletype killed the proposal because it failed one
incredibly important criterion:

"It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity
correctly."

In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition
triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on
most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for
corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s.
Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years.

:Great Worm, the: n. The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by
{RTM}. This is a play on Tolkien (compare {elvish},
{Elder Days}). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth
books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire
regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM
hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history;
certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.

:great-wall: [from SF fandom] vi.,n. A mass expedition to an
oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style
and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food
to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of N,
which is the number of people in the group, can be inferred from
context (see {N}). See {{oriental food}}, {ravs},
{stir-fried random}.

:Green Book: n. 1. One of the three standard {PostScript}
references: `PostScript Language Program Design', bylined
`Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN;
0-201-14396-8); see also {Red Book}, {Blue Book}, and the
{White Book} (sense 2)). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: `Smalltalk-80: Bits of
History, Words of Advice', by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983;
QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with
blue and red books). 3. The `X/Open Compatibility Guide'.
Defines an international standard {{UNIX}} environment that is a
proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a
standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the
like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in
Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating
Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book".
5. Any of the 1992 standards which will be issued by the CCITT's
tenth plenary assembly. Until now, these have changed color each
review cycle (1984 was {Red Book}, 1988 {Blue Book});
however, it is rumored that this convention is going to be dropped
before 1992. These include, among other things, the X.400 email
standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also
{{book titles}}.

:green bytes: n. (also `green words') 1. Meta-information
embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as
opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file
or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting
(ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were being debated and the
diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn
in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any
self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things,
green bytes describing the packing method for the image." Compare
{out-of-band}, {zigamorph}, {fence} (sense 1).

:green card: n. [after the `IBM System/360 Reference Data'
card] This is used for any summary of an assembly language, even if
the color is not green. Less frequently used now because of the
decrease in the use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green
card so I can check the addressing mode for that instruction."
Some green cards are actually booklets.

The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370
was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM
refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room
at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers ask
another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and
passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser
turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never
to return. See also {card}.

:green lightning: [IBM] n. 1. Apparently random flashing streaks on
the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is being
downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed, as
some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that
`something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later
microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually
*programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any
bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or
marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000
architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
lightning". See also {feature}.

:green machine: n. A computer or peripheral device that has been
designed and built to military specifications for field equipment
(that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature
and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab `uniform'
paint used for military equipment.

:Green's Theorem: [TMRC] prov. For any story, in any group of people
there will be at least one person who has not heard the story.
[The name of this theorem is a play on a fundamental theorem in
calculus. --- ESR]

:grep: /grep/ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p , where
re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the
Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it,
via {{UNIX}} `grep(1)'] vt. To rapidly scan a file or set of
files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing
through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping
around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep
the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?"
See also {vgrep}.

:grind: vt. 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To format code, especially LISP
code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
{prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [UNIX] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source. The BSD
program `vgrind(1)' grinds code for printing on a Versatec
bitmapped printer. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but
not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a
connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind
a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole
system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind grind'
excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"

:grind crank: n. A mythical accessory to a terminal. A crank on the
side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing noise and
causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not refer to a
grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate gesture and
noise. See {grind} and {wugga wugga}.

Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank --- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the
days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known
as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice
University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for
use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large
program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and
gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button.
This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow
down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of
interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and
then keep on cranking.

:gripenet: [IBM] n. A wry (and thoroughly unoffical) name for IBM's
internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by IBMers to
voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be taboo in
more formal channels.

:gritch: /grich/ 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a {glitch}).
2. vi. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A
synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).

:grok: /grok/, var. /grohk/ [from the novel `Stranger in
a Strange Land', by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word
meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one
with'] vt. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes
intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast {zen}, similar
supernal understanding as a single brief flash. See also
{glark}. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient
understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type
these days."

:gronk: /gronk/ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic strip
"B.C." but the word apparently predates that] vt. 1. To
clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
than `to {frob}'. 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash, or
similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette
drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go
"grink, gronk".

:gronk out: vi. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go
to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow."

:gronked: adj. 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so
we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition of feeling
very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing that bug
for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare
{broken}, which means about the same as {gronk} used of
hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in
people.

:grovel: vi. 1. To work interminably and without apparent progress.
Often used transitively with `over' or `through'. "The file
scavenger has been groveling through the file directories for 10
minutes now." Compare {grind} and {crunch}. Emphatic form:
`grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine minutely or in complete detail.
"The compiler grovels over the entire source program before
beginning to translate it." "I grovelled through all the
documentation, but I still couldn't find the command I wanted."

:grunge: /gruhnj/ n. 1. That which is grungy, or that which makes
it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to changes in
other parts of the program. The preferred term in North America is
{dead code}.

:gubbish: /guhb'*sh/ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and `rubbish'?]
n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The
opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported.

:guiltware: /gilt'weir/ n. 1. A piece of {freeware} decorated
with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on
it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not
immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money.
2. {Shareware} that works.

:gumby: /guhm'bee/ [from a class of Monty Python characters,
poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation character] n.
An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in `gumby
maneuver' or `pull a gumby'.

:gun: [ITS: from the `:GUN' command] vt. To forcibly
terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot
left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I
gunned it." Compare {can}.

:gunch: /guhnch/ [TMRC] vt. To push, prod, or poke at a device
that has almost produced the desired result. Implies a threat to
{mung}.

:gurfle: /ger'fl/ interj. An expression of shocked disbelief. "He
said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by next week.
Gurfle!" Compare {weeble}.

:guru: n. [UNIX] An expert. Implies not only {wizard} skill but
also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less
often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems,
as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}.

:guru meditation: n. Amiga equivalent of `panic' in UNIX
(sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the
system crashes, a cryptic message "GURU MEDITATION
#XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" appears, indicating what the problem was. An
Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Generally a
{guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the
Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was
basically a plastic board built onto on a joystick-like device; it
was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine.
It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system
programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a
solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep
the board in balance. This position resembled that of a
meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04.

:gweep: /gweep/ [WPI] 1. v. To {hack}, usually at night. At
WPI, from 1977 onwards, this often indicated that the speaker could
be found at the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing
the {PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20; the term has survived the
demise of those technologies, however, and is still live in late
1991. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you in the
morning" "I gweep from 8pm till 3am during the week." 2. n. One
who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a
hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep."

= H = =====

:h: [from SF fandom] infix. A method of `marking' common words,
i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a
nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish
catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago.
H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s
counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom
either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three
overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has
become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone,
Rhealstone, etc.); this is prob. patterning on the original
Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the
fannish/counterculture h infix.

:ha ha only serious: [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK,
`Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS)
that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied
especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both
intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of
truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody.
This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both
form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often
perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it
either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider,
a {wannabee}, or in {larval stage}. For further
enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also
{{Humor, Hacker}}, and {AI koans}.

:hack: 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what is needed,
but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very
time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed.
3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this
heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In an
immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO."
In a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?"
"I hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly
equivalent to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I
hack solid-state physics." 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See
sense 2 and {hacker} (sense 5). 6. vi. To interact with a
computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for
{hacker}. 8. See {nethack}. 9. [MIT] v. To explore
the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large,
institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and
(since this is usually performed at educational institutions) the
Campus Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar
to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and {Zork}.
See also {vadding}.

Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy hacking'
(a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting among
hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but friendly
comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more on this
totipotent term see "{The Meaning of `Hack'}". See
also {neat hack}, {real hack}.

:hack attack: [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads
for the McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack'
is reported] n. Nearly synonymous with {hacking run}, though the
latter more strongly implies an all-nighter.

:hack mode: n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course. 2. More
specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that
may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker
is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration at will
correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the most
important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes
amplified as `deep hack mode'.

Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be
experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in it
is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this
experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the
existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted
out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace}
(sense 2).

Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an
observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For
example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to
hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to
avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the
computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to
leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in
{hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense 2) in your
head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have
reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}.

:hack on: vt. To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
something one might {hack up}.

:hack together: vt. To throw something together so it will work.
Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does not
necessarily have negative connotations.

:hack up: vt. To {hack}, but generally implies that the result is
a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with {hack on}.
To `hack up on' implies a {quick-and-dirty} modification to an
existing system. Contrast {hacked up}; compare {kluge up},
{monkey up}, {cruft together}.

:hack value: n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for
expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being
that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had
features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were
installed purely for hack value. See {display hack} for one
method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be
explained. As a great artist once said of jazz: "If you hafta ask,
you ain't never goin' to find out."

:hack-and-slay: v. (also `hack-and-slash') 1. To play a {MUD}
or go mudding, especially with the intention of {berserking} for
pleasure. 2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking
session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace.
This term arose on the British academic network amongst students
who worked nights and logged onto Essex University's MUDs during
public-access hours (2 A.M. to 7 A.M.). Usually more
mudding than work was done in these sessions.

:hacked off: [analogous to `pissed off'] adj. Said of system
administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to
suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized
by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or
even overtly criminal activities. For example, having unreadable
files in your home directory called `worm', `lockpick', or `goroot'
would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and
stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.

:hacked up: adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the
surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare
{critical mass}). Not all programs that are hacked become
`hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to coherence
and continued maintainability, the software may emerge better for
the experience. Contrast {hack up}.

:hacker: [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n.
1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most
users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is
good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program,
or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIX
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who
fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One
might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the
intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing
limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to
discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password
hacker', `network hacker'. See {cracker}.

The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global
community defined by the net (see {network, the} and
{Internet address}). It also implies that the person described
is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see
{hacker ethic, the}.

It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe
oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an
elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new
members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego
satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if
you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled
{bogus}). See also {wannabee}.

:hacker ethic, the: n. 1. The belief that information-sharing
is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of
hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and
facilitating access to information and to computing resources
wherever possible. 2. The belief that system-cracking for fun
and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits
no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no
means universally) accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe
to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and
giving away free software. A few go further and assert that
*all* information should be free and *any* proprietary
control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the {GNU}
project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of
cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.
But this principle at least moderates the behavior of people who
see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also {samurai}). On
this view, it is one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy
to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop,
preferably by email from a {superuser} account, exactly how it
was done and how the hole can be plugged --- acting as an
unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger team}.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker
ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share
technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing
resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as
{USENET}, {Fidonet} and Internet (see {Internet address})
can function without central control because of this trait; they
both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be
hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.

:hacking run: [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed run'] n. A
hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially
one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change phase the hard
way' (see {phase}).

:Hacking X for Y: [ITS] n. The information ITS made publicly
available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in
which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these
fields were combined into a project description of the form
"Hacking X for Y" (e.g., `"Hacking perceptrons for
Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has
since been carried over to other systems with more general
facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX {plan file}s).

:Hackintosh: n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a
Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh assembled
from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.

:hackish: /hak'ish/ adj. (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said of
something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining to
hackers or the hacker subculture. See also {true-hacker}.

:hackishness: n. The quality of being or involving a hack. This
term is considered mildly silly. Syn. {hackitude}.

:hackitude: n. Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered sillier.

:hair: [back-formation from {hairy}] n. The complications that
make something hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires a
certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite
hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous'
(tending to promote hair growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers
to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous
all right." (or just: "Hair squared!")

:hairy: adj. 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is incredibly
hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is incredibly hairy."
3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or
incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows
this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." See
also {hirsute}.

The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in
slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it
was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very
likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun
`long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying
sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair
was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture,
leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.

:HAKMEM: /hak'mem/ n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A
legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks
contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the
memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks
memo'.) Some of them are very useful techniques, powerful
theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the
category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling
of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:

Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less
than 2^18.

Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most *probable* suit
distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,
which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the
world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying
things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state
of lowest disordered energy.

Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5
(that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25
such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same
number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that
differ only by rotation and reflection.

Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming
language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the
sum of powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1
with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the
result loops with period = 1 at -1, you are on a
twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater
than 1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement
machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, not
including the beginning, your machine isn't binary --- the pattern
should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you are on a
string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error,
some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine
independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine
dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more
precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =
...111111. Now add X to itself:
X + X = ...111110 Thus, 2X = X - 1, so
X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the
universe) that is two's-complement.

Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only
number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an
integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two
representations are identical.

Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when
processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed
out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the
text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out,
and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output
occurs in the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We
note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one
sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are
nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the
first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By
Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a
loop. An option to find overlapped instances would be useful,
although it would require backing up N - 1 characters before
seeking the next N-character string.

Note: This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press}
implementation. See also {banana problem}.

HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
technical items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor.

:hakspek: /hak'speek/ n. A shorthand method of spelling found on
many British academic bulletin boards and {talker system}s.
Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by single
ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically similar or
equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence,
`for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to' become `2'; `ck'
becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i c u
2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably
caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which
operated on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and
no standard methods of communication. Has become rarer since.
See also {talk mode}.

:hammer: vt. Commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}.

:hamster: n. 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece of
code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack. The
image is of a hamster happily spinning its exercise wheel. 2. A
tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a receiver on
the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable. 3. [UK] Any
item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for its cheap
plastic PC-almost-compatibles.

:hand-hacking: n. 1. The practice of translating {hot spot}s from
an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to
coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and
the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {bum}, {by
hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}. 2. More generally, manual
construction or patching of data sets that would normally be
generated by a translation utility and interpreted by another
program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified by
humans.

:handle: [from CB slang] n. An electronic pseudonym; a `nom de
guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity. Network and
BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous concealment
and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from which the term
was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of
{cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of
network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather
than invented legendry.

:hand-roll: [from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in
opposition to `ready-made', referring to cigarettes] v. To
perform a normally automated software installation or configuration
process {by hand}; implies that the normal process failed due to
bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional
in the local environment. "The worst thing about being a gateway
between four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail
configuration every time any of them upgrades."

:handshaking: n. Hardware or software activity designed to start or
keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they {do
protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker might
watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to indicate
that they have heard each others' points and say "Oh, they're
handshaking!". See also {protocol}.

:handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage magicians]
1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to
support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty
logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!"

If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or
"Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", it is
a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these
constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone
else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory behind
this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the
listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you
have said is {bogus}. Failing that, if a listener does object,
you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand.

The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands
up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting
at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the
handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position
while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In
context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker
makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave
your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than
words could express, that his logic is faulty.

:hang: v. 1. To wait for an event that will never occur. "The
system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed drive".
See {wedged}, {hung}. 2. To wait for some event to occur; to
hang around until something happens. "The program displays a menu
and then hangs until you type a character." Compare {block}.
3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in the construction `hang
off': "We're going to hang another tape drive off the file
server." Implies a device attached with cables, rather than
something that is strictly inside the machine's chassis.

:Hanlon's Razor: prov. A corollary of {Finagle's Law}, similar to
Occam's Razor, that reads "Never attribute to malice that which can
be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the
common title Hanlon's Razor is unknown; a similar epigram has been
attributed to William James. Quoted here because it seems to be a
particular favorite of hackers, often showing up in {fortune
cookie} files and the login banners of BBS systems and commercial
networks. This probably reflects the hacker's daily experience of
environments created by well-intentioned but short-sighted people.