Chapter V: Rare: book (6)

:earthquake: /n./ [IBM] The ultimate real-world shock test for
computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the
Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test
quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.

:Easter egg: /n./ [from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt
observed in the U.S. and many parts of Europe] 1. A message hidden
in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by
persons disassembling or browsing the code. 2. A message, graphic,
or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in
response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,
intended as a joke or to display program credits. One well-known
early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to respond
to the command `make love' with `not war?'. Many
personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM,
including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations,
snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire
development team.

:Easter egging: /n./ [IBM] The act of replacing unrelated
components more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will
go away. Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of
{field circus} techs and do not love them for it. See also the
jokes under {field circus}. Compare {shotgun debugging}.

:eat flaming death: /imp./ A construction popularized among
hackers by the infamous {CPU Wars} comic; supposedly derive from
a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic
that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something
of the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign
Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own"
included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this
may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown
expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, {{EBCDIC}} users!"

:EBCDIC:: /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ /n./
[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An
alleged character set used on IBM {dinosaur}s. It exists in at
least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such
delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of
several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern
computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies
according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM
adapted EBCDIC from {{punched card}} code in the early 1960s and
promulgated it as a customer-control tactic (see {connector
conspiracy}), spurning the already established ASCII standard.
Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems company, but IBM's own
description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them
is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading.
Hackers blanch at the very *name* of EBCDIC and consider it a
manifestation of purest {evil}. See also {fear and
loathing}.

:echo: [FidoNet] /n./ A {topic group} on {FidoNet}'s
echomail system. Compare {newsgroup}.

:eighty-column mind: /n./ [IBM] The sort said to be possessed by
persons for whom the transition from {punched card} to tape was
traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said
that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder
of IBM, will be buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being
the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402
and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel
called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as
follows:

He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.

The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
customer base and its thinking. See {IBM}, {fear and
loathing}, {card walloper}.

:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ /n./ The road
mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco
peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City;
many portions of the old road are still intact. Navigation on the
San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real,
which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't
really north-south in many places. El Camino Real runs right past
Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.

The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
digits (other languages have similar `real' types).

When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the hacker
was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it
`El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)
In recent years, the synonym `El Camino Virtual' has been
reported as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.

[GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was
in fact he --ESR]

:elder days: /n./ The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly,
pre-1980); the era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the
ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings".
Compare {Iron Age}; see also {elvish} and {Great Worm,
the}.

:elegant: /adj./ [from mathematical usage] Combining
simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher
praise than `clever', `winning', or even {cuspy}.

The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de
Saint-Exup'ery, probably best known for his classic children's
book "The Little Prince", was also an aircraft designer. He
gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he
said "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there
is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take
away."

:elephantine: /adj./ Used of programs or systems that are both
conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on
{brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in
source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even
friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an
elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a
pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have
been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive
proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage:
semi-humorous. Compare `has the elephant nature' and the
somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}. See also
{second-system effect} and {baroque}.

:elevator controller: /n./ An archetypal dumb embedded-systems
application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one
period (1983--84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C
standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't
require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library
-- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator
controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of
several {holy wars}.

:elite: /adj./ Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti.
Also used as a general positive adjective. This term is not
actually hacker slang in the strict sense; it is used primarily by
crackers and {warez d00dz}. Cracker usage is probably related to
a 19200cps modem called the `Courier Elite' that was widely popular
on pirate boards before the V.32bis standard. A true hacker would
be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose {lamer}.

:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ /n./ [AI community] The
tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior
experience. For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol
`+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just
that people associate it with addition. Using `+' or `plus'
to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the
ELIZA effect.

This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum,
which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of
the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the
patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution
of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however,
that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very
emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to
people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer
never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when
writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious
shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.
Compare {ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.

:elvish: /n./ 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms
resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book
of Kells". Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The
Lord of The Rings" as an orthography for his fictional `elvish'
languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically
{elegant}) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be intrigued
by artificial languages in general). It is traditional for
graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the like to
support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo items. See also
{elder days}. 2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface
produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called
`B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/ /n./ [from Editing MACroS] The ne plus
ultra of hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire
LISP system inside it. It was originally written by Richard
Stallman in {TECO} under {{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554
described it as "an advanced, self-documenting, customizable,
extensible real-time display editor". It has since been
reimplemented any number of times, by various hackers, and versions
exist that run under most major operating systems. Perhaps the
most widely used version, also written by Stallman and now called
"{GNU} EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs principally under Unix.
It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and
receive mail; many hackers spend up to 80% of their {tube time}
inside it. Other variants include {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS,
UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS.

Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an
overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the
editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too
{heavyweight} and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the
name as `Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance
on keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof
expansions include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping',
`Eventually `malloc()'s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS
Makes A Computer Slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). See
also {vi}.

:email: /ee'mayl/ (also written `e-mail' and `E-mail')
1. /n./ Electronic mail automatically passed through computer
networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast
{snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network
address}. 2. /vt./ To send electronic mail.

Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED;
it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a
net or open work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is probably
derived from French `'emaill'e' (enameled) and related to Old
French `emmaille"ure' (network). A French correspondent tells
us that in modern French, `email' is a hard enamel obtained by
heating special paints in a furnace; an `emailleur' (no final e) is
a craftsman who makes email (he generally paints some objects
(like, say, jewelry) and cooks them in a furnace).

There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet
traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a
not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant
third and fourth.

:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ /n./ An ASCII glyph used to
indicate an emotional state in email or news. Although originally
intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor
indication) are virtually required under certain circumstances in
high-volume text-only communication forums such as Usenet; the lack
of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to
be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious
comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by
{newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in
common use. These include:

:-)
`smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness,
occasionally sarcasm)

:-(
`frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)

;-)
`half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious}); also known as
`semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.

:-/
`wry face'

(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head
sideways, to the left.)

The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered.
Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX;
see also {bixie}. On {Usenet}, `smiley' is often used as a
generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically
for the happy-face emoticon.

It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on
the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980. He later wrote: "I wish I
had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for
posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that
would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS
confirms that he remembers this original posting].

Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of
loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that
you've gone over the line.

:empire: /n./ Any of a family of military simulations derived
from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. Five or six
multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication exist,
and one single-player version implemented for both Unix and VMS;
the latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are
notoriously addictive.

:engine: /n./ 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some
function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}.
Today we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser
printer. 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that
does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.

The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had
not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that
he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.

:English: 1. /n. obs./ The source code for a program, which may
be in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary
produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that
to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming
language is at least as readable as English. Usage: mostly by
old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. 2. The official
name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System,
actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of
grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you
can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s
without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: /n./ Common {marketroid}-speak for a bug
{fix}. This abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way
to turn incompetence into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic
would instead call the fix a {feature} -- or perhaps save some
effort by declaring the bug itself to be a feature.

:ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire
for 0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's
availability. After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone
apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?'
(the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect
a return of {ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not the
person felt interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the
usage of `FOO?' listed under {talk mode}.

:EOF: /E-O-F/ /n./ [abbreviation, `End Of File']
1. [techspeak] The {out-of-band} value returned by C's
sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in
other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value
is -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was
originally 0. 2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually control-D,
the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) that is mapped by
the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3. Used by
extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing something
that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further.
"Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but
I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a {JCL} manual."
See also {EOL}.

:EOL: /E-O-L/ /n./ [End Of Line] Syn. for {newline},
derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but
widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the
example entry under {BNF}. See also {EOF}.

:EOU: /E-O-U/ /n./ The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control
character (End Of User) that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode
on receipt. This construction parodies the numerous obscure
delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when
it was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers
(e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth
remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a
lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was
nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in
front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.

:epoch: /n./ [Unix: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] The
time and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and
timestamp values. Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00
GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858
(base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a
Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning January 1 1904. System time
is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. Weird
problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap
around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems
counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is
good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is
good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software
continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't
increase by then. See also {wall time}.

:epsilon: [see {delta}] 1. /n./ A small quantity of
anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. /adj./ Very small,
negligible; less than {marginal}. "We can get this feature for
epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon of': close enough to be
indistinguishable for all practical purposes, even closer than
being `within delta of'. "That's not what I asked for, but it's
within epsilon of what I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not
close enough, but very little is required to get it there: "My
program is within epsilon of working."

:epsilon squared: /n./ A quantity even smaller than
{epsilon}, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to
something normal; completely negligible. If you buy a
supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the
thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the
cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared.
Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}.

:era, the: /n./ Syn. {epoch}. Webster's Unabridged makes these
words almost synonymous, but `era' more often connotes a span of
time rather than a point in time, whereas the reverse is true for
{epoch}. The {epoch} usage is recommended.

:Eric Conspiracy: /n./ A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers
named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous
talk.bizarre posting ca. 1987; this was doubtless influenced
by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There
do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in
hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for
unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples
include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under
{indent style}) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor
has heard from about fifteen others by email, and the organization
line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly
from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy Web Page at
http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ecsl.html for full details.

:Eris: /e'ris/ /n./ The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord,
Confusion, and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to
Discordia and she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very
friendly deity in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a
more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by
the adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a
semi-serious subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures,
including hackerdom. See {Discordianism}, {Church of the
SubGenius}.

:erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ /n./ [Helsinki University of
Technology, Finland] /n./ English-language university slang for
electronics. Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good
electronics excites them and makes them warm.

:error 33: [XEROX PARC] /n./ 1. Predicating one research effort
upon the success of another. 2. Allowing your own research effort
to be placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a
research effort or not).

:evil: /adj./ As used by hackers, implies that some system,
program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to
be not worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in
the {cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil'
does not imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of
goals or design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's.
This usage is more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a
moral one in the mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a
{Blue Glue} interface but decided it was too evil to deal
with." "{TECO} is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're
prone to typos." Often pronounced with the first syllable
lengthened, as /eeee'vil/. Compare {evil and rude}.

:evil and rude: /adj./ Both {evil} and {rude}, but with
the additional connotation that the rudeness was due to malice
rather than incompetence. Thus, for example: Microsoft's Windows
NT is evil because it's a competent implementation of a bad
design; it's rude because it's gratuitously incompatible with
Unix in places where compatibility would have been as easy and
effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the
incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in
Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the
Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the
mainstream sense of `evil'.

:exa-: /ek's*/ /pref./ [SI] See {{quantifiers}}.

:examining the entrails: /n./ The process of {grovel}ling
through a {core dump} or hex image in an attempt to discover the
bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to
divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare
{runes}, {incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.

:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ /vt./ To exchange two things,
each for the other; to swap places. If you point to two people
sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade
places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a
PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and a
memory location. Many newer hackers are probably thinking instead
of the {{PostScript}} exchange operator (which is usually written
in lowercase).

:excl: /eks'kl/ /n./ Abbreviation for `exclamation point'.
See {bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.

:EXE: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ /n./ An executable
binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and
TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is
also occasionally found among Unix programmers even though Unix
executables don't have any required suffix.

:exec: /eg-zek'/ or /eks'ek/ vt., /n./ 1. [Unix: from
`execute'] Synonym for {chain}, derives from the
`exec(2)' call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command
interpreter for an {OS} (see {shell}); term esp. used
around mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2
and EXEC 8 operating systems. 3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the
equivalent of a shell command file (among VM/CMS users).

The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is
*not* used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program,
never a person.

:exercise, left as an: /adj./ [from technical books] Used to
complete a proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid
one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or `the rest']
is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has*
occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors
possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the
capabilities of their audiences.

:Exon: /eks'on/ /excl./ A generic obscenity that quickly
entered wide use on the Internet and Usenet after {Black
Thursday}. From the last name of Senator James Exon
(Democrat-Nevada), primary author of the {CDA}.

:external memory: /n./ A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written
notes. "Hold on while I write that to external memory". The
analogy is with store or DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage on
computers.

:eye candy: /i:' kand`ee/ /n./ [from mainstream slang
"ear candy"] A display of some sort that's presented to {luser}s
to keep them distracted while the program performs necessary
background tasks. "Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end
{slurp}s that {BLOB} into core."

:eyeball search: /n.,v./ To look for something in a mass of
code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to
using some sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any
other automated search tool. Also called a {vgrep}; compare
{vdiff}, {desk check}.

= F = =====

:face time: /n./ Time spent interacting with somebody
face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I
spent some face time with him at the last Usenix."

:factor: /n./ See {coefficient of X}.

:fall over: /vi./ [IBM] Yet another synonym for {crash} or
{lose}. `Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.

:fall through: /v./ (n. `fallthrough', var.
`fall-through') 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having
fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception
condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears to
be *really* old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail
a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other
distant portion of code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the
flow of execution in a switch statement reaches a `case' label
other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a point
where one would normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial
example:

switch (color)
{
case GREEN:
do_green();
break;
case PINK:
do_pink();
/* FALL THROUGH */
case RED:
do_red();
break;
default:
do_blue();
break;
}

The variant spelling `/* FALL THRU */' is also common.

The effect of the above code is to `do_green()' when color is
`GREEN', `do_red()' when color is `RED',
`do_blue()' on any other color other than `PINK', and
(and this is the important part) `do_pink()' *and then*
`do_red()' when color is `PINK'. Fall-through is
{considered harmful} by some, though there are contexts (such as
the coding of state machines) in which it is natural; it is
generally considered good practice to include a comment
highlighting the fall-through where one would normally expect a
break. See also {Duff's device}.

:fan: /n./ Without qualification, indicates a fan of science
fiction, especially one who goes to {con}s and tends to hang out
with other fans. Many hackers are fans, so this term has been
imported from fannish slang; however, unlike much fannish slang it
is recognized by most non-fannish hackers. Among SF fans the
plural is correctly `fen', but this usage is not automatic to
hackers. "Laura reads the stuff occasionally but isn't really a
fan."

:fandango on core: /n./ [Unix/C hackers, from the Mexican
dance] In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a
{core dump}, or corrupts the `malloc(3)' {arena} in such
a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said
to have `done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal machines
without an MMU, this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive
lossage. Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or
watusi, may be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence
lossage}, {smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory
smash}, {overrun screw}, {core}.

:FAQ: /F-A-Q/ or /fak/ /n./ [Usenet] 1. A Frequently Asked
Question. 2. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically
to high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall such
questions. Some people prefer the term `FAQ list' or `FAQL'
/fa'kl/, reserving `FAQ' for sense 1.

This lexicon itself serves as a good example of a collection of one
kind of lore, although it is far too big for a regular FAQ
posting. Examples: "What is the proper type of NULL?" and
"What's that funny name for the `#' character?" are both
Frequently Asked Questions. Several FAQs refer readers to
this file.

:FAQ list: /F-A-Q list/ or /fak list/ /n./ [Usenet] Syn
{FAQ}, sense 2.

:FAQL: /fa'kl/ /n./ Syn. {FAQ list}.

:faradize: /far'*-di:z/ /v./ [US Geological Survey] To start any
hyper-addictive process or trend, or to continue adding current to
such a trend. Telling one user about a new octo-tetris game you
compiled would be a faradizing act -- in two weeks you might find
your entire department playing the faradic game.

:farkled: /far'kld/ /adj./ [DeVry Institute of Technology,
Atlanta] Syn. {hosed}. Poss. owes something to Yiddish
`farblondjet' and/or the `Farkle Family' skits on "Rowan
and Martin's Laugh-In", a popular comedy show of the late 1960s.

:farming: /n./ [Adelaide University, Australia] What the heads
of a disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the
magnetic media. Associated with a {crash}. Typically used as
follows: "Oh no, the machine has just crashed; I hope the hard
drive hasn't gone {farming} again."

:fascist: /adj./ 1. Said of a computer system with excessive or
annoying security barriers, usage limits, or access policies. The
implication is that said policies are preventing hackers from
getting interesting work done. The variant `fascistic' seems to
have been preferred at MIT, poss. by analogy with `touristic'
(see {tourist}). 2. In the design of languages and other
software tools, `the fascist alternative' is the most restrictive
and structured way of capturing a particular function; the
implication is that this may be desirable in order to simplify the
implementation or provide tighter error checking. Compare
{bondage-and-discipline language}, although that term is global
rather than local.

:fat electrons: /n./ Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on
the causation of computer glitches. Your typical electric utility
draws its line current out of the big generators with a pair of
coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. When the normal tap
brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean them up, and
use special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. Now,
this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary
or `thin' electrons, but the fat'n'sloppy electrons that are
heavier and so settle to the bottom of the generator. These flow
down ordinary wires just fine, but when they have to turn a sharp
corner (as in an integrated-circuit via), they're apt to get stuck.
This is what causes computer glitches. [Fascinating. Obviously,
fat electrons must gain mass by {bogon} absorption --ESR]
Compare {bogon}, {magic smoke}.

:faulty: /adj./ Non-functional; buggy. Same denotation as
{bletcherous}, {losing}, q.v., but the connotation is much
milder.

:fd leak: /F-D leek/ /n./ A kind of programming bug analogous
to a {core leak}, in which a program fails to close file
descriptors (`fd's) after file operations are completed, and
thus eventually runs out of them. See {leak}.

:fear and loathing: /n./ [from Hunter S. Thompson] A state
inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems
and standards that are totally {brain-damaged} but ubiquitous
-- Intel 8086s, or {COBOL}, or {{EBCDIC}}, or any {IBM}
machine except the Rios (a.k.a. the RS/6000). "Ack! They want
PCs to be able to talk to the AI machine. Fear and loathing
time!"

:feature: /n./ 1. A good property or behavior (as of a
program). Whether it was intended or not is immaterial. 2. An
intended property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is
good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a
{misfeature}). 3. A surprising property or behavior; in
particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works
better that way -- such an inconsistency is therefore a
{feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of feature is sometimes
called a {miswart}; see that entry for a classic example. 4. A
property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though
perhaps also impressive or cute. For example, one feature of
Common LISP's `format' function is the ability to print
numbers in two different Roman-numeral formats (see {bells,
whistles, and gongs}). 5. A property or behavior that was put in
to help someone else but that happens to be in your way. 6. A bug
that has been documented. To call something a feature sometimes
means the author of the program did not consider the particular
case, and that the program responded in a way that was unexpected
but not strictly incorrect. A standard joke is that a bug can be
turned into a {feature} simply by documenting it (then
theoretically no one can complain about it because it's in the
manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. "That's not a
bug, that's a feature!" is a common catchphrase. See also
{feetch feetch}, {creeping featurism}, {wart}, {green
lightning}.

The relationship among bugs, features, misfeatures, warts, and
miswarts might be clarified by the following hypothetical exchange
between two hackers on an airliner:

A: "This seat doesn't recline."

B: "That's not a bug, that's a feature. There is an emergency
exit door built around the window behind you, and the route has to
be kept clear."

A: "Oh. Then it's a misfeature; they should have increased the
spacing between rows here."

B: "Yes. But if they'd increased spacing in only one section it
would have been a wart -- they would've had to make
nonstandard-length ceiling panels to fit over the displaced
seats."

A: "A miswart, actually. If they increased spacing throughout
they'd lose several rows and a chunk out of the profit margin. So
unequal spacing would actually be the Right Thing."

B: "Indeed."

`Undocumented feature' is a common, allegedly humorous euphemism
for a {bug}. There's a related joke that is sometimes referred
to as the "one-question geek test". You say to someone "I saw a
Volkswagen Beetle today with a vanity license plate that read
FEATURE". If he/she laughs, he/she is a geek (see {computer
geek}, sense #2).

:feature creature: /n./ [poss. fr. slang `creature feature'
for a horror movie] 1. One who loves to add features to designs or
programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision, or
{taste}. 2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces
otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also
{feeping creaturism}, {creeping featurism}.

:feature key: /n./ The Macintosh key with the cloverleaf
graphic on its keytop; sometimes referred to as `flower',
`pretzel', `clover', `propeller', `beanie' (an apparent
reference to the major feature of a propeller beanie), {splat},
or the `command key'. The Mac's equivalent of an {alt} key.
The proliferation of terms for this creature may illustrate one
subtle peril of iconic interfaces.

Many people have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that
appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is `cross of St.
Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative
motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to
mark sites of historical interest. Apple picked up the symbol from
an early Mac developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple
documentation gives the translation "interesting feature"!

There is some dispute as to the proper (Swedish) name of this
symbol. It technically stands for the word `sev"ardhet'
(interesting feature); many of these are old churches. Some Swedes
report as an idiom for it the word `kyrka', cognate to English
`church' and Scots-dialect `kirk' but pronounced /shir'k*/ in
modern Swedish. Others say this is nonsense. Another idiom
reported for the sign is `runsten' /roon'stn/, derived from
the fact that many of the interesting features are Viking
rune-stones.

:feature shock: /n./ [from Alvin Toffler's book title
"Future Shock"] A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when
confronted with a package that has too many features and poor
introductory material.

:featurectomy: /fee`ch*r-ek't*-mee/ /n./ The act of removing
a feature from a program. Featurectomies come in two flavors, the
`righteous' and the `reluctant'. Righteous featurectomies are
performed because the remover believes the program would be more
elegant without the feature, or there is already an equivalent and
better way to achieve the same end. (Doing so is not quite the
same thing as removing a {misfeature}.) Reluctant
featurectomies are performed to satisfy some external constraint
such as code size or execution speed.

:feep: /feep/ 1. /n./ The soft electronic `bell' sound of a
display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the
microcomputer world seems to prefer {beep}). 2. /vi./ To cause
the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do
not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms:
{beep}, `bleep', or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic.
(Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip "Shoe", uses the word
`eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this
is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term
`breedle' was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal
bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the
musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close
approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep
lasting for five seconds). The `feeper' on a VT-52 has been
compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also
{ding}.

:feeper: /fee'pr/ /n./ The device in a terminal or
workstation (usually a loudspeaker of some kind) that makes the
{feep} sound.

:feeping creature: /n./ [from {feeping creaturism}] An
unnecessary feature; a bit of {chrome} that, in the speaker's
judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.

:feeping creaturism: /fee'ping kree`ch*r-izm/ /n./ A
deliberate spoonerism for {creeping featurism}, meant to imply
that the system or program in question has become a misshapen
creature of hacks. This term isn't really well defined, but it
sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is
probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the
dark making their customary noises.

:feetch feetch: /feech feech/ /interj./ If someone tells you
about some new improvement to a program, you might respond:
"Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on
vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like "Boy,
that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious
doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more
unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of resignation,
it means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has
to be done".

:fence: /n./ 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished
({out-of-band}) characters (or other data items), used to
delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the
computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel'). The NUL
(ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is a fence.
Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way.
See {zigamorph}. 2. An extra data value inserted in an array or
other data structure in order to allow some normal test on the
array's contents also to function as a termination test. For
example, a highly optimized routine for finding a value in an array
might artificially place a copy of the value to be searched for
after the last slot of the array, thus allowing the main search
loop to search for the value without having to check at each pass
whether the end of the array had been reached. 3. [among users of
optimizing compilers] Any technique, usually exploiting knowledge
about the compiler, that blocks certain optimizations. Used when
explicit mechanisms are not available or are overkill. Typically a
hack: "I call a dummy procedure there to force a flush of the
optimizer's register-coloring info" can be expressed by the
shorter "That's a fence procedure".

:fencepost error: /n./ 1. A problem with the discrete
equivalent of a boundary condition, often exhibited in programs by
iterative loops. From the following problem: "If you build a
fence 100 feet long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you
need?" (Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10.)
For example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and
want to process items m through n; how many items are
there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one;
the right answer is n - m + 1. A program that used the
`obvious' formula would have a fencepost error in it. See also
{zeroth} and {off-by-one error}, and note that not all
off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs
involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try
to sit in N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error.
Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces
between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether
one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. [rare] An error
induced by unexpected regularities in input values, which can (for
instance) completely thwart a theoretically efficient binary tree
or hash table implementation. (The error here involves the
difference between expected and worst case behaviors of an
algorithm.)

:fepped out: /fept owt/ /adj./ The Symbolics 3600 LISP
Machine has a Front-End Processor called a `FEP' (compare sense 2
of {box}). When the main processor gets {wedged}, the FEP
takes control of the keyboard and screen. Such a machine is said
to have `fepped out' or `dropped into the fep'.

:FidoNet: /n./ A worldwide hobbyist network of personal
computers which exchanges mail, discussion groups, and files.
Founded in 1984 and originally consisting only of IBM PCs and
compatibles, FidoNet now includes such diverse machines as Apple
][s, Ataris, Amigas, and Unix systems. FidoNet has grown rapidly
and in early 1996 has approximately 38000 nodes.

:field circus: /n./ [a derogatory pun on `field service'] The
field service organization of any hardware manufacturer, but
especially DEC. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field
circus engineers:

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer
who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

[See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes.]

There is also the `Field Circus Cheer' (from the {plan file} for
DEC on MIT-AI):

Maynard! Maynard!
Don't mess with us!
We're mean and we're tough!
If you get us confused
We'll screw up your stuff.

(DEC's service HQ is located in Maynard, Massachusetts.)

:field servoid: [play on `android'] /fee'ld ser'voyd/ /n./
Representative of a field service organization (see {field
circus}). This has many of the implications of {droid}.

:Fight-o-net: /n./ [FidoNet] Deliberate distortion of {FidoNet},
often applied after a flurry of {flamage} in a particular
{echo}, especially the SYSOP echo or Fidonews (see {'Snooze}).

:File Attach: [FidoNet] 1. /n./ A file sent along with a mail
message from one BBS to another. 2. /vt./ Sending someone a file
by
using the File Attach option in a BBS mailer.

:File Request: [FidoNet] 1. /n./ The {FidoNet} equivalent of
{FTP}, in which one BBS system automatically dials another and
{snarf}s one or more files. Often abbreviated `FReq'; files
are often announced as being "available for FReq" in the same way
that files are announced as being "available for/by anonymous
FTP" on the Internet. 2. /vt./ The act of getting a copy of a file
by using the File Request option of the BBS mailer.

:file signature: /n./ A {magic number}, sense 3.

:filk: /filk/ /n.,v./ [from SF fandom, where a typo for
`folk' was adopted as a new word] A popular or folk song with
lyrics revised or completely new lyrics, intended for humorous
effect when read, and/or to be sung late at night at SF
conventions. There is a flourishing subgenre of these called
`computer filks', written by hackers and often containing rather
sophisticated technical humor. See {double bucky} for an
example. Compare {grilf}, {hing} and {newsfroup}.

:film at 11: [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in
conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic
implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{{ITS}}
crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11."
2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional
information will be available at some future time, *without*
the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the
referenced event. For example, "The mail file server died this
morning; we found garbage all over the root directory. Film at
11." would indicate that a major failure had occurred but that the
people working on it have no additional information about it as
yet; use of the phrase in this way suggests gently that the problem
is liable to be fixed more quickly if the people doing the fixing
can spend time doing the fixing rather than responding to
questions, the answers to which will appear on the normal "11:00
news", if people will just be patient.

:filter: /n./ [orig. {{Unix}}, now also in {{MS-DOS}}] A
program that processes an input data stream into an output data
stream in some well-defined way, and does no I/O to anywhere else
except possibly on error conditions; one designed to be used as a
stage in a `pipeline' (see {plumbing}). Compare {sponge}.

:Finagle's Law: /n./ The generalized or `folk' version of
{Murphy's Law}, fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic
Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can go wrong,
will". One variant favored among hackers is "The perversity of
the Universe tends towards a maximum" (but see also {Hanlon's
Razor}). The label `Finagle's Law' was popularized by SF author
Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of
asteroid miners; this `Belter' culture professed a religion
and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle
and his mad prophet Murphy. Some technical and scientific cultures
(e.g., paleontologists) know it under the name `Sod's Law'; this
usage may be more common in Great Britain.

:fine: /adj./ [WPI] Good, but not good enough to be {cuspy}.
The word `fine' is used elsewhere, of course, but without the
implicit comparison to the higher level implied by {cuspy}.

:finger: [WAITS, via BSD Unix] 1. /n./ A program that displays
information about a particular user or all users logged on the
system, or a remote system. Typically shows full name, last login
time, idle time, terminal line, and terminal location (where
applicable). May also display a {plan file} left by the user
(see also {Hacking X for Y}). 2. /vt./ To apply finger to a
username. 3. /vt./ By extension, to check a human's current state
by
any means. "Foodp?" "T!" "OK, finger Lisa and see if she's
idle." 4. Any picture (composed of ASCII characters) depicting
`the finger'. Originally a humorous component of one's plan file
to deter the curious fingerer (sense 2), it has entered the arsenal
of some {flamer}s.

:finger trouble: /n./ Mistyping, typos, or generalized keyboard
incompetence (this is surprisingly common among hackers, given the
amount of time they spend at keyboards). "I keep putting colons at
the end of statements instead of semicolons", "Finger trouble
again, eh?".

:finger-pointing syndrome: /n./ All-too-frequent result of
bugs, esp. in new or experimental configurations. The hardware
vendor points a finger at the software. The software vendor points
a finger at the hardware. All the poor users get is the finger.

:finn: /v./ [IRC] To pull rank on somebody based on the amount
of time one has spent on {IRC}. The term derives from the fact
that IRC was originally written in Finland in 1987. There may be
some influence from the `Finn' character in William Gibson's
seminal cyberpunk novel "Count Zero", who at one point says to
another (much younger) character "I have a pair of shoes older
than you are, so shut up!"

:firebottle: /n./ A large, primitive, power-hungry active
electrical device, similar in function to a FET but constructed out
of glass, metal, and vacuum. Characterized by high cost, low
density, low reliability, high-temperature operation, and high
power dissipation. Sometimes mistakenly called a `tube' in the
U.S. or a `valve' in England; another hackish term is
{glassfet}.

:firefighting: /n./ 1. What sysadmins have to do to correct
sudden operational problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been
hacking your new newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the
network and I spent the whole afternoon fighting fires." 2. The
act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project,
esp. to get it out before deadline. See also {gang bang},
{Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term `firefighting'
connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than
adding features.

:firehose syndrome: /n./ In mainstream folklore it is observed
that trying to drink from a firehose can be a good way to rip your
lips off. On computer networks, the absence or failure of flow
control mechanisms can lead to situations in which the sending
system sprays a massive flood of packets at an unfortunate
receiving system, more than it can handle. Compare {overrun},
{buffer overflow}.

:firewall code: /n./ 1. The code you put in a system (say, a
telephone switch) to make sure that the users can't do any
damage. Since users always want to be able to do everything but
never want to suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a
firewall is a question not only of defensive coding but also of
interface presentation, so that users don't even get curious about
those corners of a system where they can burn themselves.
2. Any sanity check inserted to catch a {can't happen} error.
Wise programmers often change code to fix a bug twice: once to fix
the bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have arrested
the bug before it did quite as much damage.

:firewall machine: /n./ A dedicated gateway machine with
special security precautions on it, used to service outside network
connections and dial-in lines. The idea is to protect a cluster of
more loosely administered machines hidden behind it from
{cracker}s. The typical firewall is an inexpensive micro-based
Unix box kept clean of critical data, with a bunch of modems and
public network ports on it but just one carefully watched
connection back to the rest of the cluster. The special
precautions may include threat monitoring, callback, and even a
complete {iron box} keyable to particular incoming IDs or
activity patterns. Syn. {flytrap}, {Venus flytrap}.

[When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon. Now
(1996) it is borderline techspeak, and may have to be dropped from
this lexicon before very long --ESR]

:fireworks mode: /n./ The mode a machine is sometimes said to
be in when it is performing a {crash and burn} operation.

:firmy: /fer'mee/ /n./ Syn. {stiffy} (a 3.5-inch floppy
disk).

:fish: /n./ [Adelaide University, Australia] 1. Another
{metasyntactic variable}. See {foo}. Derived originally
from the Monty Python skit in the middle of "The Meaning of
Life" entitled "Find the Fish". 2. A pun for `microfiche'.
A microfiche file cabinet may be referred to as a `fish tank'.

:FISH queue: /n./ [acronym, by analogy with FIFO (First In,
First Out)] `First In, Still Here'. A joking way of pointing out
that processing of a particular sequence of events or requests has
stopped dead. Also `FISH mode' and `FISHnet'; the latter may
be applied to any network that is running really slowly or
exhibiting extreme flakiness.

:FITNR: // /adj./ [Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In The
Often Next Release. A written-only notation attached to bug
reports.
wishful thinking.

:fix: /n.,v./ What one does when a problem has been reported
too many times to be ignored.

:FIXME: /imp./ A standard tag often put in C comments near a
piece of code that needs work. The point of doing so is that a
`grep' or a similar pattern-matching tool can find all such
places quickly.

/* FIXME: note this is common in {GNU} code. */

Compare {XXX}.

:flag: /n./ A variable or quantity that can take on one of two
values; a bit, particularly one that is used to indicate one of two
outcomes or is used to control which of two things is to be done.
"This flag controls whether to clear the screen before printing
the message." "The program status word contains several flag
bits." Used of humans analogously to {bit}. See also
{hidden flag}, {mode bit}.

:flag day: /n./ A software change that is neither forward- nor
backward-compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to
reverse. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all
users?" This term has nothing to do with the use of the word
{flag} to mean a variable that has two values. It came into use
when a massive change was made to the {{Multics}} timesharing
system to convert from the old ASCII code to the new one; this was
scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. See also
{backward combatability}.

:flaky: /adj./ (var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequent
{lossage}. This use is of course related to the common slang
use of the word to describe a person as eccentric, crazy, or just
unreliable. A system that is flaky is working, sort of -- enough
that you are tempted to try to use it -- but fails frequently
enough that the odds in favor of finishing what you start are low.
Commonwealth hackish prefers {dodgy} or {wonky}.

:flamage: /flay'm*j/ /n./ Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise,
low-signal postings to {Usenet} or other electronic {fora}.
Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act
itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming
message. See {flame}, also {dahmum}.