Chapter V: Rare: book (2)

:black art: /n./ A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by
implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular
application or systems area (compare {black magic}). VLSI
design and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings)
considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they
became {deep magic}, and once standard textbooks had been
written, became merely {heavy wizardry}. The huge proliferation
of formal and informal channels for spreading around new
computer-related technologies during the last twenty years has made
both the term `black art' and what it describes less common than
formerly. See also {voodoo programming}.

:black hole: /n./ What a piece of email or netnews has fallen
into if it disappears mysteriously between its origin and
destination sites (that is, without returning a {bounce
message}). "I think there's a black hole at foovax!" conveys
suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on
the floor lately (see {drop on the floor}). The implied
metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself.
Compare {bit bucket}.

:black magic: /n./ A technique that works, though nobody really
understands why. More obscure than {voodoo programming}, which
may be done by cookbook. Compare also {black art}, {deep
magic}, and {magic number} (sense 2).

:Black Screen of Death: n. [prob. related to the
Floating Head of Death in a famous "Far Side" cartoon.] A
failure mode of {Microsloth Windows}. On an attempt to launch a
DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the
screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold
{boot} to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black
Screen of Death.

:Black Thursday: n. February 8th, 1996 -- the day of the
signing into law of the {CDA}, so called by analogy with the
catastrophic "Black Friday" in 1929 that began the Great
Depression.

:blammo: /v./ [Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To
forcibly remove someone from any interactive system, especially
talker systems. The operators, who may remain hidden, may `blammo'
a user who is misbehaving. Very similar to MIT {gun}; in fact,
the `blammo-gun' is a notional device used to `blammo' someone.
While in actual fact the only incarnation of the blammo-gun is the
command used to forcibly eject a user, operators speak of different
levels of blammo-gun fire; e.g., a blammo-gun to `stun' will
temporarily remove someone, but a blammo-gun set to `maim' will
stop someone coming back on for a while.

:blargh: /blarg/ /n./ [MIT] The opposite of {ping}, sense
5; an exclamation indicating that one has absorbed or is emitting a
quantum of unhappiness. Less common than {ping}.

:blast: 1. /v.,n./ Synonym for {BLT}, used esp. for large
data sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of {snarf}.
Usage: uncommon. The variant `blat' has been reported. 2. vt.
[HP/Apollo] Synonymous with {nuke} (sense 3). Sometimes the
message `Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?'
would appear in the command window upon logout.

:blat: /n./ 1. Syn. {blast}, sense 1. 2. See {thud}.

:bletch: /blech/ /interj./ [from Yiddish/German `brechen', to
vomit, poss. via comic-strip exclamation `blech'] Term
of disgust. Often used in "Ugh, bletch". Compare {barf}.

:bletcherous: /blech'*-r*s/ /adj./ Disgusting in design or
function; esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of
people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't
work very well, or are misplaced.) See {losing},
{cretinous}, {bagbiting}, {bogus}, and {random}. The
term {bletcherous} applies to the esthetics of the thing so
described; similarly for {cretinous}. By contrast, something
that is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet
objective criteria. See also {bogus} and {random}, which
have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above.

:blink: /vi.,n./ To use a navigator or off-line message reader
to minimize time spent on-line to a commercial network service.
As of late 1994, this term was said to be in wide use in the UK,
but is rare or unknown in the US.

:blinkenlights: /blink'*n-li:tz/ /n./ Front-panel diagnostic
lights on a computer, esp. a {dinosaur}. Derives from the
last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled
pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the
English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as
follows:

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das
computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in
das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

This silliness dates back at least as far as 1959 at Stanford
University and had already gone international by the early 1960s,
when it was reported at London University's ATLAS computing site.
There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which
actually do end with the word `blinkenlights'.

In an amusing example of turnabout-is-fair-play, German hackers
have developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster in
fractured English, one of which is reproduced here:

ATTENTION

This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is
allowed for die experts only! So all the "lefthanders" stay away
and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working
intelligencies. Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked
anderswhere! Also: please keep still and only watchen
astaunished the blinkenlights.

See also {geef}.

Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because
they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly,
very few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard
certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost
of front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret
machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only part of the
story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the
lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor
machines. But the most fundamental fact is that there are very few
signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs,
you could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, but
at 33/66/150MHz it's all a blur.

:blit: /blit/ /vt./ 1. To copy a large array of bits from one
part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the
memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display
screen. "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies
the good parts up into high memory, and then blits it all back down
again." See {bitblt}, {BLT}, {dd}, {cat}, {blast},
{snarf}. More generally, to perform some operation (such as
toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2. Sometimes
all-capitalized as `BLIT': an early experimental bit-mapped
terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as
the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent
Terminal' is incorrect. Its creators liked to claim that "Blit"
stood for the Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato.)

:blitter: /blit'r/ /n./ A special-purpose chip or hardware
system built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast
implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a
few other micros have these, but sine 1990 the trend is away from
them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}). Syn. {raster
blaster}.

:blivet: /bliv'*t/ /n./ [allegedly from a World War II
military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"]
1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that
can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been
hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become
an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but
unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up
during a customer demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security
specialists, a denial-of-service attack performed by hogging
limited resources that have no access controls (for example, shared
spool space on a multi-user system).

This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among
experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it
seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to
hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an
amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that
appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes
that the parts fit together in an impossible way.

:BLOB: 1. /n./ [acronym: Binary Large OBject] Used by database
people to refer to any random large block of bits that needs to be
stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file. The
essential point about a BLOB is that it's an object that cannot be
interpreted within the database itself. 2. /v./ To {mailbomb}
someone by sending a BLOB to him/her; esp. used as a mild threat.
"If that program crashes again, I'm going to BLOB the core dump to
you."

:block: /v./ [from process scheduling terminology in OS theory]
1. /vi./ To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're
blocking until everyone gets here." Compare {busy-wait}.
2. `block on' /vt./ To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is
blocked on Phil's arrival."

:block transfer computations: /n./ [from the television series
"Dr. Who"] Computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that
they could not be performed by machines. Used to refer to any task
that should be expressible as an algorithm in theory, but isn't.
(The Z80's LDIR instruction, "Computed Block Transfer with
increment", may also be relevant)

:Bloggs Family, the: /n./ An imaginary family consisting of
Fred and Mary Bloggs and their children. Used as a standard
example in knowledge representation to show the difference between
extensional and intensional objects. For example, every occurrence
of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences
of "person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs
family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the DEC
Telephone Directory. Compare {Mbogo, Dr. Fred}.

:blow an EPROM: /bloh *n ee'prom/ /v./ (alt. `blast an
EPROM', `burn an EPROM') To program a read-only memory, e.g.
for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the
programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs)
that preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories
(EPROMs) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on
the chip. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to
discard) even though the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.

:blow away: /vt./ To remove (files and directories) from
permanent storage, generally by accident. "He reformatted the
wrong partition and blew away last night's netnews." Oppose
{nuke}.

:blow out: /vi./ [prob. from mining and tunneling jargon] Of
software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and
burn}. See {blow past}, {blow up}, {die horribly}.

:blow past: /vt./ To {blow out} despite a safeguard. "The
server blew past the 5K reserve buffer."

:blow up: /vi./ 1. [scientific computation] To become unstable.
Suggests that the computation is diverging so rapidly that it will
soon overflow or at least go {nonlinear}. 2. Syn. {blow
out}.

:BLT: /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ /n.,vt./ Synonym
for {blit}. This is the original form of {blit} and the
ancestor of {bitblt}. It referred to any large bit-field copy
or move operation (one resource-intensive memory-shuffling
operation done on pre-paged versions of ITS, WAITS, and TOPS-10 was
sardonically referred to as `The Big BLT'). The jargon usage has
outlasted the {PDP-10} BLock Transfer instruction from which
{BLT} derives; nowadays, the assembler mnemonic {BLT} almost
always means `Branch if Less Than zero'.

:Blue Book: /n./ 1. Informal name for one of the three standard
references on the page-layout and graphics-control language
{{PostScript}} ("PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook",
Adobe Systems, Addison-Wesley 1985, QA76.73.P67P68, ISBN
0-201-10179-3); the other three official guides are known as the
{Green Book}, the {Red Book}, and the {White Book} (sense
2). 2. Informal name for one of the three standard references on
Smalltalk: "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its
Implementation", David Robson, Addison-Wesley 1983, QA76.8.S635G64,
ISBN 0-201-11371-63 (this book also has green and red siblings).
3. Any of the 1988 standards issued by the CCITT's ninth plenary
assembly. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec
and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also {{book
titles}}.

:blue box: /n./ 1. obs. Once upon a time, before
all-digital switches made it possible for the phone companies to
move them out of band, one could actually hear the switching tones
used to route long-distance calls. Early {phreaker}s built
devices called `blue boxes' that could reproduce these tones,
which could be used to commandeer portions of the phone network.
(This was not as hard as it may sound; one early phreak acquired
the sobriquet `Captain Crunch' after he proved that he could
generate switching tones with a plastic whistle pulled out of a box
of Captain Crunch cereal!) There were other colors of box with more
specialized phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver boxes,
etc. 2. /n./ An {IBM} machine, especially a large (non-PC)
one.

:Blue Glue: /n./ [IBM] IBM's SNA (Systems Network
Architecture), an incredibly {losing} and {bletcherous}
communications protocol widely favored at commercial shops that
don't know any better. The official IBM definition is "that which
binds blue boxes together." See {fear and loathing}. It may
not be irrelevant that {Blue Glue} is the trade name of a 3M
product that is commonly used to hold down the carpet squares to
the removable panel floors common in {dinosaur pen}s. A
correspondent at U. Minn. reports that the CS department there has
about 80 bottles of the stuff hanging about, so they often refer to
any messy work to be done as `using the blue glue'.

:blue goo: /n./ Term for `police' {nanobot}s intended to
prevent {gray goo}, denature hazardous waste, destroy pollution,
put ozone back into the stratosphere, prevent halitosis, and
promote truth, justice, and the American way, etc. The term
`Blue Goo' can be found in Dr. Seuss's "Fox In Socks" to
refer to a substance much like bubblegum. `Would you like to
chew blue goo, sir?'. See {{nanotechnology}}.

:blue wire: /n./ [IBM] Patch wires added to circuit boards at
the factory to correct design or fabrication problems. These may
be necessary if there hasn't been time to design and qualify
another board version. Compare {purple wire}, {red wire},
{yellow wire}.

:blurgle: /bler'gl/ /n./ [UK] Spoken {metasyntactic
variable}, to indicate some text that is obvious from context, or
which is already known. If several words are to be replaced,
blurgle may well be doubled or tripled. "To look for something in
several files use `grep string blurgle blurgle'." In each case,
"blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file
you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, sense 7.

:BNF: /B-N-F/ /n./ 1. [techspeak] Acronym for `Backus-Naur
Form', a metasyntactic notation used to specify the syntax of
programming languages, command sets, and the like. Widely used for
language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere, so that it
must usually be learned by osmosis from other hackers. Consider
this BNF for a U.S. postal address:

<postal-address> ::= <name-part> <street-address> <zip-part>

<personal-part> ::= <name> | <initial> "."

<name-part> ::= <personal-part> <last-name> [<jr-part>] <EOL>
| <personal-part> <name-part>

<street-address> ::= [<apt>] <house-num> <street-name> <EOL>

<zip-part> ::= <town-name> "," <state-code> <ZIP-code> <EOL>

This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a
name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a
zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or
an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a
personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional
`jr-part' (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a
personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the
use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use
multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address
consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street
number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a
town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed
by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things
(such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or
ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed to be obvious
from context or detailed somewhere nearby. See also {parse}.
2. Any of a number number of variants and extensions of BNF proper,
possibly containing some or all of the {regexp} wildcards such
as `*' or `+'. In fact the example above isn't the pure
form invented for the Algol-60 report; it uses `[]', which was
introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now
universally recognized. 3. In {{science-fiction fandom}}, a
`Big-Name Fan' (someone famous or notorious). Years ago a fan
started handing out black-on-green BNF buttons at SF conventions;
this confused the hacker contingent terribly.

:boa: [IBM] /n./ Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the
floor in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they
display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them
straight and flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is
rumored within IBM that channel cables for the 370 are limited to
200 feet because beyond that length the boas get dangerous -- and
it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the
trademark `Anaconda'.

:board: /n./ 1. In-context synonym for {bboard}; sometimes
used even for Usenet newsgroups (but see usage note under
{bboard}, sense 1). 2. An electronic circuit board.

:boat anchor: /n./ 1. Like {doorstop} but more severe;
implies that the offending hardware is irreversibly dead or
useless. "That was a working motherboard once. One lightning
strike later, instant boat anchor!" 2. A person who just takes up
space. 3. Obsolete but still working hardware, especially
when used of an old S100-bus hobbyist system; originally a term of
annoyance, but became more and more affectionate as the hardware
became more and more obsolete.

:bodysurf code: /n./ A program or segment of code written
quickly in the heat of inspiration without the benefit of formal
design or deep thought. Like its namesake sport, the result is
too often a wipeout that leaves the programmer eating sand.

:BOF: /B-O-F/ or /bof/ /n./ Abbreviation for the phrase
"Birds Of a Feather" (flocking together), an informal discussion
group and/or bull session scheduled on a conference program. It is
not clear where or when this term originated, but it is now
associated with the USENIX conferences for Unix techies and was
already established there by 1984. It was used earlier than that
at DECUS conferences and is reported to have been common at SHARE
meetings as far back as the early 1960s.

:BOFH: // /n./ Acronym, Bastard Operator From Hell. A system
administrator with absolutely no tolerance for {luser}s. "You
say you need more filespace? <massive-global-delete> Seems to me
you have plenty left..." Many BOFHs (and others who would be
BOFHs if they could get away with it) hang out in the newsgroup
alt.sysadmin.recovery, although there has also been created a
top-level newsgroup hierarchy (bofh.*) of their own.

Several people have written stories about BOFHs. The set usually
considered canonical is by Simon Travaglia and may be found at the
Bastard Home Page,
http://prime-mover.cc.waikato.ac.nz/Bastard.html.

:bogo-sort: /boh`goh-sort'/ /n./ (var. `stupid-sort') The
archetypical perversely awful algorithm (as opposed to {bubble
sort}, which is merely the generic *bad* algorithm).
Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in
the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they
are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of
awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one
might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare
{bogus}, {brute force}, {Lasherism}.

:bogometer: /boh-gom'-*t-er/ /n./ A notional instrument for
measuring {bogosity}. Compare the `wankometer' described in
the {wank} entry; see also {bogus}.

:bogon: /boh'gon/ /n./ [by analogy with
proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the
similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons'; see the {Bibliography}
in Appendix C and note that Arthur Dent actually mispronounces
`Vogons' as `Bogons' at one point] 1. The elementary particle of
bogosity (see {quantum bogodynamics}). For instance, "the
Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or
acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from
a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set
instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed
packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any
bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got
to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or
who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage,
but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1--4. See also
{bogosity}, {bogus}; compare {psyton}, {fat electrons},
{magic smoke}.

The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce
particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible
particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon)
and the futon (elementary particle of {randomness}, or sometimes
of lameness). These are not so much live usages in themselves as
examples of a live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard
joke or linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious
circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. And these imply
nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof (we
might note parenthetically that this is a generalization from
"(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!).
Perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls and
wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to construct
explanatory myths. Of course, playing on an existing word (as in
the `futon') yields additional flavor. Compare {magic
smoke}.

:bogon filter: /boh'gon fil'tr/ /n./ Any device, software or
hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of
bogons. "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and
the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped packets." See also
{bogosity}, {bogus}.

:bogon flux: /boh'gon fluhks/ /n./ A measure of a supposed
field of {bogosity} emitted by a speaker, measured by a
{bogometer}; as a speaker starts to wander into increasing
bogosity a listener might say "Warning, warning, bogon flux is
rising". See {quantum bogodynamics}.

:bogosity: /boh-go's*-tee/ /n./ 1. The degree to which
something is {bogus}. At CMU, bogosity is measured with a
{bogometer}; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus,
a listener might raise his hand and say "My bogometer just
triggered". More extremely, "You just pinned my bogometer"
means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it
is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest
possible reading (one might also say "You just redlined my
bogometer"). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the
{microLenat}. 2. The potential field generated by a {bogon
flux}; see {quantum bogodynamics}. See also {bogon flux},
{bogon filter}, {bogus}.

:bogotify: /boh-go't*-fi:/ /vt./ To make or become bogus. A
program that has been changed so many times as to become completely
disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard
and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified
and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led to the
notional `autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming
bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been
`live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about
jargon. See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.

:bogue out: /bohg owt/ /vi./ To become bogus, suddenly and
unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked
him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but
{flame} afterwards." See also {bogosity}, {bogus}.

:bogus: /adj./ 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus."
2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your
arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus."
5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem
for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop
writing those bogus sagas."

Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break.
So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a
scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of
the connotations of {random} -- mostly the negative ones.)

It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense
at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by
Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus
words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (see
{autobogotiphobia} under {bogotify}). The word spread into
hackerdom from CMU and MIT. By the early 1980s it was also
current in something like the hackish sense in West Coast teen
slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from
Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on
British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically,
`counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".

:Bohr bug: /bohr buhg/ /n./ [from quantum physics] A repeatable
{bug}; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but
well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of {heisenbug}; see also
{mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}.

:boink: /boynk/ [Usenet: variously ascribed to the TV
series "Cheers" "Moonlighting", and "Soap"]
1. /v./ To have sex with; compare {bounce}, sense 3. (This is
mainstream slang.) In Commonwealth hackish the variant `bonk' is
more common. 2. /n./ After the original Peter Korn `Boinkon'
{Usenet} parties, used for almost any net social gathering,
e.g., Miniboink, a small boink held by Nancy Gillett in 1988;
Minniboink, a Boinkcon in Minnesota in 1989; Humpdayboinks,
Wednesday get-togethers held in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Compare {@-party}. 3. Var of `bonk'; see {bonk/oif}.

:bomb: 1. /v./ General synonym for {crash} (sense 1) except
that it is not used as a noun; esp. used of software or OS
failures. "Don't run Empire with less than 32K stack, it'll
bomb." 2. /n.,v./ Atari ST and Macintosh equivalents of a Unix
`panic' or Amiga {guru} (sense 2), in which icons of little
black-powder bombs or mushroom clouds are displayed, indicating
that the system has died. On the Mac, this may be accompanied by a
decimal (or occasionally hexadecimal) number indicating what went
wrong, similar to the Amiga {guru meditation} number.
{{MS-DOS}} machines tend to get {locked up} in this situation.

:bondage-and-discipline language: /n./ A language (such as
{{Pascal}}, {{Ada}}, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly
general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of
`right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably
inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose
programming. Often abbreviated `B&D'; thus, one may speak of
things "having the B&D nature". See {{Pascal}}; oppose
{languages of choice}.

:bonk/oif: /bonk/, /oyf/ /interj./ In the {MUD}
community, it has become traditional to express pique or censure by
`bonking' the offending person. Convention holds that one should
acknowledge a bonk by saying `oif!' and there is a myth to the
effect that failing to do so upsets the cosmic bonk/oif balance,
causing much trouble in the universe. Some MUDs have implemented
special commands for bonking and oifing. See also {talk mode}.

:book titles:: There is a tradition in hackerdom of
informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with
the dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous
feature of the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon
under their own entries. See {Aluminum Book}, {Blue Book},
{Camel Book}, {Cinderella Book}, {Devil Book}, {Dragon
Book}, {Green Book}, {Orange Book}, {Pink-Shirt Book},
{Purple Book}, {Red Book}, {Silver Book}, {White Book},
{Wizard Book}, {Yellow Book}, and {bible}; see also
{rainbow series}. Since about 1983 this tradition has gotten a
boost from the popular O'Reilly Associates line of technical books,
which usually feature some kind of exotic animal on the
cover.

:boot: /v.,n./ [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To
load and initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage
is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given
rise to some derivatives that are still jargon.

The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been down
for long, or that the boot is a {bounce} (sense 4) intended to
clear some state of {wedgitude}. This is sometimes used of
human thought processes, as in the following exchange: "You've
lost me." "OK, reboot. Here's the theory...."

This term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from
power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all
devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software
crash).

Another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a
system, under control of other software still running: "If
you're running the {mess-dos} emulator, control-alt-insert will
cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the
system running."

Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility
towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have
to hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it
hard." One often hard-boots by performing a {power cycle}.

Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short
program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in
from the front panel switches. This program was always very short
(great efforts were expended on making it short in order to
minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in),
but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex
program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it
handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the
application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk
drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up
by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. Nowadays the
bootstrap is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first
stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot
block'. When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to
load the actual OS and hand control over to it.

:bottom feeder: /n./ Syn. for {slopsucker}, derived from the
fishermen's and naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist
on the primordial ooze.

:bottom-up implementation: /n./ Hackish opposite of the
techspeak term `top-down design'. It is now received wisdom in
most programming cultures that it is best to design from higher
levels of abstraction down to lower, specifying sequences of action
in increasing detail until you get to actual code. Hackers often
find (especially in exploratory designs that cannot be closely
specified in advance) that it works best to *build* things in
the opposite order, by writing and testing a clean set of primitive
operations and then knitting them together.

:bounce: /v./ 1. [perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check] An
electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error
notification to the sender is said to `bounce'. See also
{bounce message}. 2. [Stanford] To play volleyball. The
now-demolished {D. C. Power Lab} building used by the Stanford
AI Lab in the 1970s had a volleyball court on the front lawn. From
5 P.M. to 7 P.M. was the scheduled maintenance time for the
computer, so every afternoon at 5 would come over the intercom the
cry: "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!", followed by Brian McCune
loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of
known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob.
from the expression `bouncing the mattress', but influenced by
Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me, Tigger!" from the
"Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare {boink}. 4. To casually
reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported
primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [VM/CMS programmers]
*Automatic* warm-start of a machine after an error. "I
logged on this morning and found it had bounced 7 times during the
night" 6. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral in order to reset
it.

:bounce message: /n./ [Unix] Notification message returned to sender
by a site unable to relay {email} to the intended {{Internet
address}} recipient or the next link in a {bang path} (see
{bounce}, sense 1). Reasons might include a nonexistent or
misspelled username or a {down} relay site. Bounce messages can
themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see {sorcerer's
apprentice mode} and {software laser}. The terms `bounce
mail' and `barfmail' are also common.

:boustrophedon: /n./ [from a Greek word for turning like an ox
while plowing] An ancient method of writing using alternate
left-to-right and right-to-left lines. This term is actually
philologists' techspeak and typesetters' jargon. Erudite hackers
use it for an optimization performed by some computer typesetting
software and moving-head printers. The adverbial form
`boustrophedonically' is also found (hackers purely love
constructions like this).

:box: /n./ 1. A computer; esp. in the construction `foo
box' where foo is some functional qualifier, like
`graphics', or the name of an OS (thus, `Unix box', `MS-DOS
box', etc.) "We preprocess the data on Unix boxes before handing
it up to the mainframe." 2. [IBM] Without qualification but
within an SNA-using site, this refers specifically to an IBM
front-end processor or FEP /F-E-P/. An FEP is a small computer
necessary to enable an IBM {mainframe} to communicate beyond the
limits of the {dinosaur pen}. Typically used in expressions
like the cry that goes up when an SNA network goes down: "Looks
like the {box} has fallen over." (See {fall over}.) See also
{IBM}, {fear and loathing}, {fepped out}, {Blue Glue}.

:boxed comments: /n./ Comments (explanatory notes attached to
program instructions) that occupy several lines by themselves; so
called because in assembler and C code they are often surrounded by
a box in a style something like this:

/*************************************************
*
* This is a boxed comment in C style
*
*************************************************/

Common variants of this style omit the asterisks in column 2 or add
a matching row of asterisks closing the right side of the box. The
sparest variant omits all but the comment delimiters themselves;
the `box' is implied. Oppose {winged comments}.

:boxen: /bok'sn/ /pl.n./ [by analogy with {VAXen}]
Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase `Unix
boxen', used to describe commodity {{Unix}} hardware. The
connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.

:boxology: /bok-sol'*-jee/ /n./ Syn. {ASCII art}. This
term implies a more restricted domain, that of box-and-arrow
drawings. "His report has a lot of boxology in it." Compare
{macrology}.

:bozotic: /boh-zoh'tik/ or /boh-zo'tik/ /adj./ [from the name of
a TV clown even more losing than Ronald McDonald] Resembling
or having the quality of a bozo; that is, clownish, ludicrously
wrong, unintentionally humorous. Compare {wonky},
{demented}. Note that the noun `bozo' occurs in slang, but
the mainstream adjectival form would be `bozo-like' or (in New
England) `bozoish'.

:BQS: /B-Q-S/ /adj./ Syn. {Berkeley Quality Software}.

:brain dump: /n./ The act of telling someone everything one
knows about a particular topic or project. Typically used when
someone is going to let a new party maintain a piece of code.
Conceptually analogous to an operating system {core dump} in
that it saves a lot of useful {state} before an exit. "You'll
have to give me a brain dump on FOOBAR before you start your new
job at HackerCorp." See {core dump} (sense 4). At Sun, this
is also known as `TOI' (transfer of information).

:brain fart: /n./ The actual result of a {braino}, as
opposed to the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g.,
typing `dir' on a Unix box after a session with DOS.

:brain-damaged: /adj./ 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain
Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain
utter cretinisms in Honeywell {{Multics}}] /adj./ Obviously
wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that
the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he
should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is
really bad; it also implies it is unusable, and that its failure to
work is due to poor design rather than some accident. "Only six
monocase characters per file name? Now *that's*
brain-damaged!" 2. [esp. in the Mac world] May refer to free
demonstration software that has been deliberately crippled in some
way so as not to compete with the commercial product it is intended
to sell. Syn. {crippleware}.

:brain-dead: /adj./ Brain-damaged in the extreme. It tends to
imply terminal design failure rather than malfunction or simple
stupidity. "This comm program doesn't know how to send a break
-- how brain-dead!"

:braino: /bray'no/ /n./ Syn. for {thinko}. See also
{brain fart}.

:branch to Fishkill: /n./ [IBM: from the location of one of the
corporation's facilities] Any unexpected jump in a program that
produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See {jump
off into never-never land}, {hyperspace}.

:bread crumbs: /n./ Debugging statements inserted into a
program that emit output or log indicators of the program's
{state} to a file so you can see where it dies or pin down the
cause of surprising behavior. The term is probably a reference to
the Hansel and Gretel story from the Brothers Grimm; in several
variants, a character leaves a trail of bread crumbs so as not to
get lost in the woods.

:break: 1. /vt./ To cause to be {broken} (in any sense).
"Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands."
2. /v./ (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may
debugged.
The place where it stops is a `breakpoint'. 3. [techspeak]
/vi./ To send an RS-232 break (two character widths of line high)
over a serial comm line. 4. [Unix] /vi./ To strike whatever key
currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current
process. Normally, break (sense 3), delete or {control-C} does
this. 5. `break break' may be said to interrupt a conversation
(this is an example of verb doubling). This usage comes from radio
communications, which in turn probably came from landline
telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's Band
craze a few years ago.

:break-even point: /n./ In the process of implementing a new
computer language, the point at which the language is sufficiently
effective that one can implement the language in itself. That is,
for a new language called, hypothetically, FOOGOL, one has reached
break-even when one can write a demonstration compiler for FOOGOL
in FOOGOL, discard the original implementation language, and
thereafter use working versions of FOOGOL to develop newer ones.
This is an important milestone; see {MFTL}.

Since this entry was first written, several correspondents have
reported that there actually was a compiler for a tiny Algol-like
language called Foogol floating around on various {VAXen} in the
early and mid-1980s. A FOOGOL implementation is available at the
Retrocomputing Museum http://www.ccil.org/retro.

:breath-of-life packet: /n./ [XEROX PARC] An Ethernet packet
that contains bootstrap (see {boot}) code, periodically sent out
from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any
computer on the network that has happened to crash. Machines
depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code
to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process.
See also {dickless workstation}.

The notional `kiss-of-death packet', with a function
complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended
for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources.
Though `kiss-of-death packet' is usually used in jest, there is
at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited
address-table slots in a gateway machine in which such packets were
routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers
competing for scarce parking spaces.

:breedle: /n./ See {feep}.

:bring X to its knees: /v./ To present a machine, operating
system, piece of software, or algorithm with a load so extreme or
{pathological} that it grinds to a halt. "To bring a MicroVAX
to its knees, try twenty users running {vi} -- or four running
{EMACS}." Compare {hog}.

:brittle: /adj./ Said of software that is functional but easily
broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by
any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that
responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected
external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally
scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is
often used to describe the results of a research effort that were
never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially
developed software, which displays the quality far more often than
it ought to. Oppose {robust}.

:broadcast storm: /n./ An incorrect packet broadcast on a
network that causes most hosts to respond all at once, typically
with wrong answers that start the process over again. See
{network meltdown}; compare {mail storm}.

:brochureware: /n./ Planned but non-existent product like
{vaporware}, but with the added implication that marketing is
actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures).
Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic weapon; the idea is
to con customers into not committing to an existing product of the
competition's. It is a safe bet that when a brochureware product
finally becomes real, it will be more expensive than and inferior
to the alternatives that had been available for years.

:broken: /adj./ 1. Not working properly (of programs).
2. Behaving strangely; especially (when used of people) exhibiting
extreme depression.

:broken arrow: /n./ [IBM] The error code displayed on line 25
of a 3270 terminal (or a PC emulating a 3270) for various kinds of
protocol violations and "unexpected" error conditions (including
connection to a {down} computer). On a PC, simulated with
`->/_', with the two center characters overstruck.

Note: to appreciate this term fully, it helps to know that `broken
arrow' is also military jargon for an accident involving nuclear
weapons....

:BrokenWindows: /n./ Abusive hackerism for the {crufty} and
{elephantine} {X} environment on Sun machines; properly
called `OpenWindows'.

:broket: /broh'k*t/ or /broh'ket`/ /n./ [by analogy with
`bracket': a `broken bracket'] Either of the characters
`<' and `>', when used as paired enclosing delimiters.
This word originated as a contraction of the phrase `broken
bracket', that is, a bracket that is bent in the middle. (At MIT,
and apparently in the {Real World} as well, these are usually
called {angle brackets}.)

:Brooks's Law: /prov./ "Adding manpower to a late software
project makes it later" -- a result of the fact that the expected
advantage from splitting work among N programmers is
O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity
and communications cost associated with coordinating and then
merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the
square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of
IBM's OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month"
(Addison-Wesley, 1975, ISBN 0-201-00650-2), an excellent early book
on software engineering. The myth in question has been most
tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks
established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never
forgotten his advice; too often, {management} still does. See
also {creationism}, {second-system effect}, {optimism}.

:browser: /n./ A program specifically designed to help users view
and navigate hypertext, on-line documentation, or a database.
While this general sense has been present in jargon for a long
time, the proliferation of browsers for the World Wide Web after
1992 has made it much more popular and provided a central or
default meaning of the word previously lacking in hacker usage.
Nowadays, if someone mentions using a `browser' without
qualification, one may assume it is a Web browser.

:BRS: /B-R-S/ /n./ Syn. {Big Red Switch}. This
abbreviation is fairly common on-line.

:brute force: /adj./ Describes a primitive programming style,
one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing
power instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the
problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive
methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term
can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force
programs are written in a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of
repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see
also {brute force and ignorance}).

The {canonical} example of a brute-force algorithm is associated
with the `traveling salesman problem' (TSP), a classical
{NP-}hard problem: Suppose a person is in, say, Boston, and
wishes to drive to N other cities. In what order should the
cities be visited in order to minimize the distance travelled? The
brute-force method is to simply generate all possible routes and
compare the distances; while guaranteed to work and simple to
implement, this algorithm is clearly very stupid in that it
considers even obviously absurd routes (like going from Boston to
Houston via San Francisco and New York, in that order). For very
small N it works well, but it rapidly becomes absurdly
inefficient when N increases (for N = 15, there are
already 1,307,674,368,000 possible routes to consider, and for
N = 1000 -- well, see {bignum}). Sometimes,
unfortunately, there is no better general solution than brute
force. See also {NP-}.

A more simple-minded example of brute-force programming is finding
the smallest number in a large list by first using an existing
program to sort the list in ascending order, and then picking the
first number off the front.

Whether brute-force programming should actually be considered
stupid or not depends on the context; if the problem is not
terribly big, the extra CPU time spent on a brute-force solution
may cost less than the programmer time it would take to develop a
more `intelligent' algorithm. Additionally, a more intelligent
algorithm may imply more long-term complexity cost and bug-chasing
than are justified by the speed improvement.

Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the
epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended
this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original Unix kernel's
preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over
{brittle} `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant
factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in
software design, the choice between brute force and complex,
finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both
engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment.

:brute force and ignorance: /n./ A popular design technique at
many software houses -- {brute force} coding unrelieved by any
knowledge of how problems have been previously solved in elegant
ways. Dogmatic adherence to design methodologies tends to
encourage this sort of thing. Characteristic of early {larval
stage} programming; unfortunately, many never outgrow it. Often
abbreviated BFI: "Gak, they used a {bubble sort}! That's
strictly from BFI." Compare {bogosity}.

:BSD: /B-S-D/ /n./ [abbreviation for `Berkeley Software
Distribution'] a family of {{Unix}} versions for the {DEC}
{VAX} and PDP-11 developed by Bill Joy and others at
{Berzerkeley} starting around 1980, incorporating paged virtual
memory, TCP/IP networking enhancements, and many other features.
The BSD versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial versions
derived from them (SunOS, ULTRIX, and Mt. Xinu) held the technical
lead in the Unix world until AT&T's successful standardization
efforts after about 1986, and are still widely popular. Note that
BSD versions going back to 2.9 are often referred to by their
version numbers, without the BSD prefix. See {4.2}, {{Unix}},
{USG Unix}.

:BUAF: // /n./ [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big
Ugly ASCII Font -- a special form of {ASCII art}. Various
programs exist for rendering text strings into block, bloob, and
pseudo-script fonts in cells between four and six character cells
on a side; this is smaller than the letters generated by older
{banner} (sense 2) programs. These are sometimes used to render
one's name in a {sig block}, and are critically referred to as
`BUAF's. See {warlording}.

:BUAG: // /n./ [abbreviation, from alt.fan.warlord] Big
Ugly ASCII Graphic. Pejorative term for ugly {ASCII art},
especially as found in {sig block}s. For some reason, mutations
of the head of Bart Simpson are particularly common in the least
imaginative {sig block}s. See {warlording}.

:bubble sort: /n./ Techspeak for a particular sorting technique
in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are
compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list
entries `bubble upward' in the list until they bump into one
with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to
other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by {naive}
and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the {canonical}
example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really
*bad* algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be
used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only
from brain damage or willful perversity.

:bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ /n./ 1. obs. The bits produced by
the CONTROL and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and
400 respectively), resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set.
The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP and
separate left and right CONTROL and META keys, resulting in a
12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines added such keys as
SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see {space-cadet keyboard}). 2. By
extension, bits associated with `extra' shift keys on any
keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option keys on
a Macintosh.

It has long been rumored that `bucky bits' were named for
Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at
Stanford. Actually, bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirth when
*he* was at Stanford in 1964--65; he first suggested the idea
of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7-bit ASCII
character). It seems that, unknown to Wirth, certain Stanford
hackers had privately nicknamed him `Bucky' after a prominent
portion of his dental anatomy, and this nickname transferred to the
bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in a number of editors written
at Stanford, including most notably TV-EDIT and NLS.

The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general use.
Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its derivation for
nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up this history in early 1993! See
{double bucky}, {quadruple bucky}.

:buffer chuck: /n./ Shorter and ruder syn. for {buffer
overflow}.

:buffer overflow: /n./ What happens when you try to stuff more
data into a buffer (holding area) than it can handle. This may be
due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and
consuming processes (see {overrun} and {firehose syndrome}),
or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that
must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For
example, in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a
time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from
a long line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good
defensive programming would check for overflow on each character
and stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is
used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I
agree to meet you? My buffer must have overflowed." Or "If I
answer that phone my buffer is going to overflow." See also
{spam}, {overrun screw}.

:bug: /n./ An unwanted and unintended property of a program or
piece of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction.
Antonym of {feature}. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor:
it writes things out backwards." "The system crashed because of
a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs"
(i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).

Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer
better known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in
which a technician solved a {glitch} in the Harvard Mark II
machine by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts
of one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in
its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she was
careful to admit, she was not there when it happened). For many
years the logbook associated with the incident and the actual bug
in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface
Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the
logbook and the moth taped into it, is recorded in the "Annals
of the History of Computing", Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981),
pp. 285--286.

The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads "1545
Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being
found". This wording establishes that the term was already
in use at the time in its current specific sense -- and Hopper
herself reports that the term `bug' was regularly applied to
problems in radar electronics during WWII.

Indeed, the use of `bug' to mean an industrial defect was already
established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather
modern use can be found in an electrical handbook from 1896
("Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity", Theo. Audel & Co.)
which says: "The term `bug' is used to a limited extent to
designate any fault or trouble in the connections or working of
electric apparatus." It further notes that the term is "said to
have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred
to all electric apparatus."

The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the
term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which "bugs in
a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines. Though this
derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory
of a joke first current among *telegraph* operators more than
a century ago!

Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the
term "bug" was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to
refer to a variety of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would
send a string of dots if you held them down. In fact, the
Vibroplex keyers (which were among the most common of this type)
even had a graphic of a beetle on them! While the ability to send
repeated dots automatically was very useful for professional morse
code operators, these were also significantly trickier to use than
the older manual keyers, and it could take some practice to ensure
one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the code by holding the
key down a fraction too long. In the hands of an inexperienced
operator, a Vibroplex "bug" on the line could mean that a lot
of garbled Morse would soon be coming your way.