Chapter V: Rare: book (13)

:ogg: /og/ /v./ [CMU] 1. In the multi-player space combat
game Netrek, to execute kamikaze attacks against enemy ships which
are carrying armies or occupying strategic positions. Named during
a game in which one of the players repeatedly used the tactic while
playing Orion ship G, showing up in the player list as "Og".
This trick has been roundly denounced by those who would return to
the good old days when the tactic of dogfighting was dominant, but
as Sun Tzu wrote, "What is of supreme importance in war is to
attack the enemy's strategy." However, the traditional answer to
the newbie question "What does ogg mean?" is just "Pick up some
armies and I'll show you." 2. In other games, to forcefully
attack an opponent with the expectation that the resources expended
will be renewed faster than the opponent will be able to regain his
previous advantage. Taken more seriously as a tactic since it has
gained a simple name. 3. To do anything forcefully, possibly
without consideration of the drain on future resources. "I guess
I'd better go ogg the problem set that's due tomorrow." "Whoops!
I looked down at the map for a sec and almost ogged that oncoming
car."

:old fart: /n./ Tribal elder. A title self-assumed with
remarkable frequency by (esp.) Usenetters who have been
programming for more than about 25 years; often appears in {sig
block}s attached to Jargon File contributions of great
archeological significance. This is a term of insult in the second
or third person but one of pride in first person.

:Old Testament: /n./ [C programmers] The first edition of
{K&R}, the sacred text describing {Classic C}.

:one-banana problem: /n./ At mainframe shops, where the
computers have operators for routine administrivia, the programmers
and hardware people tend to look down on the operators and claim
that a trained monkey could do their job. It is frequently
observed that the incentives that would be offered said monkeys can
be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A
one-banana problem is simple; hence, "It's only a one-banana job
at the most; what's taking them so long?"

At IBM, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and
three-banana problems. Other cultures have different hierarchies
and may divide them more finely; at ICL, for example, five grapes
(a bunch) equals a banana. Their upper limit for the in-house
{sysape}s is said to be two bananas and three grapes (another
source claims it's three bananas and one grape, but observes
"However, this is subject to local variations, cosmic rays and
ISO"). At a complication level any higher than that, one asks the
manufacturers to send someone around to check things.

See also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.

:one-line fix: /n./ Used (often sarcastically) of a change to a
program that is thought to be trivial or insignificant right up to
the moment it crashes the system. Usually `cured' by another
one-line fix. See also {I didn't change anything!}

:one-liner wars: /n./ A game popular among hackers who code in
the language APL (see {write-only language} and {line
noise}). The objective is to see who can code the most interesting
and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's
exceedingly {hairy} primitive set. A similar amusement was
practiced among {TECO} hackers and is now popular among
{Perl} aficionados.

Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, has been credited with a
one-liner that, given a number N, produces a list of the
prime numbers from 1 to N inclusive. It looks like this:

(2 = 0 +.= T o.| T) / T <- iN

where `o' is the APL null character, the assignment arrow is a
single character, and `i' represents the APL iota.

:ooblick: /oo'blik/ /n./ [from the Dr. Seuss title
"Bartholomew and the Oobleck"; the spelling `oobleck' is still
current in the mainstream] A bizarre semi-liquid sludge made from
cornstarch and water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches
during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely
non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but resists rapid
motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer.
Often found near lasers.

Here is a field-tested ooblick recipe contributed by GLS:

1 cup cornstarch 1 cup baking soda 3/4 cup water N drops of food coloring

This recipe isn't quite as non-Newtonian as a pure cornstarch
ooblick, but has an appropriately slimy feel.

Some, however, insist that the notion of an ooblick *recipe*
is far too mechanical, and that it is best to add the water in
small increments so that the various mixed states the cornstarch
goes through as it *becomes* ooblick can be grokked in
fullness by many hands. For optional ingredients of this
experience, see the "{Ceremonial Chemicals}" section of
Appendix B.

:op: /op/ /n./ 1. In England and Ireland, common verbal
abbreviation for `operator', as in system operator. Less common in
the U.S., where {sysop} seems to be preferred. 2. [IRC] Someone
who is endowed with privileges on {IRC}, not limited to a
particular channel. These are generally people who are in charge
of the IRC server at their particular site. Sometimes used
interchangeably with {CHOP}. Compare {sysop}.

:open: /n./ Abbreviation for `open (or left) parenthesis' ---
used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the
LISP form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open defun
foo, open eks close, open, plus eks one, close close."

:Open DeathTrap: /n./ Abusive hackerism for the Santa Cruz
Operation's `Open DeskTop' product, a Motif-based graphical
interface over their Unix. The funniest part is that this was
coined by SCO's own developers.... Compare {AIDX},
{Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor}, {ScumOS},
{sun-stools}, {HP-SUX}.

:open switch: /n./ [IBM: prob. from railroading] An
unresolved question, issue, or problem.

:operating system:: /n./ [techspeak] (Often abbreviated `OS')
The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which
schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default
interface to the user between applications. The facilities an
operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert
an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the
technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker
folklore has been shaped primarily by the {{Unix}}, {{ITS}},
{{TOPS-10}}, {{TOPS-20}}/{{TWENEX}}, {{WAITS}}, {{CP/M}},
{{MS-DOS}}, and {{Multics}} operating systems (most importantly
by ITS and Unix).

:optical diff: /n./ See {vdiff}.

:optical grep: /n./ See {vgrep}.

:optimism: /n./ What a programmer is full of after fixing the
last bug and before discovering the *next* last bug. Fred
Brooks's book "The Mythical Man-Month" (See "Brooks's
Law") contains the following paragraph that describes this
extremely well:

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery
especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy
godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive
away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps
it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection
process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will
surely run," or "I just found the last bug.".

See also {Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology}.

:Orange Book: /n./ The U.S. Government's standards document
"Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD standard
5200.28-STD, December, 1985" which characterize secure computing
architectures and defines levels A1 (most secure) through D
(least). Stock Unixes are roughly C1, and can be upgraded to about
C2 without excessive pain. See also {{crayola books}}, {{book
titles}}.

:oriental food:: /n./ Hackers display an intense tropism
towards oriental cuisine, especially Chinese, and especially of the
spicier varieties such as Szechuan and Hunan. This phenomenon
(which has also been observed in subcultures that overlap heavily
with hackerdom, most notably science-fiction fandom) has never been
satisfactorily explained, but is sufficiently intense that one can
assume the target of a hackish dinner expedition to be the best
local Chinese place and be right at least three times out of four.
See also {ravs}, {great-wall}, {stir-fried random},
{laser chicken}, {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. Thai, Indian,
Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines are also quite popular.

:orphan: /n./ [Unix] A process whose parent has died; one
inherited by `init(1)'. Compare {zombie}.

:orphaned i-node: /or'f*nd i:'nohd/ /n./ [Unix]
1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in
the directories of a filesystem. 2. By extension, a pejorative for
any person no longer serving a useful function within some
organization, esp. {lion food} without subordinates.

:orthogonal: /adj./ [from mathematics] Mutually independent;
well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization
of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or
capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire
`capability space' of the system and are in some sense
non-overlapping or mutually independent. For example, in
architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all
registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to
any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal. Or, in
logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal, but
the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any one of
these can be expressed in terms of the others). Also used in
comments on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the
discussion, but...."

:OS: /O-S/ 1. [Operating System] /n./ An abbreviation heavily
used in email, occasionally in speech. 2. /n. obs./ On ITS, an
output spy. See "{OS and JEDGAR}" in Appendix A.

:OS/2: /O S too/ /n./ The anointed successor to MS-DOS for
Intel 286- and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't
get it right the second time, either. Often called `Half-an-OS'.
Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers ---
the design was so {baroque}, and the implementation of 1.x so
bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the
major {app}s shipping for it on the fingers of two hands -- in
unary. The 2.x versions are said to have improved somewhat, and
informed hackers now rate them superior to Microsoft Windows (an
endorsement which, however, could easily be construed as damning
with faint praise). See {monstrosity}, {cretinous},
{second-system effect}.

:OSU: /O-S-U/ /n. obs./ [TMRC] Acronym for Officially
Sanctioned User; a user who is recognized as such by the computer
authorities and allowed to use the computer above the objections of
the security monitor.

:OTOH: // [USENET] On The Other Hand.

:out-of-band: /adj./ [from telecommunications and network
theory] 1. In software, describes values of a function which are
not in its `natural' range of return values, but are rather
signals that some kind of exception has occurred. Many C
functions, for example, return a nonnegative integral value, but
indicate failure with an out-of-band return value of -1.
Compare {hidden flag}, {green bytes}, {fence}. 2. Also
sometimes used to describe what communications people call
`shift characters', such as the ESC that leads control sequences
for many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit
Baudot codes. 3. In personal communication, using methods other
than email, such as telephones or {snail-mail}.

:overflow bit: /n./ 1. [techspeak] A {flag} on some
processors indicating an attempt to calculate a result too large
for a register to hold. 2. More generally, an indication of any
kind of capacity overload condition. "Well, the {{Ada}}
description was {baroque} all right, but I could hack it OK
until they got to the exception handling ... that set my
overflow bit." 3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a
hacker doesn't get to make a trip to the Room of Porcelain
Fixtures: "I'd better process an internal interrupt before the
overflow bit gets set".

:overflow pdl: /n./ [MIT] The place where you put things when
your {pdl} is full. If you don't have one and too many things
get pushed, you forget something. The overflow pdl for a person's
memory might be a memo pad. This usage inspired the following
doggerel:

Hey, diddle, diddle
The overflow pdl
To get a little more stack;
If that's not enough
Then you lose it all,
And have to pop all the way back.
--The Great Quux

The term {pdl} seems to be primarily an MITism; outside MIT this
term is replaced by `overflow {stack}'.

:overrun: /n./ 1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence
of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial
line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost
exactly one character per millisecond, so if a {silo} can hold
only two characters and the machine takes longer than 2 msec to get
to service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost.
2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot to
pay my electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got four
phone calls in 3 minutes last night and lost your message to
overrun." When {thrash}ing at tasks, the next person to make a
request might be told "Overrun!" Compare {firehose syndrome}.
3. More loosely, may refer to a {buffer overflow} not
necessarily related to processing time (as in {overrun screw}).

:overrun screw: /n./ [C programming] A variety of {fandango
on core} produced by scribbling past the end of an array (C
implementations typically have no checks for this error). This is
relatively benign and easy to spot if the array is static; if it is
auto, the result may be to {smash the stack} -- often resulting
in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical subtlety. The term
`overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of
arrays allocated with `malloc(3)'; this typically trashes the
allocation header for the next block in the {arena}, producing
massive lossage within malloc and often a core dump on the next
operation to use `stdio(3)' or `malloc(3)' itself. See
{spam}, {overrun}; see also {memory leak}, {memory
smash}, {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage}, {fandango on
core}, {secondary damage}.

= P = =====

:P-mail: /n./ Physical mail, as opposed to {email}.
Synonymous with {snail-mail}, but much less common.

:P.O.D.: /P-O-D/ Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed
to a code section). Usage: pedantic and rare. See also {pod}.

:padded cell: /n./ Where you put {luser}s so they can't hurt
anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted
subset of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the
`rsh(1)' utility on USG Unix). Note that this is different
from an {iron box} because it is overt and not aimed at
enforcing security so much as protecting others (and the luser)
from the consequences of the luser's boundless naivete (see
{naive}). Also `padded cell environment'.

:page in: /v./ [MIT] 1. To become aware of one's surroundings
again after having paged out (see {page out}). Usually confined
to the sarcastic comment: "Eric pages in, {film at 11}!"
2. Syn. `swap in'; see {swap}.

:page out: /vi./ [MIT] 1. To become unaware of one's
surroundings temporarily, due to daydreaming or preoccupation.
"Can you repeat that? I paged out for a minute." See {page
in}. Compare {glitch}, {thinko}. 2. Syn. `swap out'; see
{swap}.

:pain in the net: /n./ A {flamer}.

:Pangloss parity: /n./ [from Dr. Pangloss, the eternal optimist
in Voltaire's "Candide"] In corporate DP shops, a common
condition of severe but equally shared {lossage} resulting from
the theory that as long as everyone in the organization has the
exactly the *same* model of obsolete computer, everything will
be fine.

:paper-net: /n./ Hackish way of referring to the postal
service, analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network.
Usenet {sig block}s sometimes include a "Paper-Net:" header
just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this
are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note that the standard
{netiquette} guidelines discourage this practice as a waste of
bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to casually use postal
addresses. Compare {voice-net}, {snail-mail}, {P-mail}.

:param: /p*-ram'/ /n./ Shorthand for `parameter'. See
also {parm}; compare {arg}, {var}.

:PARC: /n./ See {XEROX PARC}.

:parent message: /n./ What a {followup} follows up.

:parity errors: /pl.n./ Little lapses of attention or (in more
severe cases) consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all
night and most of the next day hacking. "I need to go home and
crash; I'm starting to get a lot of parity errors." Derives from
a relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error
in RAM hardware. Parity errors can also afflict mass storage and
serial communication lines; this is more serious because not always
correctable.

:Parkinson's Law of Data: /prov./ "Data expands to fill the
space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the
use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over
the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends
to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory
density available for constant dollars also tends to double about
once every 12 months (see {Moore's Law}); unfortunately, the
laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue
indefinitely.

:parm: /parm/ /n./ Further-compressed form of {param}.
This term is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown
outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is more widely distributed, but
the synonym {arg} is favored among hackers. Compare {arg},
{var}.

:parse: [from linguistic terminology] /vt./ 1. To determine the
syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the
standard English meaning). "That was the one I saw you." "I
can't parse that." 2. More generally, to understand or
comprehend. "It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then
aos the zotz." "I can't parse that." 3. Of fish, to have to
remove the bones yourself. "I object to parsing fish", means "I
don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay". A
`parsed fish' has been deboned. There is some controversy over
whether `unparsed' should mean `bony', or also mean
`deboned'.

:Pascal:: /n./ An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus
Wirth on the CDC 6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for
elementary programming. This language, designed primarily to keep
students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely
restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of view, was
later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the
ancestor of a large family of languages including Modula-2 and
{{Ada}} (see also {bondage-and-discipline language}). The
hackish point of view on Pascal was probably best summed up by a
devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper
by Brian Kernighan (of {K&R} fame) entitled "Why Pascal is
Not My Favorite Programming Language", which was turned down by the
technical journals but circulated widely via photocopies. It was
eventually published in "Comparing and Assessing Programming
Languages", edited by Alan Feuer and Narain Gehani (Prentice-Hall,
1984). Part of his discussion is worth repeating here, because its
criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself after ten years of
improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many other
bondage-and-discipline languages. At the end of a summary of the
case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:

9. There is no escape

This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape
its limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking
when necessary. There is no way to replace the defective
run-time environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the
compiler that defines the "standard procedures". The language is
closed.

People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal
trap. Because the language is impotent, it must be extended.
But each group extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it
look like whatever language they really want. Extensions for
separate compilation, FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types,
internal static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit
operators, etc., all add to the utility of the language for one
group but destroy its portability to others.

I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much
beyond its original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy
language, suitable for teaching but not for real programming.

Pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by {C}) from the
niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems
programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist language in
the MS-DOS and Macintosh worlds.

:pastie: /pay'stee/ /n./ An adhesive-backed label designed to
be attached to a key on a keyboard to indicate some non-standard
character which can be accessed through that key. Pasties are
likely to be used in APL environments, where almost every key is
associated with a special character. A pastie on the R key, for
example, might remind the user that it is used to generate the
rho character. The term properly refers to
nipple-concealing devices formerly worn by strippers in concession
to indecent-exposure laws; compare {tits on a keyboard}.

:patch: 1. /n./ A temporary addition to a piece of code,
usually as a {quick-and-dirty} remedy to an existing bug or
misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not
eventually be incorporated permanently into the program.
Distinguished from a {diff} or {mod} by the fact that a patch
is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program;
the classical examples are instructions modified by using the front
panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary executable
of a program originally written in an {HLL}. Compare
{one-line fix}. 2. /vt./ To insert a patch into a piece of code.
3. [in the Unix world] /n./ A {diff} (sense 2). 4. A set of
modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. IBM
operating systems often receive updates to the operating system in
the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. If you have modified
your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the source. The
patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them
(patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was often
a convoluted {patch space} and headaches galore. 5. [Unix] the
`patch(1)' program, written by Larry Wall, which automatically
applies a patch (sense 3) to a set of source code.

There is a classic story of a {tiger team} penetrating a secure
military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary
patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't -- or don't ---
inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any
{trap door}s or any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so
they made a site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were
official military types who were purportedly on official business),
swiped some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch
was actually the trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed
at about the right time for an IBM patch, had official stationery
and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed.
The installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something
about proper procedures.

:patch space: /n./ An unused block of bits left in a binary so
that it can later be modified by insertion of machine-language
instructions there (typically, the patch space is modified to
contain new code, and the superseded code is patched to contain a
jump or call to the patch space). The widening use of HLLs has
made this term rare; it is now primarily historical outside IBM
shops. See {patch} (sense 4), {zap} (sense 4), {hook}.

:path: /n./ 1. A {bang path} or explicitly routed
{{Internet address}}; a node-by-node specification of a link
between two machines. 2. [Unix] A filename, fully specified
relative to the root directory (as opposed to relative to the
current directory; the latter is sometimes called a `relative
path'). This is also called a `pathname'. 3. [Unix and MS-DOS]
The `search path', an environment variable specifying the
directories in which the {shell} (COMMAND.COM, under MS-DOS)
should look for commands. Other, similar constructs abound under
Unix (for example, the C preprocessor has a `search path' it
uses in looking for `#include' files).

:pathological: /adj./ 1. [scientific computation] Used of a
data set that is grossly atypical of normal expected input, esp.
one that exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is
using. An algorithm that can be broken by pathological inputs may
still be useful if such inputs are very unlikely to occur in
practice. 2. When used of test input, implies that it was
purposefully engineered as a worst case. The implication in both
senses is that the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that
someone had to explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order
to come up with such a crazy example. 3. Also said of an unlikely
collection of circumstances. "If the network is down and comes up
halfway through the execution of that command by root, the system
may just crash." "Yes, but that's a pathological case." Often
used to dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that
the consequences are acceptable, since they will happen so
infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem worth going to the
extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).

:payware: /pay'weir/ /n./ Commercial software. Oppose
{shareware} or {freeware}.

:PBD: /P-B-D/ /n./ [abbrev. of `Programmer Brain Damage']
Applied to bug reports revealing places where the program was
obviously broken by an incompetent or short-sighted programmer.
Compare {UBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.

:PC-ism: /P-C-izm/ /n./ A piece of code or coding technique
that takes advantage of the unprotected single-tasking environment
in IBM PCs and the like, e.g., by busy-waiting on a hardware
register, direct diddling of screen memory, or using hard timing
loops. Compare {ill-behaved}, {vaxism}, {unixism}. Also,
`PC-ware' n., a program full of PC-isms on a machine with a more
capable operating system. Pejorative.

:PD: /P-D/ /adj./ Common abbreviation for `public domain',
applied to software distributed over {Usenet} and from Internet
archive sites. Much of this software is not in fact public domain
in the legal sense but travels under various copyrights granting
reproduction and use rights to anyone who can {snarf} a copy.
See {copyleft}.

:PDL: /P-D-L/, /pid'l/, /p*d'l/ or /puhd'l/
1. /n./ `Program Design Language'. Any of a large class of formal
and profoundly useless pseudo-languages in which {management}
forces one to design programs. Too often, management expects PDL
descriptions to be maintained in parallel with the code, imposing
massive overhead to little or no benefit. See also {{flowchart}}.
2. /v./ To design using a program design language. "I've been
pdling so long my eyes won't focus beyond 2 feet." 3. /n./ `Page
Description Language'. Refers to any language which is used to
control a graphics device, usually a laserprinter. The most common
example is, of course, Adobe's {{PostScript}} language, but there
are many others, such as Xerox InterPress, etc.

:pdl: /pid'l/ or /puhd'l/ /n./ [abbreviation for `Push Down
List'] 1. In ITS days, the preferred MITism for {stack}. See
{overflow pdl}. 2. Dave Lebling, one of the co-authors of
{Zork}; (his {network address} on the ITS machines was at one
time pdl@dms). 3. Rarely, any sense of {PDL}, as these are not
invariably capitalized.

:PDP-10: /n./ [Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine
that made timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore
because of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university
computing facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab,
Stanford, and CMU. Some aspects of the instruction set (most
notably the bit-field instructions) are still considered
unsurpassed. The 10 was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines
(descendants of the PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX
product lines were competing with each other and decided to
concentrate its software development effort on the more profitable
VAX. The machine was finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983,
following the failure of the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a
viable new model. (Some attempts by other companies to market
clones came to nothing; see {Foonly} and {Mars}.) This event
spelled the doom of {{ITS}} and the technical cultures that had
spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become
something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to
have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10. See {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}},
{AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {DPB}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM},
{JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop}, {push}.

:PDP-20: /n./ The most famous computer that never was.
{PDP-10} computers running the {{TOPS-10}} operating system
were labeled `DECsystem-10' as a way of differentiating them from
the PDP-11. Later on, those systems running {TOPS-20} were labeled
`DECSYSTEM-20' (the block capitals being the result of a lawsuit
brought against DEC by Singer, which once made a computer called
`system-10'), but contrary to popular lore there was never a
`PDP-20'; the only difference between a 10 and a 20 was the
operating system and the color of the paint. Most (but not all)
machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted `Basil Blue', whereas
most TOPS-20 machines were painted `Chinese Red' (often mistakenly
called orange).

:peek: /n.,vt./ (and {poke}) The commands in most
microcomputer BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an
absolute address; often extended to mean the corresponding
constructs in any {HLL} (peek reads memory, poke modifies it).
Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros consists of `peek'ing
around memory, more or less at random, to find the location where
the system keeps interesting stuff. Long (and variably accurate)
lists of such addresses for various computers circulate (see
{{interrupt list, the}}). The results of `poke's at these
addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat,
or (most likely) total {lossage} (see {killer poke}).

Since a {real operating system} provides useful, higher-level
services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on
micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory
groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is
diagnostic of the {newbie}. (Of course, OS kernels often have to
do exactly this; a real C hacker would unhesitatingly, if
unportably, assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and
indirect through it.)

:pencil and paper: /n./ An archaic information storage and
transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on
bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based
technology include improved `write-once' update devices which use
tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit colored
pigment. All these devices require an operator skilled at
so-called `handwriting' technique. These technologies are
ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most
hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of
keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps
for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and
often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.

:peon: /n./ A person with no special ({root} or {wheel})
privileges on a computer system. "I can't create an account on
*foovax* for you; I'm only a peon there."

: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
{random}.

:perf: /perf/ /n./ Syn. {chad} (sense 1). The term
`perfory' /per'f*-ree/ is also heard. The term {perf} may
also refer to the perforations themselves, rather than the chad
they produce when torn (philatelists use it this way).

: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
{toy problem}s). "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 {root
mode}."

:Perl: /perl/ /n./ [Practical Extraction and Report Language,
a.k.a. Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted
language developed by Larry Wall (<[email protected]>, author
of `patch(1)' and `rn(1)') and distributed over Usenet.
Superficially resembles {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, increasingly consider it one of
the {languages of choice}. Perl has been described, in a parody
of a famous remark about `lex(1)', as the "Swiss-Army
chainsaw" of Unix programming. See also {Camel Book}.

:person of no account: /n./ [University of California at Santa
Cruz] Used when referring to a person with no {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 [email protected]". Compare {return from the
dead}.

: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.

:pessimizing compiler: /pes'*-mi:z`ing k*m-pi:l'r/ /n./ A
compiler that produces object [antonym of `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.

:peta-: /pe't*/ pref [SI] See {{quantifiers}}.

:PETSCII: /pet'skee/ /n. obs./ [abbreviation of PET ASCII] The
variation (many would say perversion) of the {{ASCII}} character
set used by the Commodore Business Machines PET series of personal
computers and the later Commodore C64, C16, and C128 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.

:phage: /n./ A program that modifies other programs or
databases in unauthorized ways; esp. one that propagates a
{virus} or {Trojan horse}. See also {worm},
{mockingbird}. The analogy, of course, is with phage viruses in
biology.

:phase: 1. /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 {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 term `day 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
{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.

: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 {heisenbug}.

True story: Once upon a time there was a 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 {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.

:phase-wrapping: /n./ [MIT] Syn. {wrap around}, sense 2.

:phreaker: /freek'r/ /n./ One who engages in
{phreaking}.

:phreaking: /freek'ing/ /n./ [from `phone phreak'] 1. The
art and science of {cracking} the phone network (so as, for
example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension,
security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not
exclusively, on communications networks) (see {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.

:pico-: /pref./ [SI: a quantifier
meaning * 10^-12]
Smaller than {nano-}; used in the same rather loose
connotative way as {nano-} and {micro-}. This usage is not yet
common in the way {nano-} and {micro-} are, but should be
instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also {{quantifiers}},
{micro-}.

:pig, run like a: /v./ To run very slowly on given hardware,
said of software. Distinct from {hog}.

:pilot error: /n./ [Sun: from aviation] A user's
misconfiguration or misuse of a piece of software, producing
apparently buglike results (compare {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."

: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
Unix command `ping(8)' can be used to do this manually (note
that `ping(8)''s author denies the widespread folk etymology
that the name was ever intended as acronym `Packet INternet
Groper'). Occasionally used as a phone greeting. See {ACK},
also {ENQ}. 2. /vt./ To verify the presence of. 3. /vt./ To get
the attention of. 4. /vt./ To send a message to all members of a
{mailing list} requesting an {ACK} (in order to verify that
everybody's addresses are reachable). "We haven't heard much of
anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK both times I
pinged jargon-friends." 5. /n./ A quantum packet of happiness.
People who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one can
intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party (e.g., a
depressed person). This sense of ping may appear as an
exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting a quantum of
happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of happiness). The form
"pingfulness", which is used to describe people who exude pings,
also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language, "pingfulness"
can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's a much
stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose {blargh}.

The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by
Steve Hayman on the Usenet group comp.sys.next. He was trying
to isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to
a NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console
after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting
through. So he used the sound-recording feature on the NeXT, then
wrote a script that repeatedly invoked `ping(8)', listened for
an echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet.
Result? A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and
over, "Ping ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the
network was up. He turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through
the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector
in no time.

:Pink-Shirt Book: "The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide
to the IBM PC". The original cover featured a picture of Peter
Norton with a silly smirk on his face, wearing a pink shirt.
Perhaps in recognition of this usage, the current edition has a
different picture of Norton wearing a pink shirt. See also
{{book titles}}.

:PIP: /pip/ vt.,obs. [Peripheral Interchange Program] To
copy; from the program PIP on CP/M, RSX-11, RSTS/E, TOPS-10, and
OS/8 (derived from a utility on the PDP-6) that was used for file
copying (and in OS/8 and RT-11 for just about every other file
operation you might want to do). It is said that when the program
was originated, during the development of the PDP-6 in 1963, it was
called ATLATL (`Anything, Lord, to Anything, Lord'; this played on
the Nahuatl word `atlatl' for a spear-thrower, with connotations
of utility and primitivity that were no doubt quite intentional).
See also {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}.

:pistol: /n./ [IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to
shoot yourself in the foot. "Unix `rm *' makes such a nice
pistol!"

:pixel sort: /n./ [Commodore users] Any compression routine
which irretrievably loses valuable data in the process of
{crunch}ing it. Disparagingly used for `lossy' methods such as
JPEG. The theory, of course, is that these methods are only used on
photographic images in which minor loss-of-data is not visible to
the human eye. The term `pixel sort' implies distrust of this
theory. Compare {bogo-sort}.

:pizza box: /n./ [Sun] The largish thin box housing the electronics
in (especially Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its
size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.

Two meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called
pizzas, and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to as
a pizza oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days just
the disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is.

:pizza, ANSI standard: /an'see stan'd*rd peet'z*/ [CMU]
Pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Coined allegedly because most pizzas
ordered by CMU hackers during some period leading up to mid-1990
were of that flavor. See also {rotary debugger}; compare
{tea, ISO standard cup of}.

:plaid screen: /n./ [XEROX PARC] A `special effect' that
occurs when certain kinds of {memory smash}es overwrite the
control blocks or image memory of a bit-mapped display. The term
"salt and pepper" may refer to a different pattern of similar
origin. Though the term as coined at PARC refers to the result of
an error, some of the {X} demos induce plaid-screen effects
deliberately as a {display hack}.

:plain-ASCII: /playn-as'kee/ Syn. {flat-ASCII}.

:plan file: /n./ [Unix] On systems that support {finger}, the
`.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user
is fingered. This feature was originally intended to be used to
keep potential fingerers apprised of one's location and near-future
plans, but has been turned almost universally to humorous and
self-expressive purposes (like a {sig block}). See also
{Hacking X for Y}.

A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of
"scrolling plan files" which are one-dimensional animations made
using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and
line feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the
{finger} command will (for security reasons; see
{letterbomb}) not pass the escape character.

Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and some
sites have started competitions to find who can create the longest
running, funniest, and most original animations. Various animation
characters include:

Centipede:
mmmmme
Lorry/Truck:
oo-oP
Andalusian Video Snail:
_@/

and a compiler (ASP) is available on Usenet for producing them.
See also {twirling baton}.

:platinum-iridium: /adj./ Standard, against which all others of
the same category are measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that
one of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium
alloy and placed in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. (From
1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance between two
scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that same vault ---
this replaced an earlier definition as 10^(-7) times the
distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian
through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact
value of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was
defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of
krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the
length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time
interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the
only unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique
artifact.) "This garbage-collection algorithm has been tested
against the platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare
{golden}.

:playpen: /n./ [IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare {salt
mines}.

:playte: /playt/ 16 bits, by analogy with {nybble} and
{{byte}}. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also {dynner}
and {crumb}. General discussion of such terms is under
{nybble}.

:plingnet: /pling'net/ /n./ Syn. {UUCPNET}. Also see
{{Commonwealth Hackish}}, which uses `pling' for {bang} (as
in {bang path}).

:plokta: /plok't*/ /v./ [acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To
Abort] To press random keys in an attempt to get some response
from the system. One might plokta when the abort procedure for a
program is not known, or when trying to figure out if the system is
just sluggish or really hung. Plokta can also be used while trying
to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation.
Someone going into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat
on the keyboard and mashes them down, hoping for some useful
response.

A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in mail
messages or Usenet articles from new users -- the text might end
with

^X^C
q
quit
:q
^C
end
x
exit
ZZ
^D
?
help

as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the
incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message....

:plonk: /excl.,vt./ [Usenet: possibly influenced by British
slang `plonk' for cheap booze, or `plonker' for someone
behaving stupidly (latter is lit. equivalent to Yiddish
`schmuck')] The sound a {newbie} makes as he falls to the
bottom of a {kill file}. While it originated in the
{newsgroup} talk.bizarre, this term (usually written
"*plonk*") is now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public
ridicule.

:plugh: /ploogh/ /v./ [from the {ADVENT} game] See
{xyzzy}.

:plumbing: /n./ [Unix] Term used for {shell} code, so called
because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of
one program to the input of another. Under Unix, user utilities
can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable
collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a
shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time,
and the capability is considered one of Unix's major winning
features. A few other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS support similar
facilities. Esp. used in the construction `hairy plumbing'
(see {hairy}). "You can kluge together a basic spell-checker
out of `sort(1)', `comm(1)', and `tr(1)' with a
little plumbing." See also {tee}.

:PM: /P-M/ 1. /v./ (from `preventive maintenance') To
bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes. See
{provocative maintenance}; see also {scratch monkey}.
2. /n./ Abbrev. for `Presentation Manager', an {elephantine} OS/2
graphical user interface.

:pnambic: /p*-nam'bik/ [Acronym from the scene in the film
version of "The Wizard of Oz" in which the true nature of the
wizard is first discovered: "Pay no attention to the man behind
the curtain."] 1. A stage of development of a process or function
that, owing to incomplete implementation or to the complexity of
the system, requires human interaction to simulate or replace some
or all of the actions, inputs, or outputs of the process or
function. 2. Of or pertaining to a process or function whose
apparent operations are wholly or partially falsified.
3. Requiring {prestidigitization}.

The ultimate pnambic product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a program
which supported flashy user-interface design prototyping. There is
a related maxim among hackers: "Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." See
{magic}, sense 1, for illumination of this point.

:pod: /n./ [allegedly from abbreviation POD for `Prince Of
Darkness'] A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact
printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted
text to it. Not to be confused with {P.O.D.}.

:point-and-drool interface: /n./ Parody of the techspeak term
`point-and-shoot interface', describing a windows, icons, and
mouse-based interface such as is found on the Macintosh. The
implication, of course, is that such an interface is only suitable
for idiots. See {for the rest of us}, {WIMP environment},
{Macintrash}, {drool-proof paper}. Also `point-and-grunt
interface'.

:poke: /n.,vt./ See {peek}.

:poll: /v.,n./ 1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status
of an input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular
external event has been registered. 2. To repeatedly call or check
with someone: "I keep polling him, but he's not answering his
phone; he must be swapped out." 3. To ask. "Lunch? I poll for
a takeout order daily."

:polygon pusher: /n./ A chip designer who spends most of his or
her time at the physical layout level (which requires drawing
*lots* of multi-colored polygons). Also `rectangle
slinger'.

:POM: /P-O-M/ /n./ Common abbreviation for {phase of the
moon}. Usage: usually in the phrase `POM-dependent', which means
{flaky}.

:pop: /pop/ [from the operation that removes the top of a
stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are usually
saved on the stack] (also capitalized `POP') 1. /vt./ To remove
something from a {stack} or {pdl}. If a person says he/she
has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally
finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of
things hanging overhead. 2. When a discussion gets to a level of
detail so deep that the main point of the discussion is being lost,
someone will shout "Pop!", meaning "Get back up to a higher
level!" The shout is frequently accompanied by an upthrust arm
with a finger pointing to the ceiling.

:POPJ: /pop'J/ /n.,v./ [from a {PDP-10}
return-from-subroutine instruction] To return from a digression.
By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see,
where were we?" See {RTI}.

:poser: /n./ A {wannabee}; not hacker slang, but used among
crackers, phreaks and {warez d00dz}. Not as negative as
{lamer} or {leech}. Probably derives from a similar usage
among punk-rockers and metalheads, putting down those who "talk
the talk but don't walk the walk".

:post: /v./ To send a message to a {mailing list} or
{newsgroup}. Distinguished in context from `mail'; one might
ask, for example: "Are you going to post the patch or mail it to
known users?"

:postcardware: /n./ A kind of {shareware} that borders on
{freeware}, in that the author requests only that satisfied
users send a postcard of their home town or something. (This
practice, silly as it might seem, serves to remind users that they
are otherwise getting something for nothing, and may also be
psychologically related to real estate `sales' in which $1
changes hands just to keep the transaction from being a gift.)

:posting: /n./ Noun corresp. to v. {post} (but note that
{post} can be nouned). Distinguished from a `letter' or
ordinary {email} message by the fact that it is broadcast rather
than point-to-point. It is not clear whether messages sent to a
small mailing list are postings or email; perhaps the best dividing
line is that if you don't know the names of all the potential
recipients, it is a posting.

:postmaster: /n./ The email contact and maintenance person at a
site connected to the Internet or UUCPNET. Often, but not always,
the same as the {admin}. The Internet standard for electronic
mail ({RFC}-822) requires each machine to have a `postmaster'
address; usually it is aliased to this person.

:PostScript:: /n./ A Page Description Language ({PDL}),
based on work originally done by John Gaffney at Evans and
Sutherland in 1976, evolving through `JaM' (`John and Martin',
Martin Newell) at {XEROX PARC}, and finally implemented in its
current form by John Warnock et al. after he and Chuck Geschke
founded Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1982. PostScript gets its
leverage by using a full programming language, rather than a series
of low-level escape sequences, to describe an image to be printed
on a laser printer or other output device (in this it parallels
{EMACS}, which exploited a similar insight about editing tasks).
It is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly rasterization,
from Bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality fonts at low (e.g.
300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that hand-tuned
bitmap fonts were required for this task). Hackers consider
PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time, and the
combination of technical merits and widespread availability has
made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output.

:pound on: /vt./ Syn. {bang on}.