Chapter V: Rare: book (15)

:rococo: /adj./ Terminally {baroque}. Used to imply that a
program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of
gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the
underlying design. Called after the later and more extreme forms
of Baroque architecture and decoration prevalent during the
mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis said: "Every program eventually
becomes rococo, and then rubble." Compare {critical mass}.

:rogue: /n./ [Unix] A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character
graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other
Unix systems. The original BSD `curses(3)' screen-handling
package was hacked together by Ken Arnold to support
`rogue(6)' and has since become one of Unix's most important
and heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, and
an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games all took off from the
inspiration provided by `rogue(6)'. See also {nethack}.

:room-temperature IQ: /quant./ [IBM] 80 or below (nominal room
temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, 22 degrees Celsius). Used in
describing the expected intelligence range of the {luser}.
"Well, but how's this interface going to play with the
room-temperature IQ crowd?" See {drool-proof paper}. This is
a much more insulting phrase in countries that use Celsius
thermometers.

:root: /n./ [Unix] 1. The {superuser} account (with user
name `root') that ignores permission bits, user number 0 on a
Unix system. The term {avatar} is also used. 2. The top node
of the system directory structure; historically the home directory
of the root user, but probably named after the root of an
(inverted) tree. 3. By extension, the privileged
system-maintenance login on any OS. See {root mode}, {go
root}, see also {wheel}.

:root mode: /n./ Syn. with {wizard mode} or `wheel mode'.
Like these, it is often generalized to describe privileged states
in systems other than OSes.

:rot13: /rot ther'teen/ /n.,v./ [Usenet: from `rotate
alphabet 13 places'] The simple Caesar-cypher encryption that
replaces each English letter with the one 13 places forward or back
along the alphabet, so that "The butler did it!" becomes "Gur
ohgyre qvq vg!" Most Usenet news reading and posting programs
include a rot13 feature. It is used to enclose the text in a
sealed wrapper that the reader must choose to open -- e.g., for
posting things that might offend some readers, or {spoiler}s. A
major advantage of rot13 over rot(N) for other N is
that it is self-inverse, so the same code can be used for encoding
and decoding.

:rotary debugger: /n./ [Commodore] Essential equipment for
those late-night or early-morning debugging sessions. Mainly used
as sustenance for the hacker. Comes in many decorator colors, such
as Sausage, Pepperoni, and Garbage. See {pizza, ANSI standard}.

:round tape: /n./ Industry-standard 1/2-inch magnetic tape (7-
or 9-track) on traditional circular reels. See {macrotape},
oppose {square tape}.

:RSN: /R-S-N/ /adj./ See {Real Soon Now}.

:RTBM: /R-T-B-M/ /imp./ [Unix] Commonwealth Hackish variant
of {RTFM}; expands to `Read The Bloody Manual'. RTBM is often
the entire text of the first reply to a question from a
{newbie}; the *second* would escalate to "RTFM".

:RTFAQ: /R-T-F-A-Q/ /imp./ [Usenet: primarily written, by
analogy with {RTFM}] Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an
exhortation that the person addressed ought to read the newsgroup's
{FAQ list} before posting questions.

:RTFB: /R-T-F-B/ /imp./ [Unix] Acronym for `Read The Fucking
Binary'. Used when neither documentation nor source for the
problem at hand exists, and the only thing to do is use some
debugger or monitor and directly analyze the assembler or even the
machine code. "No source for the buggy port driver? Aaargh! I
*hate* proprietary operating systems. Time to RTFB."

Of the various RTF? forms, `RTFB' is the least pejorative against
anyone asking a question for which RTFB is the answer; the anger
here is directed at the absence of both source *and* adequate
documentation.

:RTFM: /R-T-F-M/ /imp./ [Unix] Acronym for `Read The Fucking
Manual'. 1. Used by {guru}s to brush off questions they
consider trivial or annoying. Compare {Don't do that, then!}.
2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just
asking out of {randomness}. "No, I can't figure out how to
interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike
sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also {FM},
{RTFAQ}, {RTFB}, {RTFS}, {RTM}, all of which mutated
from RTFM, and compare {UTSL}.

:RTFS: /R-T-F-S/ [Unix] 1. /imp./ Acronym for `Read The
Fucking Source'. Variant form of {RTFM}, used when the problem
at hand is not necessarily obvious and not answerable from the
manuals -- or the manuals are not yet written and maybe never will
be. For even trickier situations, see {RTFB}. Unlike RTFM, the
anger inherent in RTFS is not usually directed at the person asking
the question, but rather at the people who failed to provide
adequate documentation. 2. /imp./ `Read The Fucking Standard';
this
oath can only be used when the problem area (e.g., a language or
operating system interface) has actually been codified in a
ratified standards document. The existence of these standards
documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically
mandated compromises that they inevitably contain, and the
impenetrable {legalese} in which they are invariably written,
and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are
produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain
amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use.
(Hackers feel that such ambiguities are acceptable as long as the
{Right Thing} to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly,
this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when
a system becomes popular in the {Real World}.) Since a hacker
is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and
technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be
directed as much against the standard as against the person who
ought to read it.

:RTI: /R-T-I/ /interj./ The mnemonic for the `return from
interrupt' instruction on many computers including the 6502 and
6800. The variant `RETI' is found among former Z80 hackers
(almost nobody programs these things in assembler anymore).
Equivalent to "Now, where was I?" or used to end a
conversational digression. See {pop}; see also {POPJ}.

:RTM: /R-T-M/ [Usenet: abbreviation for `Read The Manual']
1. Politer variant of {RTFM}. 2. Robert T. Morris,
perpetrator of the great Internet worm of 1988 (see {Great Worm,
the}); villain to many, naive hacker gone wrong to a few. Morris
claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its knees was a
benign experiment that got out of control as the result of a coding
error. After the storm of negative publicity that followed this
blunder, Morris's username on ITS was hacked from RTM to
{RTFM}.

:RTS: /R-T-S/ /imp./ Acronym for `Read The Screen'. Mainly
used by hackers in the microcomputer world. Refers to what one
would like to tell the {suit} one is forced to explain an
extremely simple application to. Particularly appropriate when the
suit failed to notice the `Press any key to continue' prompt, and
wishes to know `why won't it do anything'. Also seen as `RTFS' in
especially deserving cases.

:rude: [WPI] /adj./ 1. (of a program) Badly written.
2. Functionally poor, e.g., a program that is very difficult to use
because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. Oppose
{cuspy}. 3. Anything that manipulates a shared resource without
regard for its other users in such a way as to cause a (non-fatal)
problem. Examples: programs that change tty modes without
resetting them on exit, or windowing programs that keep forcing
themselves to the top of the window stack. Compare
{all-elbows}.

:runes: /pl.n./ 1. Anything that requires {heavy wizardry}
or {black art} to {parse}: core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or
code in a language you haven't a clue how to read. Not quite as
bad as {line noise}, but close. Compare {casting the runes},
{Great Runes}. 2. Special display characters (for example, the
high-half graphics on an IBM PC). 3. [borderline techspeak]
16-bit characters from the Unicode multilingual character set.

:runic: /adj./ Syn. {obscure}. VMS fans sometimes refer to
Unix as `Runix'; Unix fans return the compliment by expanding VMS
to `Very Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais Syst`eme' (French
idiom, "Hugely Bad System").

:rusty iron: /n./ Syn. {tired iron}. It has been claimed
that this is the inevitable fate of {water MIPS}.

:rusty memory: /n./ Mass-storage that uses iron-oxide-based
magnetic media (esp. tape and the pre-Winchester removable disk
packs used in {washing machine}s). Compare {donuts}.

:rusty wire: /n./ [Amateur Packet Radio] Any very noisy network
medium, in which the packets are subject to frequent corruption.
Most prevalent in reference to wireless links subject to all the
vagaries of RF noise and marginal propagation conditions. "Yes,
but how good is your whizbang new protocol on really rusty
wire?".

= S = =====

:S/N ratio: // /n./ (also `s/n ratio', `s:n ratio').
Syn. {signal-to-noise ratio}. Often abbreviated `SNR'.

:sacred: /adj./ Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an
extension of the standard meaning). Often means that anyone may
look at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it
is sacred to. The comment "Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt
handler" appearing in a program would be interpreted by a hacker
to mean that if any *other* part of the program changes the
contents of register 7, dire consequences are likely to ensue.

:saga: /n./ [WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N
random broken people.

Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L.
Steele:

Jon L. White (login name JONL) and I (GLS) were office mates at
MIT for many years. One April, we both flew from Boston to
California for a week on research business, to consult
face-to-face with some people at Stanford, particularly our
mutual friend Richard P. Gabriel (RPG; see {gabriel}).

RPG picked us up at the San Francisco airport and drove us back
to Palo Alto (going {logical} south on route 101, parallel to {El
Camino Bignum}). Palo Alto is adjacent to Stanford University
and about 40 miles south of San Francisco. We ate at The Good
Earth, a `health food' restaurant, very popular, the sort whose
milkshakes all contain honey and protein powder. JONL ordered
such a shake -- the waitress claimed the flavor of the day was
"lalaberry". I still have no idea what that might be, but it
became a running joke. It was the color of raspberry, and JONL
said it tasted rather bitter. I ate a better tostada there than
I have ever had in a Mexican restaurant.

After this we went to the local Uncle Gaylord's Old Fashioned Ice
Cream Parlor. They make ice cream fresh daily, in a variety of
intriguing flavors. It's a chain, and they have a slogan: "If
you don't live near an Uncle Gaylord's -- MOVE!" Also, Uncle
Gaylord (a real person) wages a constant battle to force big-name
ice cream makers to print their ingredients on the package (like
air and plastic and other non-natural garbage). JONL and I had
first discovered Uncle Gaylord's the previous August, when we had
flown to a computer-science conference in Berkeley, California,
the first time either of us had been on the West Coast. When not
in the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the
length of Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in
Cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and
interesting little shops. On that street we discovered Uncle
Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very good.
During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to
speak) over one particular flavor, ginger honey.

Therefore, after eating at The Good Earth -- indeed, after every
lunch and dinner and before bed during our April visit -- a trip
to Uncle Gaylord's (the one in Palo Alto) was mandatory. We had
arrived on a Wednesday, and by Thursday evening we had been there
at least four times. Each time, JONL would get ginger honey ice
cream, and proclaim to all bystanders that "Ginger was the spice
that drove the Europeans mad! That's why they sought a route to
the East! They used it to preserve their otherwise off-taste
meat." After the third or fourth repetition RPG and I were
getting a little tired of this spiel, and began to paraphrase
him: "Wow! Ginger! The spice that makes rotten meat taste
good!" "Say! Why don't we find some dog that's been run over
and sat in the sun for a week and put some *ginger* on it for
dinner?!" "Right! With a lalaberry shake!" And so on. This
failed to faze JONL; he took it in good humor, as long as we kept
returning to Uncle Gaylord's. He loves ginger honey ice cream.

Now RPG and his then-wife KBT (Kathy Tracy) were putting us up
(putting up with us?) in their home for our visit, so to thank them
JONL and I took them out to a nice French restaurant of their
choosing. I unadventurously chose the filet mignon, and KBT had
je ne sais quoi du jour, but RPG and JONL had lapin
(rabbit). (Waitress: "Oui, we have fresh rabbit, fresh
today." RPG: "Well, JONL, I guess we won't need any
*ginger*!")

We finished the meal late, about 11 P.M., which is 2 A.M Boston
time, so JONL and I were rather droopy. But it wasn't yet
midnight. Off to Uncle Gaylord's!

Now the French restaurant was in Redwood City, north of Palo
Alto. In leaving Redwood City, we somehow got onto route 101
going north instead of south. JONL and I wouldn't have known the
difference had RPG not mentioned it. We still knew very little
of the local geography. I did figure out, however, that we were
headed in the direction of Berkeley, and half-jokingly suggested
that we continue north and go to Uncle Gaylord's in Berkeley.

RPG said "Fine!" and we drove on for a while and talked. I was
drowsy, and JONL actually dropped off to sleep for 5 minutes.
When he awoke, RPG said, "Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the
way over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning San
Francisco Bay. Just then we came to a sign that said "University
Avenue". I mumbled something about working our way over to
Telegraph Avenue; RPG said "Right!" and maneuvered some more.
Eventually we pulled up in front of an Uncle Gaylord's.

Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so
sleepy, and I didn't really understand what was happening until
RPG let me in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert
enough to notice that we had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle
Gaylord's after all.

JONL noticed the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but hadn't
caught on. (The place is lit with red and yellow lights at
night, and looks much different from the way it does in
daylight.) He said, "This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to in
Berkeley! It looked like a barn! But this place looks *just
like* the one back in Palo Alto!"

RPG deadpanned, "Well, this is the one *I* always come to when
I'm in Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too.
Remember, they're a chain."

JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally ignorant
--- he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in Berkeley,
not far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was that
there is a completely different University Avenue in Palo Alto.

JONL went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. The guy
at the counter asked whether JONL would like to taste it first,
evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as not too
many people like it.

JONL said, "I'm sure I like it. Just give me a cone." The guy
behind the counter insisted that JONL try just a taste first.
"Some people think it tastes like soap." JONL insisted, "Look, I
*love* ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots. I
already went through this hassle with the guy back in Palo Alto.
I *know* I like that flavor!"

At the words "back in Palo Alto" the guy behind the counter got a
very strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught his
eye and winked. Through my stupor I still hadn't quite grasped
what was going on, and thought RPG was rolling on the floor
laughing and clutching his stomach just because JONL had launched
into his spiel ("makes rotten meat a dish for princes") for the
forty-third time. At this point, RPG clued me in fully.

RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our
chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream
with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream
shops and generally having a good old time.

At length the g.b.t.c. said, "How's the ginger honey?" JONL
said, "Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it?" Now Uncle Gaylord
publishes all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make
his ice cream at home. So the g.b.t.c. got out the recipe, and
he and JONL pored over it for a while. But the g.b.t.c. could
contain his curiosity no longer, and asked again, "You really
like that stuff, huh?" JONL said, "Yeah, I've been eating it
constantly back in Palo Alto for the past two days. In fact, I
think this batch is about as good as the cones I got back in Palo
Alto!"

G.b.t.c. looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're
*in* Palo Alto!"

JONL turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a
fit of giggles. He clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed,
"I've been hacked!"

[My spies on the West Coast inform me that there is a close
relative of the raspberry found out there called an `ollalieberry'
--ESR]

[Ironic footnote: it appears that the {meme} about ginger vs.
rotting meat may be an urban legend. It's not borne out by an
examination of medieval recipes or period purchase records for
spices, and appears full-blown in the works of Samuel Pegge, a
gourmand and notorious flake case who originated numerous food
myths. --ESR]

:sagan: /say'gn/ /n./ [from Carl Sagan's TV series
"Cosmos"; think "billions and billions"] A large quantity
of anything. "There's a sagan different ways to tweak EMACS."
"The U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and welfare -- hard
to say which is more destructive."

:SAIL:: /sayl/, not /S-A-I-L/ /n./ 1. The Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in the early
development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, XEROX PARC, and
the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings of technical
innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the {{WAITS}} entry
for details). The SAIL machines were shut down in late May 1990,
scant weeks after the MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster was officially
decommissioned. 2. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language
used at SAIL (sense 1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with a
coroutining facility and some new data types intended for building
search trees and association lists.

:salescritter: /sayls'kri`tr/ /n./ Pejorative hackerism for a
computer salesperson. Hackers tell the following joke:

Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a
computer salesman?
A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying. [Some versions add:
...and probably knows how to drive.]

This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are
self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the
inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms
`salesthing' and `salesdroid' are also common. Compare
{marketroid}, {suit}, {droid}.

:salt: /n./ A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too
much regularity would be undesirable; a data {frob} (sense 1).
For example, the Unix crypt(3) man page mentions that "the salt
string is used to perturb the DES algorithm in one of 4096
different ways."

:salt mines: /n./ Dense quarters housing large numbers of
programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope
of seeing the end of the tunnel in N years. Noted for their
absence of sunshine. Compare {playpen}, {sandbox}.

:salt substrate: /n./ [MIT] Collective noun used to refer to
potato chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food
designed primarily as a carrier for sodium chloride. Also
`sodium substrate'. From the technical term `chip substrate',
used to refer to the silicon on the top of which the active parts
of integrated circuits are deposited.

:same-day service: /n./ Ironic term used to describe long
response time, particularly with respect to {{MS-DOS}} system
calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to
execute). Such response time is a major incentive for programmers
to write programs that are not {well-behaved}. See also
{PC-ism}.

:samizdat: /sahm-iz-daht/ /n./ [Russian, literally "self
publishing"] The process of disseminating documentation via
underground channels. Originally referred to underground
duplication and distribution of banned books in the Soviet Union;
now refers by obvious extension to any less-than-official
promulgation of textual material, esp. rare, obsolete, or
never-formally-published computer documentation. Samizdat is
obviously much easier when one has access to high-bandwidth
networks and high-quality laser printers. Note that samizdat is
properly used only with respect to documents which contain needed
information (see also {hacker ethic}) but which are for
some reason otherwise unavailable, but *not* in the context of
documents which are available through normal channels, for which
unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation.
See {Lions Book} for a historical example.

:samurai: /n./ A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs,
snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers
pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other
parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith.
In 1991, mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit
culture of samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly
bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves
explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the "net
cowboys" of William Gibson's {cyberpunk} novels. Those
interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their
employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by
criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic;
some quote Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic
of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles.
See also {sneaker}, {Stupids}, {social engineering},
{cracker}, {hacker ethic}, and {dark-side hacker}.

:sandbender: /n./ [IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and
the physical design of chips. Compare {ironmonger}, {polygon
pusher}.

:sandbox: /n./ 1. (also `sandbox, the') Common term for the R&D
department at many software and computer companies (where hackers
in commercial environments are likely to be found). Half-derisive,
but reflects the truth that research is a form of creative play.
Compare {playpen}. 2. Syn. {link farm}.

:sanity check: /n./ 1. The act of checking a piece of code (or
anything else, e.g., a Usenet posting) for completely stupid
mistakes. Implies that the check is to make sure the author was
sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of scientific software
relied on a particular formula and was giving unexpected results,
one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding of
the formula, as a `sanity check', before looking at the more
complex I/O or data structure manipulation routines, much less the
algorithm itself. Compare {reality check}. 2. A run-time test,
either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't screwed
up internally (producing an inconsistent value or state).

:Saturday-night special: /n./ [from police slang for a cheap
handgun] A {quick-and-dirty} program or feature kluged together
during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure
from a {salescritter}. Such hacks are dangerously unreliable,
but all too often sneak into a production release after
insufficient review.

:say: /vt./ 1. To type to a terminal. "To list a directory
verbosely, you have to say `ls -l'." Tends to imply a
{newline}-terminated command (a `sentence'). 2. A computer
may also be said to `say' things to you, even if it doesn't have
a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a terminal in response
to your commands. Hackers find it odd that this usage confuses
{mundane}s.

:scag: /vt./ To destroy the data on a disk, either by
corrupting the
filesystem or by causing media damage. "That last power hit scagged
the system disk." Compare {scrog}, {roach}.

:scanno: /skan'oh/ /n./ An error in a document caused by a
scanner glitch, analogous to a typo or {thinko}.

:schroedinbug: /shroh'din-buhg/ /n./ [MIT: from the
Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in quantum physics] A design
or implementation bug in a program that doesn't manifest until
someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way
notices that it never should have worked, at which point the
program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though
(like {bit rot}) this sounds impossible, it happens; some
programs have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years. Compare
{heisenbug}, {Bohr bug}, {mandelbug}.

:science-fiction fandom:: /n./ Another voluntary subculture
having a very heavy overlap with hackerdom; most hackers read SF
and/or fantasy fiction avidly, and many go to `cons' (SF
conventions) or are involved in fandom-connected activities such as
the Society for Creative Anachronism. Some hacker jargon
originated in SF fandom; see {defenestration}, {great-wall},
{cyberpunk}, {h}, {ha ha only serious}, {IMHO},
{mundane}, {neep-neep}, {Real Soon Now}. Additionally,
the jargon terms {cowboy}, {cyberspace}, {de-rezz}, {go
flatline}, {ice}, {phage}, {virus}, {wetware},
{wirehead}, and {worm} originated in SF stories.

:scram switch: /n./ [from the nuclear power industry] An
emergency-power-off switch (see {Big Red Switch}), esp. one
positioned to be easily hit by evacuating personnel. In general,
this is *not* something you {frob} lightly; these often
initiate expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed
in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in
case some luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts across
himself while {Easter egging}. (See also {molly-guard},
{TMRC}.)

:scratch: 1. [from `scratchpad'] /adj./ Describes a data
structure or recording medium attached to a machine for testing or
temporary-use purposes; one that can be {scribble}d on without
loss. Usually in the combining forms `scratch memory',
`scratch register', `scratch disk', `scratch tape',
`scratch volume'. See also {scratch monkey}. 2. [primarily
IBM] /vt./ To delete (as in a file).

:scratch monkey: /n./ As in "Before testing or reconfiguring,
always mount a {scratch monkey}", a proverb used to advise
caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to
refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky
operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that
might otherwise get trashed.

This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder
Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of
Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey;
the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing
through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas
mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one
day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's
VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was
wired to Mabel.

It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate
customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC
troubleshooter called up the {field circus} manager responsible
and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?"

Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of
the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of
certain clueless {droid}s at the local `humane' society. The moral
is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey.

[The actual incident occured in 1979 or 1980. There is a version of
this story, complete with reported dialogue between one of the
project people and DEC field service, that has been circulating on
Internet since 1986. It is hilarious and mythic, but gets some
facts wrong. For example, it reports the machine as a PDP-11 and
alleges that Mabel's demise occurred when DEC {PM}ed the
machine. Earlier versions of this entry were based on that story;
this one has been corrected from an interview with the hapless
sysop. --ESR]

:scream and die: /v./ Syn. {cough and die}, but connotes
that an error message was printed or displayed before the program
crashed.

:screaming tty: /n./ [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite
number of random characters at the operating system. This can
happen if the terminal is either disconnected or connected to a
powered-off terminal but still enabled for login; misconfiguration,
misimplementation, or simple bad luck can start such a terminal
screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously degrade the
performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving "characters"
are treated as userid/password pairs and tested as such. The Unix
password encryption algorithm is designed to be computationally
intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks, so although
none of the logins succeeds; the overhead of rejecting them all can
be substantial.

:screw: /n./ [MIT] A {lose}, usually in software.
Especially used for user-visible misbehavior caused by a bug or
misfeature. This use has become quite widespread outside MIT.

:screwage: /skroo'*j/ /n./ Like {lossage} but connotes
that the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a
simple inadequacy or a mere bug.

:scribble: /n./ To modify a data structure in a random and
unintentionally destructive way. "Bletch! Somebody's
disk-compactor program went berserk and scribbled on the i-node
table." "It was working fine until one of the allocation
routines scribbled on low core." Synonymous with {trash};
compare {mung}, which conveys a bit more intention, and
{mangle}, which is more violent and final.

:scrog: /skrog/ /vt./ [Bell Labs] To damage, trash, or
corrupt a data structure. "The list header got scrogged." Also
reported as `skrog', and ascribed to the comic strip "The
Wizard of Id". Compare {scag}; possibly the two are related.
Equivalent to {scribble} or {mangle}.

:scrool: /skrool/ /n./ [from the pioneering Roundtable chat
system in Houston ca. 1984; prob. originated as a typo for
`scroll'] The log of old messages, available for later perusal or
to help one get back in synch with the conversation. It was
originally called the `scrool monster', because an early version
of the roundtable software had a bug where it would dump all 8K of
scrool on a user's terminal.

:scrozzle: /skroz'l/ /vt./ Used when a self-modifying code
segment runs incorrectly and corrupts the running program or vital
data. "The damn compiler scrozzled itself again!"

:scruffies: /n./ See {neats vs. scruffies}.

:SCSI: /n./ [Small Computer System Interface] A bus-independent
standard for system-level interfacing between a computer and
intelligent devices. Typically annotated in literature with
`sexy' (/sek'see/), `sissy' (/sis'ee/), and `scuzzy'
(/skuh'zee/) as pronunciation guides -- the last being the
overwhelmingly predominant form, much to the dismay of the
designers and their marketing people. One can usually assume that
a person who pronounces it /S-C-S-I/ is clueless.

:ScumOS: /skuhm'os/ or /skuhm'O-S/ /n./ Unflattering
hackerism for SunOS, the BSD Unix variant supported on Sun
Microsystems's Unix workstations (see also {sun-stools}), and
compare {AIDX}, {Macintrash}, {Nominal Semidestructor},
{Open DeathTrap}, {HP-SUX}. Despite what this term might
suggest, Sun was founded by hackers and still enjoys excellent
relations with hackerdom; usage is more often in exasperation than
outright loathing.

:search-and-destroy mode: /n./ Hackerism for a noninteractive
search-and-replace facility in an editor, so called because an
incautiously chosen match pattern can cause {infinite} damage.

:second-system effect: /n./ (sometimes, more euphoniously,
`second-system syndrome') When one is designing the successor to
a relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a
tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an
{elephantine} feature-laden monstrosity. The term was first
used by Fred Brooks in his classic "The Mythical Man-Month:
Essays on Software Engineering" (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN
0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice, simple
operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360
series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system;
see {Brooks's Law}, {creeping elegance}, {creeping
featurism}. See also {{Multics}}, {OS/2}, {X}, {software
bloat}.

This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of
second-system effect run amok on jargon-1....

:secondary damage: /n./ When a fatal error occurs (esp. a
{segfault}) the immediate cause may be that a pointer has been
trashed due to a previous {fandango on core}. However, this
fandango may have been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no
amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred.
"The data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary
damage."

By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded
fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least
one case on record in which 17 hours of {grovel}ling with
`adb' actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of
seventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished this
near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows.

:security through obscurity: (alt. `security by obscurity')
A term applied by hackers to most OS vendors' favorite way of
coping with security holes -- namely, ignoring them, documenting
neither any known holes nor the underlying security algorithms,
trusting that nobody will find out about them and that people who
do find out about them won't exploit them. This "strategy" never
works for long and occasionally sets the world up for debacles like
the {RTM} worm of 1988 (see {Great Worm, the}), but once the
brief moments of panic created by such events subside most vendors
are all too willing to turn over and go back to sleep. After all,
actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed to
implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list
-- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers
might begin to *expect* it and imagine that their warranties
of merchantability gave them some sort of *right* to a system
with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese, and
*then* where would we be?

Historical note: There are conflicting stories about the origin of
this term. It has been claimed that it was first used in the
Usenet newsgroup in comp.sys.apollo during a campaign to get
HP/Apollo to fix security problems in its Unix-{clone}
Aegis/DomainOS (they didn't change a thing). {ITS} fans, on the
other hand, say it was coined years earlier in opposition to the
incredibly paranoid {Multics} people down the hall, for whom
security was everything. In the ITS culture it referred to (1) the
fact that by the time a tourist figured out how to make
trouble he'd generally gotten over the urge to make it, because he
felt part of the community; and (2) (self-mockingly) the poor
coverage of the documentation and obscurity of many commands. One
instance of *deliberate* security through obscurity is
recorded; the command to allow patching the running ITS system
({altmode} altmode control-R) echoed as $$^D. If you actually
typed alt alt ^D, that set a flag that would prevent patching the
system even if you later got it right.

:SED: /S-E-D/ /n./ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode']
Smoke-emitting diode. A {friode} that lost the war. See also
{LER}.

:segfault: /n.,vi./ Syn. {segment}, {segmentation fault}.

:seggie: /seg'ee/ /n./ [Unix] Shorthand for
{segmentation fault} reported from Britain.

:segment: /seg'ment/ /vi./ To experience a {segmentation
fault}. Confusingly, this is often pronounced more like the noun
`segment' than like mainstream /v./ segment; this is because it is
actually a noun shorthand that has been verbed.

:segmentation fault: /n./ [Unix] 1. An error in which a running
program attempts to access memory not allocated to it and {core
dump}s with a segmentation violation error. 2. To lose a train of
thought or a line of reasoning. Also uttered as an exclamation at
the point of befuddlement.

:segv: /seg'vee/ /n.,vi./ Yet another synonym for
{segmentation fault} (actually, in this case, `segmentation
violation').

:self-reference: /n./ See {self-reference}.

:selvage: /sel'v*j/ /n./ [from sewing and weaving] See
{chad} (sense 1).

:semi: /se'mee/ or /se'mi:/ 1. /n./ Abbreviation for
`semicolon', when speaking. "Commands to {grind} are
prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is `;;*',
not 1/4 of a star. 2. A prefix used with words such as
`immediately' as a qualifier. "When is the system coming up?"
"Semi-immediately." (That is, maybe not for an hour.) "We did
consider that possibility semi-seriously." See also
{infinite}.

:semi-infinite: /n./ See {infinite}.

:senior bit: /n./ [IBM] Syn. {meta bit}.

:server: /n./ A kind of {daemon} that performs a service for
the requester and which often runs on a computer other than the one
on which the server runs. A particularly common term on the
Internet, which is rife with `web servers', `name servers',
`domain servers', `news servers', `finger servers', and the
like.

:SEX: /seks/ [Sun Users' Group & elsewhere] /n./ 1. Software
EXchange. A technique invented by the blue-green algae hundreds of
millions of years ago to speed up their evolution, which had been
terribly slow up until then. Today, SEX parties are popular among
hackers and others (of course, these are no longer limited to
exchanges of genetic software). In general, SEX parties are a
{Good Thing}, but unprotected SEX can propagate a {virus}.
See also {pubic directory}. 2. The rather Freudian mnemonic
often used for Sign EXtend, a machine instruction found in the
PDP-11 and many other architectures. The RCA 1802 chip used in the
early Elf and SuperElf personal computers had a `SEt X register'
SEX instruction, but this seems to have had little folkloric
impact.

DEC's engineers nearly got a PDP-11 assembler that used the
`SEX' mnemonic out the door at one time, but (for once)
marketing wasn't asleep and forced a change. That wasn't the last
time this happened, either. The author of "The Intel 8086
Primer", who was one of the original designers of the 8086, noted
that there was originally a `SEX' instruction on that
processor, too. He says that Intel management got cold feet and
decreed that it be changed, and thus the instruction was renamed
`CBW' and `CWD' (depending on what was being extended).
Amusingly, the Intel 8048 (the microcontroller used in IBM PC
keyboards) is also missing straight `SEX' but has logical-or
and logical-and instructions `ORL' and `ANL'.

The Motorola 6809, used in the U.K.'s `Dragon 32' personal
computer, actually had an official `SEX' instruction; the 6502
in the Apple II with which it competed did not. British hackers
thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it was commonly
observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a
dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.

:sex changer: /n./ Syn. {gender mender}.

:shambolic link: /sham-bol'ik link/ /n./ A Unix symbolic
link, particularly when it confuses you, points to nothing at all,
or results in your ending up in some completely unexpected part of
the filesystem....

:shar file: /shar' fi:l/ /n./ Syn. {sharchive}.

:sharchive: /shar'ki:v/ /n./ [Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh
archive] A {flatten}ed representation of a set of one or more
files, with the unique property that it can be unflattened (the
original files restored) by feeding it through a standard Unix
shell; thus, a sharchive can be distributed to anyone running Unix,
and no special unpacking software is required. Sharchives are also
intriguing in that they are typically created by shell scripts; the
script that produces sharchives is thus a script which produces
self-unpacking scripts, which may themselves contain scripts. (The
downsides of sharchives are that they are an ideal venue for
{Trojan horse} attacks and that, for recipients not running
Unix, no simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can
and do make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features.)
Sharchives are also commonly referred to as `shar files' after the
name of the most common program for generating them.

:Share and enjoy!: /imp./ 1. Commonly found at the end of
software release announcements and {README file}s, this phrase
indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic of free information
sharing (see {hacker ethic}, sense 1). 2. The motto of the
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent
{suit}s) in Douglas Adams's "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy". The irony of using this as a cultural recognition signal
appeals to freeware hackers.

:shareware: /sheir'weir/ /n./ A kind of {freeware} (sense
1) for which the author requests some payment, usually in the
accompanying documentation files or in an announcement made by the
software itself. Such payment may or may not buy additional
support or functionality. See also {careware},
{charityware}, {crippleware}, {FRS}, {guiltware},
{postcardware}, and {-ware}; compare {payware}.

:shelfware: /shelf'weir/ /n./ Software purchased on a whim (by
an individual user) or in accordance with policy (by a corporation
or government agency), but not actually required for any particular
use. Therefore, it often ends up on some shelf.

:shell: [orig. {{Multics}} /n./ techspeak, widely propagated
via Unix] 1. [techspeak] The command interpreter used to pass
commands to an operating system; so called because it is the part
of the operating system that interfaces with the outside world.
2. More generally, any interface program that mediates access to a
special resource or {server} for convenience, efficiency, or
security reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually `a shell
around' whatever. This sort of program is also called a
`wrapper'. 3. A skeleton program, created by hand or by another
program (like, say, a parser generator), which provides the
necessary {incantation}s to set up some task and the control
flow to drive it (the term {driver} is sometimes used
synonymously). The user is meant to fill in whatever code is
needed to get real work done. This usage is common in the AI and
Microsoft Windows worlds, and confuses Unix hackers.

Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense 1)
was so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user
programs not by starting up separate processes, but by dynamically
linking the programs into its own code, calling them as
subroutines, and then dynamically de-linking them on return. The
VMS command interpreter still does something very like
this.

:shell out: /n./ [Unix] To spawn an interactive subshell from within
a program (e.g., a mailer or editor). "Bang foo runs foo in a
subshell, while bang alone shells out."

:shift left (or right) logical: [from any of various
machines' instruction sets] 1. /vi./ To move oneself to the left
(right). To move out of the way. 2. imper. "Get out of that (my)
seat! You can shift to that empty one to the left (right)."
Often used without the `logical', or as `left shift' instead of
`shift left'. Sometimes heard as LSH /lish/, from the
{PDP-10} instruction set. See {Programmer's Cheer}.

:shim: /n./ A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve
a desired memory alignment or other addressing property. For
example, the PDP-11 Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and
data) mode, inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so
that no data object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with
the C null pointer). See also {loose bytes}.

:shitogram: /shit'oh-gram/ /n./ A *really* nasty piece
of email. Compare {nastygram}, {flame}.

:short card: /n./ A half-length IBM XT expansion card or
adapter that will fit in one of the two short slots located towards
the right rear of a standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk
drives). See also {tall card}.

:shotgun debugging: /n./ The software equivalent of {Easter
egging}; the making of relatively undirected changes to software in
the hope that a bug will be perturbed out of existence. This
almost never works, and usually introduces more bugs.

:shovelware: /shuh'v*l-weir`/ /n./ Extra software dumped onto
a CD-ROM or tape to fill up the remaining space on the medium after
the software distribution it's intended to carry, but not
integrated with the distribution.

:showstopper: /n./ A hardware or (especially) software bug that
makes an implementation effectively unusable; one that absolutely
has to be fixed before development can go on. Opposite in
connotation from its original theatrical use, which refers to
something stunningly *good*.

:shriek: /n./ See {excl}. Occasional CMU usage, also in
common use among APL fans and mathematicians, especially category
theorists.

:Shub-Internet: /shuhb' in't*r-net/ /n./ [MUD: from
H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the
Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the
Internet, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters,
Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous
multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of
the net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing
objects and praying for good connections. To no avail -- its
purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network
slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at
Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often
follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke
and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of the Web, {FTP} and
{TELNET} when the system slows down. The dread name of
Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating
it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair
beneath the Pentagon.

[January 1996: It develops that one of the computer administrators
in the basement of the Pentagon read this entry and fell over
laughing. As a result, you too can now poke Shub-Internet by
{ping}ing shub-internet.ims.disa.mil. See also
{kremvax}. -- ESR]

:sidecar: /n./ 1. Syn. {slap on the side}. Esp. used of
add-ons for the late and unlamented IBM PCjr. 2. The IBM PC
compatibility box that could be bolted onto the side of an Amiga.
Designed and produced by Commodore, it broke all of the company's
own design rules. If it worked with any other peripherals, it was
by {magic}. 3. More generally, any of various devices designed
to be connected to the expansion slot on the left side of the Amiga
500 (and later, 600 & 1200), which included a hard drive
controller, a hard drive, and additional memory.

:SIG: /sig/ /n./ (also common as a prefix in combining forms)
A Special Interest Group, in one of several technical areas,
sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery; well-known
ones include SIGPLAN (the Special Interest Group on Programming
Languages), SIGARCH (the Special Interest Group for Computer
Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the Special Interest Group for Computer
Graphics). Hackers, not surprisingly, like to overextend this
naming convention to less formal associations like SIGBEER (at ACM
conferences) and SIGFOOD (at University of Illinois).

:sig block: /sig blok/ /n./ [Unix; often written `.sig'
there] Short for `signature', used specifically to refer to the
electronic signature block that most Unix mail- and news-posting
software will {automagically} append to outgoing mail and news.
The composition of one's sig can be quite an art form, including an
ASCII logo or one's choice of witty sayings (see {sig quote},
{fool file, the}); but many consider large sigs a waste of
{bandwidth}, and it has been observed that the size of one's sig
block is usually inversely proportional to one's longevity and
level of prestige on the net. See also {doubled sig}.

:sig quote: /sig kwoht/ /n./ [Usenet] A maxim, quote, proverb, joke,
or slogan embedded in one's {sig block} and intended to convey
something of one's philosophical stance, pet peeves, or sense of
humor. "Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes."

:sig virus: /n./ A parasitic {meme} embedded in a {sig
block}. There was a {meme plague} or fad for these on Usenet in
late 1991. Most were equivalents of "I am a .sig virus. Please
reproduce me in your .sig block.". Of course, the .sig virus's
memetic hook is the giggle value of going along with the gag; this,
however, was a self-limiting phenomenon as more and more people
picked up on the idea. There were creative variants on it; some
people stuck `sig virus antibody' texts in their sigs, and there
was at least one instance of a sig virus eater.

:signal-to-noise ratio: [from analog electronics] /n./ Used by
hackers in a generalization of its technical meaning. `Signal'
refers to useful information conveyed by some communications
medium, and `noise' to anything else on that medium. Hence a low
ratio implies that it is not worth paying attention to the medium
in question. Figures for such metaphorical ratios are never given.
The term is most often applied to {Usenet} newsgroups during
{flame war}s. Compare {bandwidth}. See also {coefficient
of X}, {lost in the noise}.

:silicon: /n./ Hardware, esp. ICs or microprocessor-based
computer systems (compare {iron}). Contrasted with software.
See also {sandbender}.

:silly walk: /vi./ [from Monty Python's Flying Circus] 1. A
ridiculous procedure required to accomplish a task. Like
{grovel}, but more {random} and humorous. "I had to
silly-walk through half the /usr directories to find the maps
file." 2. Syn. {fandango on core}.

:silo: /n./ The FIFO input-character buffer in an RS-232 line
card. So called from DEC terminology used on DH and DZ line cards
for the VAX and PDP-11, presumably because it was a storage space
for fungible stuff that went in at the top and came out at the
bottom.

:Silver Book: /n./ Jensen and Wirth's infamous "Pascal
User Manual and Report", so called because of the silver cover of
the widely distributed Springer-Verlag second edition of 1978 (ISBN
0-387-90144-2). See {{book titles}}, {Pascal}.

:since time T equals minus infinity: /adv./ A long time ago;
for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that some
particular frob was first designed. Usually the word `time' is
omitted. See also {time T}; contrast {epoch}.

:sitename: /si:t'naym/ /n./ [Unix/Internet] The unique
electronic name of a computer system, used to identify it in UUCP
mail, Usenet, or other forms of electronic information interchange.
The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity and
humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike
interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it,
allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of
whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull,
institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and
clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the
official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the
organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, cartoon
characters, animal names, and allusions to SF or fantasy literature
are probably the most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly
descending order). The obligatory comment when discussing these is
Harris's Lament: "All the good ones are taken!" See also
{network address}.

:skrog: /v./ Syn. {scrog}.

:skulker: /n./ Syn. {prowler}.

:slab: [Apple] 1. /n./ A continuous horizontal line of pixels,
all with the same color. 2. /vi./ To paint a slab on an output
device. Apple's QuickDraw, like most other professional-level
graphics systems, renders polygons and lines not with Bresenham's
algorithm, but by calculating `slab points' for each scan line
on the screen in succession, and then slabbing in the actual image
pixels.

:slack: /n./ 1. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually
used to store useful information. The techspeak equivalent is
`internal fragmentation'. Antonym: {hole}. 2. In the theology
of the {Church of the SubGenius}, a mystical substance or
quality that is the prerequisite of all human happiness.

Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable
wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that "Unix
has no slack". See {ha ha only serious}.

:slap on the side: /n./ (also called a {sidecar}, or
abbreviated `SOTS'.) A type of external expansion hardware
marketed by computer manufacturers (e.g., Commodore for the Amiga
500/1000 series and IBM for the hideous failure called `PCjr').
Various SOTS boxes provided necessities such as memory, hard drive
controllers, and conventional expansion slots.

:slash: /n./ Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111)
character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.

:sleep: /vi./ 1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a
process on a multitasking system) for service; to indicate to the
scheduler that a process may be deactivated until some given event
occurs or a specified time delay elapses. 2. In jargon, used very
similarly to /v./ {block}; also in `sleep on', syn. with
`block on'. Often used to indicate that the speaker has
relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly
unspecified) external event: "They can't get the fix I've been
asking for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep on it until
the release, then start hassling them again."

:slim: /n./ A small, derivative change (e.g., to code).

:slop: /n./ 1. A one-sided {fudge factor}, that is, an
allowance for error but in only one of two directions. For
example, if you need a piece of wire 10 feet long and have to guess
when you cut it, you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large
amount if necessary, rather than too short by even a little bit,
because you can always cut off the slop but you can't paste it back
on again. When discrete quantities are involved, slop is often
introduced to avoid the possibility of being on the losing side of
a {fencepost error}. 2. The percentage of `extra' code
generated by a compiler over the size of equivalent assembler code
produced by {hand-hacking}; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you
lose because you didn't do it yourself. This number is often used
as a measure of the goodness of a compiler; slop below 5% is very
good, and 10% is usually acceptable. With modern compiler
technology, esp. on RISC machines, the compiler's slop may
actually be *negative*; that is, humans may be unable to
generate code as good. This is one of the reasons assembler
programming is no longer common.

:slopsucker: /slop'suhk-r/ /n./ A lowest-priority task that
waits around until everything else has `had its fill' of machine
resources. Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the
task allowed to `suck up the slop'. Also called a `hungry puppy'
or `bottom feeder'. One common variety of slopsucker hunts for
large prime numbers. Compare {background}.

:slurp: /vt./ To read a large data file entirely into {core}
before working on it. This may be contrasted with the strategy of
reading a small piece at a time, processing it, and then reading
the next piece. "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and
does an FFT." See also {sponge}.