:vulture capitalist: n. Pejorative hackerism for `venture capitalist', deriving from the common practice of pushing contracts that deprive inventors of control over their own innovations and most of the money they ought to have made from them.
= W = =====
:wabbit: /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] n. 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by inspiration) from hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a Burroughs 55000 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The program would make two copies of itself every time it was run, eventually crashing the system. 2. By extension, any hack that includes infinite self-replication but is not a {virus} or {worm}. See {fork bomb}, see also {cookie monster}.
:WAITS:: /wayts/ n. The mutant cousin of {{TOPS-10}} used on a handful of systems at {{SAIL}} up to 1990. There was never an `official' expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as `West-coast Alternative to ITS'. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of {EMACS}, for example, were directly inspired by WAITS's `E' editor —- one of a family of editors that were the first to do `real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. {Bucky bits} were also invented there —- thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One notable WAITS feature seldom duplicated elsewhere was a news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called `multimedia' computing, allowing analog audio and video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
:waldo: /wol'doh/ [From Robert A. Heinlein's story "Waldo"] 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story, which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term `telefactoring', this technology is of intense interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance. 2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is used instead of {foobar} as a metasyntactic variable and general nonsense word. See {foo}, {bar}, {foobar}, {quux}.
:walk: n.,vt. Traversal of a data structure, especially an array or linked-list data structure in {core}. See also {codewalker}, {silly walk}, {clobber}.
:walk off the end of: vt. To run past the end of an array, list, or medium after stepping through it —- a good way to land in trouble. Often the result of an {off-by-one error}. Compare {clobber}, {roach}, {smash the stack}.
:walking drives: n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races.
:wall: [WPI] interj. 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone: "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication. Compare {octal forty}. 3. [UNIX] v. To send a message to everyone currently logged in, esp. with the wall(8) utility.
It is said that sense 1 came from the idiom `like talking to a blank wall'. It was originally used in situations where, after you had carefully answered a question, the questioner stared at you blankly, clearly having understood nothing that was explained. You would then throw out a "Hello, wall?" to elicit some sort of response from the questioner. Later, confused questioners began voicing "Wall?" themselves.
:wall follower: n. A person or algorithm that compensates for lack of sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently following some simple procedure shown to have been effective in the past. Used of an algorithm, this is not necessarily pejorative; it recalls `Harvey Wallbanger', the winning robot in an early AI contest (named, of course, after the cocktail). Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall and running till it came out the other end. This was inelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work on simply-connected mazes —- and, in fact, Harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that tried to `learn' each maze by building an internal representation of it. Used of humans, the term *is* pejorative and implies an uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality. See also {code grinder}, {droid}.
:wall time: n. (also `wall clock time') 1. `Real world' time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's idea of time. 2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of {clocks} required to execute it (on a timesharing system these will differ, as no one program gets all the {clocks}, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get more processor clocks than real-time clocks).
:wallpaper: n. 1. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or a transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a login session. (The idea was that the paper for such listings was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at Stanford, where it was used to cover windows.) Now rare, esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g., PHOTO on TWENEX). However, the UNIX world doesn't have an equivalent term, so perhaps {wallpaper} will take hold there. The term probably originated on ITS, where the commands to begin and end transcript files were `:WALBEG' and `:WALEND', with default file `WALL PAPER' (the space was a path delimiter). 2. The background pattern used on graphical workstations (this is techspeak under the `Windows' graphical user interface to MS-DOS). 3. `wallpaper file' n. The file that contains the wallpaper information before it is actually printed on paper. (Even if you don't intend ever to produce a real paper copy of the file, it is still called a wallpaper file.)
:wango: /wang'goh/ n. Random bit-level {grovel}ling going on in a system during some unspecified operation. Often used in combination with {mumble}. For example: "You start with the `.o' file, run it through this postprocessor that does mumble-wango —- and it comes out a snazzy object-oriented executable."
:wank: /wangk/ [Columbia University: prob. by mutation from Commonwealth slang v. `wank', to masturbate] n.,v. Used much as {hack} is elsewhere, as a noun denoting a clever technique or person or the result of such cleverness. May describe (negatively) the act of hacking for hacking's sake ("Quit wanking, let's go get supper!") or (more positively) a {wizard}. Adj. `wanky' describes something particularly clever (a person, program, or algorithm). Conversations can also get wanky when there are too many wanks involved. This excess wankiness is signalled by an overload of the `wankometer' (compare {bogometer}). When the wankometer overloads, the conversation's subject must be changed, or all non-wanks will leave. Compare `neep-neeping' (under {neep-neep}). Usage: U.S. only. In Britain and the Commonwealth this word is *extremely* rude and is best avoided unless one intends to give offense.
:wannabee: /won'*-bee/ (also, more plausibly, spelled `wannabe') [from a term recently used to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; prob. originally from biker slang] n. A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such creatures. When used of any professional programmer, CS academic, writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory, implying that said person is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about. Overuse of terms from this lexicon is often an indication of the {wannabee} nature. Compare {newbie}.
Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavor now (1991) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage}, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular culture —- communities formed spontaneously around people who, *as individuals*, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people semi-consciously set out to *be hackers* and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.
:warlording: [from the USENET group alt.fan.warlord] v. The act of excoriating a bloated, ugly, or derivative {sig block}. Common grounds for warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a {BUAF}, over-used or cliched {sig quote}s, ugly {ASCII art}, or simply excessive size. The original `Warlord' was a {BIFF}-like {newbie} c.1991 who featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious ASCII graphic resembling the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the 1981 John Milius movie; the group name alt.fan.warlord was sarcasm, and the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic praise.
:warm boot: n. See {boot}.
:wart: n. A small, {crock}y {feature} that sticks out of anotherwise {clean} design. Something conspicuous for localizedugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule.For example, in some versions of `csh(1)', single quotesliteralize every character inside them except `!'. In ANSI C,the `??' syntax used obtaining ASCII characters in a foreignenvironment is a wart. See also {miswart}.
:washing machine: n. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standingcabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the`top-loading' access to the media packs —- and, of course, theywere always set on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiomtranscends language barriers; it is even used in Russian hackerjargon. See also {walking drives}. The thick channel cablesconnecting these were called `bit hoses' (see {hose}).
:water MIPS: n. (see {MIPS}, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional {mainframe} type.
:wave a dead chicken: v. To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare {voodoo programming}, {rain dance}.
:weasel: n. [Cambridge] A na"ive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with {loser}.
:wedged: [from a common description of recto-cranial inversion] adj. 1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, then it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it {deadlock}s with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also {gronk}, {locked up}, {hosed}. Describes a {deadlock}ed condition. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged —- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [UNIX] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
:wedgie: [Fairchild] n. A bug. Prob. related to {wedged}.
:wedgitude: /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n. The quality or state of being {wedged}.
:weeble: /weeb'l/ [Cambridge] interj. Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble…." Compare {gurfle}.
:weeds: n. 1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds…." 2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds' was equivalent to IBM's {branch to Fishkill} and mainstream hackerdom's {jump off into never-never land}.
:weenie: n. 1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing version of {BIFF} that infests many {BBS} systems. The typical weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose {handle} derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among sysops, `the weenie problem' refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden {flamage} weenies tend to spew all over a newly-discovered BBS. Compare {spod}, {computer geek}, {terminal junkie}. 2. [Among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as in {UNIX weenie}, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is positive or negative depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also {bigot}. 3. The semicolon character, `;' (ASCII 0111011).
:Weenix: /wee'niks/ [ITS] n. A derogatory term for {{UNIX}},derived from {UNIX weenie}. According to one noted ex-ITSer, itis "the operating system preferred by Unix Weenies: typified bypoor modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion, no fileversion numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believethat these are all advantages". Some ITS fans behave as thoughthey believe UNIX stole a future that rightfully belonged to them.See {{ITS}}, sense 2.
:well-behaved: adj. 1. [primarily {{MS-DOS}}] Said of softwareconforming to system interface guidelines and standards.Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores suchas keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics. Oppose{ill-behaved}. 2. Software that does its job quietly andwithout counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software havingan interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it canbe used as a {tool} by other software. See {cat}.
:well-connected: adj. Said of a computer installation, this meansthat it has reliable email links with the network and/or thatit relays a large fraction of available {USENET} newsgroups.`Well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also implies that thesite's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive serviceor active USENET users).
:wetware: /wet'weir/ [prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] n.1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware orsoftware. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers."2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attachedto a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware orsoftware. See {liveware}, {meatware}.
:whack: v. According to arch-hacker James Gosling, to "…modify aprogram with no idea whatsoever how it works." (See {whacker}.)It is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances ifthe change is small and well-defined and you are very good at{glark}ing things from context. As a trivial example, it isrelatively easy to change all `stderr' writes to `stdout'writes in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwisemysterious.
:whacker: [University of Maryland: from {hacker}] n. 1. A person,similar to a {hacker}, who enjoys exploring the details ofprogrammable systems and how to stretch their capabilities.Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only endsup whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are oftenquite egotistical and eager to claim {wizard} status,regardless of the views of their peers. 2. A person who is good atprogramming quickly, though rather poorly and ineptly.
:whales: n. See {like kicking dead whales down the beach}.
:whalesong: n. The peculiar clicking and whooshing sounds made by a PEP modem such as the Telebit Trailblazer as it tries to synchronize with another PEP modem for their special high-speed mode. This sound isn't anything like the normal two-tone handshake between conventional modems and is instantly recognizable to anyone who has heard it more than once. It sounds, in fact, very much like whale songs. This noise is also called "the moose call" or "moose tones".
:What's a spline?: [XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: "You have just used a term that I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should know, but don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." The PARC lexicon adds "Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they seem obvious."
:wheel: [from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] n. A person who has an active {wheel bit}. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." (see {wedged}, sense 1.)
:wheel bit: n. A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term entered the UNIX culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also {root}.
:wheel wars: [Stanford University] A period in {larval stage} during which student hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users.
:White Book: n. 1. Syn. {K&R}. 2. Adobe's fourth book in thePostScript series, describing the previously-secret format of Type1 fonts; `Adobe Type 1 Font Format, version 1.1',(Addison-Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-201-57044-0). See also {Red Book},{Green Book}, {Blue Book}.
:whizzy: [Sun] adj. (alt. `wizzy') Describes a {cuspy} program; one that is feature-rich and well presented.
:WIBNI: // [Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] n. What most requirements documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare {IWBNI}.
:widget: n. 1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the parts list for a widget has 52 entries…." 2. [poss. evoking `window gadget'] A user interface object in {X} graphical user interfaces.
:wiggles: n. [scientific computation] In solving partial differential equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength representable on the grid. If an algorithm is unstable, this is often the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution. Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.
:WIMP environment: n. [acronymic from `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down menu)'] A graphical-user-interface-based environment such as {X} or the Macintosh interface, as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility. See {menuitis}, {user-obsequious}.
:win: [MIT] 1. vi. To succeed. A program wins if no unexpected conditions arise, or (especially) if it sufficiently {robust} to take exceptions in stride. 2. n. Success, or a specific instance thereof. A pleasing outcome. A {feature}. Emphatic forms: `moby win', `super win', `hyper-win' (often used interjectively as a reply). For some reason `suitable win' is also common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. Oppose {lose}; see also {big win}, which isn't quite just an intensification of `win'.
:win big: vi. To experience serendipity. "I went shopping and won big; there was a 2-for-1 sale." See {big win}.
:win win: interj. Expresses pleasure at a {win}.
:Winchester:: n. Informal generic term for `floating-head' magnetic-disk drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. The name arose because the original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30—30 became `Winchester' when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge).
:winged comments: n. Comments set on the same line as code, as opposed to {boxed comments}. In C, for example:
d = sqrt(x*x + y*y); /* distance from origin */
Generally these refer only to the action(s) taken on that line.
:winkey: n. (alt. `winkey face') See {emoticon}.
:winnage: /win'*j/ n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is winning.
:winner: 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer,or person. "So it turned out I could use a {lexer} generatorinstead of hand-coding my own pattern recognizer. What a win!"2. `real winner': Often sarcastic, but also used as high praise(see also the note under {user}). "He's a real winner —- neverreports a bug till he can duplicate it and send in anexample."
:winnitude: /win'*-t[y]ood/ n. The quality of winning (as opposedto {winnage}, which is the result of winning). "Guess what?They tweaked the microcode and now the LISP interpreter runs twiceas fast as it used to." "That's really great! Boy, whatwinnitude!" "Yup. I'll probably get a half-hour's winnage on thenext run of my program." Perhaps curiously, the obvious antonym`lossitude' is rare.
:wired: n. See {hardwired}.
:wirehead: /wi:r'hed/ n. [prob. from SF slang for an electrical-brain-stimulation addict] 1. A hardware hacker, especially one who concentrates on communications hardware. 2. An expert in local-area networks. A wirehead can be a network software wizard too, but will always have the ability to deal with network hardware, down to the smallest component. Wireheads are known for their ability to lash up an Ethernet terminator from spare resistors, for example.
:wirewater: n. Syn. {programming fluid}. This melds the mainstream slang adjective `wired' (stimulated, up, hyperactive) with `firewater'.
:wish list: n. A list of desired features or bug fixes that probably won't get done for a long time, usually because the person responsible for the code is too busy or can't think of a clean way to do it. "OK, I'll add automatic filename completion to the wish list for the new interface." Compare {tick-list features}.
:within delta of: adj. See {delta}.
:within epsilon of: adj. See {epsilon}.
:wizard: n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works (that is, who {grok}s it); esp. someone who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is a {hacker} if he or she has general hacking ability, but is a wizard with respect to something only if he or she has specific detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker could become a wizard for something given the time to study it. 2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary people; one who has {wheel} privileges on a system. 3. A UNIX expert, esp. a UNIX systems programmer. This usage is well enough established that `UNIX Wizard' is a recognized job title at some corporations and to most headhunters. See {guru}, {lord high fixer}. See also {deep magic}, {heavy wizardry}, {incantation}, {magic}, {mutter}, {rain dance}, {voodoo programming}, {wave a dead chicken}.
:Wizard Book: n. Hal Abelson and Jerry Sussman's `Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (MIT Press, 1984; ISBN 0-262-01077-1, an excellent computer science text used in introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the jacket. One of the {bible}s of the LISP/Scheme world. Also, less commonly, known as the {Purple Book}.
:wizard mode: [from {rogue}] n. A special access mode of a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. Generally not used for operating systems themselves (`root mode' or `wheel mode' would be used instead).
:wizardly: adj. Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly {feature} is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly.
:womb box: n. 1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment. 2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; mundanely called a `flight case'. Used for delicate test equipment, electronics, and musical instruments.
:WOMBAT: [Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] adj. Applied to problemswhich are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves andunlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often usedin fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'. Seealso {crawling horror}, {SMOP}. Also note the rather differentusage as a metasyntactic variable in {{Commonwealth Hackish}}.
:wonky: /wong'kee/ [from Australian slang] adj. Yet anotherapproximate synonym for {broken}. Specifically connotes amalfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, oramusingly perverse. "That was the day the printer's font logicwent wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar." Also in`wonked out'. See {funky}, {demented}, {bozotic}.
:woofer: [University of Waterloo] n. Some varieties of wide paperfor printers have a perforation 8.5 inches from the left marginthat allows the excess on the right-hand side to be torn off whenthe print format is 80 columns or less wide. The right-hand excessmay be called `woofer'. This term (like {tweeter}, which see)has been in use at Waterloo since 1972, but is elsewhere unknown.In audio jargon, the word refers to the bass speaker(s) on ahi-fi.
:workaround: n. A temporary {kluge} inserted in a system underdevelopment or test in order to avoid the effects of a {bug} or{misfeature} so that work can continue. Theoretically,workarounds are always replaced by {fix}es; in practice,customers often find themselves living with workarounds in thefirst couple of releases. "The code died on NUL characters in theinput, so I fixed it to interpret them as spaces." "That's not afix, that's a workaround!"
:working as designed: [IBM] adj. 1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful, but misdesigned. 2. Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility. 3. Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a criticism or suggestion. At {IBM}, this sense is used in official documents! See {BAD}.
:worm: [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel `The Shockwave Rider', via XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes. Compare {virus}. Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only {cracker}s write worms. Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's `Internet Worm' of 1988, a `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S. See also {cracker}, {RTM}, {Trojan horse}, {ice}, and {Great Worm, the}.
:wound around the axle: adj. In an infinite loop. Often used by older computer types.
:wrap around: vi. (also n. `wraparound' and v. shorthand `wrap') 1. [techspeak] The action of a counter that starts over at zero or at `minus infinity' (see {infinity}) after its maximum value has been reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is programmed to do so or because of an overflow (as when a car's odometer starts over at 0). 2. To change {phase} gradually and continuously by maintaining a steady wake-sleep cycle somewhat longer than 24 hours, e.g., living six long (28-hour) days in a week (or, equivalently, sleeping at the rate of 10 microhertz). See also {phase-wrapping}.
:write-only code: [a play on `read-only memory'] n. Code so arcane, complex, or ill-structured that it cannot be modified or even comprehended by anyone but its author, and possibly not even by him/her. A {Bad Thing}.
:write-only language: n. A language with syntax (or semantics) sufficiently dense and bizarre that any routine of significant size is {write-only code}. A sobriquet applied occasionally to C and often to APL, though {INTERCAL} and {TECO} certainly deserve it more.
:write-only memory: n. The obvious antonym to `read-only memory'. Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics {management} only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the `erroneous' ones. Later, around 1974, Signetics bought a double-page spread in `Electronics' magazine's April issue and used the spec as an April Fools' Day joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included diagrams of "bit capacity vs. Temp.", "Iff vs. Vff", "Number of pins remaining vs. number of socket insertions", and "AQL vs. selling price". The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC VFF supply, a +10V VCC, and VDD of 0V, +/- 2%.
:Wrong Thing: n. A design, action, or decision that is clearly incorrect or inappropriate. Often capitalized; always emphasized in speech as if capitalized. The opposite of the {Right Thing}; more generally, anything that is not the Right Thing. In cases where `the good is the enemy of the best', the merely good —- although good —- is nevertheless the Wrong Thing. "In C, the default is for module-level declarations to be visible everywhere, rather than just within the module. This is clearly the Wrong Thing."
:wugga wugga: /wuh'g* wuh'g*/ n. Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task. Compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, {grind} (sense 4).
:WYSIAYG: /wiz'ee-ayg/ adj. Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is *All* You Get"; an unhappy variant of {WYSIWYG}. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth; they often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a command-style interface. When this happens, the frustrated user has a WYSIAYG problem. This term is most often used of editors, word processors, and document formatting programs. WYSIWYG `desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win for creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them, especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. When typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a command-driven formatter like TeX or UNIX's `troff(1)' becomes not just desirable but a necessity.
:WYSIWYG: /wiz'ee-wig/ adj. Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands which do not result in immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in environments supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a a rarely-attained ideal; there are variants of this term to express real-world manifestations including WYSIAWYG (What You See Is *Almost* What You Get) and WYSIMOLWYG (What You See Is More or Less What You Get). All these can be mildly derogatory, as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down {user-friendly} interfaces targeted at non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands (compare {WYSIAYG}). On the other hand, {EMACS} was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, command-based {TECO}. See also {WIMP environment}. [Oddly enough, WYSIWYG has already made it into the OED, in lower case yet. —- ESR]
= X = =====
:X: /X/ n. 1. Used in various speech and writing contexts (alsoin lowercase) in roughly its algebraic sense of `unknown within aset defined by context' (compare {N}). Thus, the abbreviation680x0 stands for 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, or 68040, and 80x86stands for 80186, 80286 80386 or 80486 (note that a UNIX hackermight write these as 680[0-4]0 and 80[1-4]86 or 680?0 and 80?86respectively; see {glob}). 2. [after the name of an earlierwindow system called `W'] An over-sized, over-featured,over-engineered and incredibly over-complicated window systemdeveloped at MIT and widely used on UNIX systems.
:XEROX PARC: The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than adecade, from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded anastonishing volume of groundbreaking hardware and softwareinnovations. The modern mice, windows, and icons style of softwareinterface was invented there. So was the laser printer, and thelocal-area network; and PARC's series of D machines anticipated thepoweful personal computers of the 1980s by a decade. Sadly, theseprophets were without honor in their own company; so much so thatit became a standard joke to describe PARC as a place characterizedby developing brilliant ideas for everyone else.
:XOFF: /X'of/ n. Syn. {control-S}.
:XON: /X'on/ n. Syn. {control-Q}.
:xor: /X'or/, /kzor/ conj. Exclusive or. `A xor B' means `A or B, but not both'. "I want to get cherry pie xor a banana split." This derives from the technical use of the term as a function on truth-values that is true if exactly one of its two arguments is true.
:xref: /X'ref/ vt., n. Hackish standard abbreviation for `cross-reference'.
:XXX: /X-X-X/ n. A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some hackers liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating.
:xyzzy: /X-Y-Z-Z-Y/, /X-Y-ziz'ee/, /ziz'ee/, or /ik-ziz'ee/ [from the ADVENT game] adj. The {canonical} `magic word'. This comes from {ADVENT}, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. If you type `xyzzy' at the appropriate time, you can move instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter some bit of {magic}, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying simply "Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you do it anyway." "Xyzzy!" Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it would typically respond "Nothing happens", just as {ADVENT} did if the magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. In more recent 32-bit versions, by the way, AOS/VS responds "Twice as much happens". See also {plugh}.
= Y = =====
:YA-: [Yet Another] abbrev. In hackish acronyms this almost invariably expands to {Yet Another}, following the precedent set by UNIX `yacc(1)' (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler). See {YABA}.
:YABA: /ya'b*/ [Cambridge] n. Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would then be `YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions like "What is WYSIWYG?" See also {TLA}.
:YAUN: /yawn/ [Acronym for `Yet Another UNIX Nerd'] n. Reported from the San Diego Computer Society (predominantly a microcomputer users' group) as a good-natured punning insult aimed at UNIX zealots.
:Yellow Book: [proposed] n. The print version of this Jargon File; `The New Hacker's Dictionary', MIT Press, 1991 (ISBN 0-262-68069-6). Includes all the material in the 2.9.6 version of the File, plus a Foreword by Guy L. Steele Jr. and a Preface by Eric S. Raymond. Most importantly, the book version is nicely typeset and includes almost all of the infamous Crunchly cartoons by the Great Quux, each attached to an appropriate entry.
:yellow wire: [IBM] n. Repair wires used when connectors (especially ribbon connectors) got broken due to some schlemiel pinching them, or to reconnect cut traces after the FE mistakenly cut one. Compare {blue wire}, {purple wire}, {red wire}.
:Yet Another: adj. [From UNIX's `yacc(1)', `Yet Another Compiler-Compiler', a LALR parser generator] 1. Of your own work: A humorous allusion often used in titles to acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is. As in `Yet Another AI Group' or `Yet Another Simulated Annealing Algorithm'. 2. Of others' work: Describes something of which there are already far too many. See also {YA-}, {YABA}, {YAUN}.
:You are not expected to understand this: cav. [UNIX] The canonical comment describing something {magic} or too complicated to bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment in the context-switching code of the V6 UNIX kernel.
:You know you've been hacking too long when…: The set-up line for a genre of one-liners told by hackers about themselves. These include the following:
* not only do you check your email more often than your papermail, but you remember your {network address} faster than yourpostal one.* your {SO} kisses you on the neck and the first thing youthink is "Uh, oh, {priority interrupt}."* you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you'redoing it in octal.* your computers have a higher street value than your car.* in your universe, `round numbers' are powers of 2, not 10.* more than once, you have woken up recalling a dream insome programming language.* you realize you have never seen half of your best friends.
[An early version of this entry said "All but one of these have been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of them quite often). Even hackers may have trouble spotting the ringer." The ringer was balancing one's checkbook in octal, which I made up out of whole cloth. Although more respondents picked that one out as fiction than any of the others, I also received multiple independent reports of its actually happening. —- ESR]
:Your mileage may vary: cav. [from the standard disclaimer attached to EPA mileage ratings by American car manufacturers] 1. A ritual warning often found in UNIX freeware distributions. Translates roughly as "Hey, I tried to write this portably, but who *knows* what'll happen on your system?" 2. A qualifier more generally attached to advice. "I find that sending flowers works well, but your mileage may vary."
:Yow!: /yow/ [from "Zippy the Pinhead" comix] interj. A favored hackerexpression of humorous surprise or emphasis. "Yow! Check out whathappens when you twiddle the foo option on this display hack!"Compare {gurfle}.
:yoyo mode: n. The state in which the system is said to be when itrapidly alternates several times between being up and being down.Interestingly (and perhaps not by coincidence), many hardwarevendors give out free yoyos at Usenix exhibits.
Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Touristsstaying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels weresubsequently treated to the sight of 200 of the country's topcomputer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.
:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish: /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs. The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not {parse}d) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.
= Z = =====
:zap: 1. n. Spiciness. 2. vt. To make food spicy. 3. vt. To make someone `suffer' by making his food spicy. (Most hackers love spicy food. Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.) See {zapped}. 4. vt. To modify, usually to correct; esp. used when the action is performed with a debugger or binary patching tool. Also implies surgical precision. "Zap the debug level to 6 and run it again." In the IBM mainframe world, binary patches are applied to programs or to the OS with a program called `superzap', whose file name is `IMASPZAP' (possibly contrived from I M A SuPerZAP). 5. vt. To erase or reset. 6. To {fry} a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh —- I think that lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."
:zapped: adj. Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between foodthat is hot (in temperature) and food that is *spicy*-hot.For example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind ofchicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, {vanilla}wonton soup is hot but not zapped. See also {{oriental food}},{laser chicken}. See {zap}, senses 1 and 2.
:zen: vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flashof enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionallyapplied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out thebuffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast {grok},which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system.Compare {hack mode}. See also {guru}.
:zero: vt. 1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero out'). 2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and directories, where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One may speak of something being `logically zeroed' rather than being `physically zeroed'. See {scribble}.
:zero-content: adj. Syn. {content-free}.
:zeroth: /zee'rohth/ adj. First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0 instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, …, 255 and the digital devices known as `counters' count in this way.
Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter of a publication `chapter 0', especially if it is of an introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition of {K&R}). In recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce {fencepost error}s, though it cannot eliminate them entirely.
:zigamorph: /zig'*-morf/ n. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or {fence} character. Usage: primarily at IBM shops.
:zip: [primarily MS-DOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been written. Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and send it to you." See {arc}, {tar and feather}.
:zipperhead: [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.
:zombie: [UNIX] n. A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a `wait(2)' for it yet). These can be seen in `ps(1)' listings occasionally. Compare {orphan}.
:zorch: /zorch/ 1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink. 2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity approaching lightspeed —- ESR]. 3. [MIT] v. To propel something very quickly. "The new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the network." 4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in which favors are measured. "I'd rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him for the week." 5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability. "I think I'll {punt} that change for now; I've been up for 30 hours and I've run out of zorch."
:Zork: /zork/ n. The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy gaming; see {ADVENT}. Originally written on MIT-DM during the late 1970s, later distributed with BSD UNIX (as a patched, sourceless RT-11 Fortran binary; see {retrocomputing}) and commercialized as `The Zork Trilogy' by Infocom.
:zorkmid: /zork'mid/ n. The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This originated in {zork} but has spread to {nethack} and is referred to in several other games.
= [^A-Za-z] (see {regexp}) = ============================
:'Snooze: /snooz/ [FidoNet] n. Fidonews, the weekly official on-line newsletter of FidoNet. As the editorial policy of Fidonews is "anything that arrives, we print", there are often large articles completely unrelated to FidoNet, which in turn tend to elicit {flamage} in subsequent issues.
:(TM): // [USENET] ASCII rendition of the trademark-superscript symbol appended to phrases that the author feels should be recorded for posterity, perhaps in future editions of this lexicon. Sometimes used ironically as a form of protest against the recent spate of software and algorithm patents and `look and feel' lawsuits. See also {UN*X}.
:-oid: [from `android'] suff. 1. This suffix is used as in mainstream English to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some otherwise slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers will happily use it with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream English. For example, "He's a nerdoid" means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't make the grade; a `modemoid' might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems run at 9600); a `computeroid' might be any {bitty box}. The word `keyboid' could be used to describe a {chiclet keyboard}, but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the speaker's city of origin. 2. There is a more specific sense of `oid' as an indicator for `resembling an android' which in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers. It too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably in the term `trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness). This is probably traceable to the popularization of the term {droid} in "Star Wars" and its sequels.
Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long [though GLS and I can personally confirm only that they were already common in the mid-1970s —- ESR].
:-ware: [from `software'] suff. Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. For examples, see {careware}, {crippleware}, {crudware}, {freeware}, {fritterware}, {guiltware}, {liveware}, {meatware}, {payware}, {psychedelicware}, {shareware}, {shelfware}, {vaporware}, {wetware}.
:/dev/null: /dev-nuhl/ [from the UNIX null device, used as a data sink] n. A notional `black hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. A controversial posting, for example, might end "Kudos to rasputin@kremlin.org, flames to /dev/null". See {bit bucket}.
:0: Numeric zero, as opposed to `O' (the 15th letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero more like an American football stood on end, you're probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom slashed-O is a letter, curse this arrangement). If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse *this* arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a *reversed* slash. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O. Are we sufficiently confused yet?
:1TBS: // n. The "One True Brace Style"; see {indent style}.
:120 reset: /wuhn-twen'tee ree'set/ [from 120 volts, U.S. wall voltage] n. To cycle power on a machine in order to reset or unjam it. Compare {Big Red Switch}, {power cycle}.
:2: infix. In translation software written by hackers, infix 2 often represents the syllable *to* with the connotation `translate to': as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2string (integer to string), and texi2roff (Texinfo to [nt]roff).
:@-party: /at'par`tee/ [from the @-sign in an Internet address] n. (alt. `@-sign party' /at'si:n par`tee/) A semi-closed party thrown for hackers at a science-fiction convention (esp. the annual Worldcon); one must have a {network address} to get in, or at least be in company with someone who does. One of the most reliable opportunities for hackers to meet face to face with people who might otherwise be represented by mere phosphor dots on their screens. Compare {boink}.
:@Begin: // See {\begin}.
:\begin: // [from the LaTeX command] With \end, used humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. For example:
\begin{flame}Predicate logic is the only good programminglanguage. Anyone who would use anything elseis an idiot. Also, all computers should betredecimal instead of binary.\end{flame}
The Scribe users at CMU and elsewhere used to use @Begin/@End in
an identical way (LaTeX was built to resemble Scribe). On USENET,
this construct would more frequently be rendered as `
:(Lexicon Entries End Here):
:Appendix A: Hacker Folklore ****************************
This appendix contains several legends and fables that illuminate the meaning of various entries in the lexicon.
:The Meaning of `Hack': =======================
"The word {hack} doesn't really have 69 different meanings", according to MIT hacker Phil Agre. "In fact, {hack} has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably {random}."
Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it.
An important secondary meaning of {hack} is `a creative practical joke'. This kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures; see the lexicon entries for {pseudo} and {kgbvax}. But here are some examples of pure practical jokes that illustrate the hacking spirit:
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed as a reporter and `interviewed' the director of the University of Washington card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up colored cards to make pictures). The reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and also that the director would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the `Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction sheet for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the blank. The next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts —- large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using these as a guide, they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled instruction sheets for the original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally different. Instead of `WASHINGTON', the word ``CALTECH' was flashed. Another stunt showed the word `HUSKIES', the Washington nickname, but spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have been a picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the beaver —- nature's engineer —- as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative said: "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The Washington student body president remarked: "No hard feelings, but at the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed."
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the direction sheets constituted a form of programming.
Here is another classic hack:
On November 20, 1982, MIT hacked the Harvard-Yale football game. Just after Harvard's second touchdown against Yale, in the first quarter, a small black ball popped up out of the ground at the 40-yard line, and grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The letters `MIT' appeared all over the ball. As the players and officials stood around gawking, the ball grew to six feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of white smoke.
The `Boston Globe' later reported: "If you want to know the truth,MIT won The Game."
The prank had taken weeks of careful planning by members of MIT's Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The device consisted of a weather balloon, a hydraulic ram powered by Freon gas to lift it out of the ground, and a vacuum-cleaner motor to inflate it. They made eight separate expeditions to Harvard Stadium between 1 and 5 A.M., locating an unused 110-volt circuit in the stadium and running buried wires from the stadium circuit to the 40-yard line, where they buried the balloon device. When the time came to activate the device, two fraternity members had merely to flip a circuit breaker and push a plug into an outlet.
This stunt had all the earmarks of a perfect hack: surprise, publicity, the ingenious use of technology, safety, and harmlessness. The use of manual control allowed the prank to be timed so as not to disrupt the game (it was set off between plays, so the outcome of the game would not be unduly affected). The perpetrators had even thoughtfully attached a note to the balloon explaining that the device was not dangerous and contained no explosives.
Harvard president Derek Bok commented: "They have an awful lot of clever people down there at MIT, and they did it again." President Paul E. Gray of MIT said: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I had anything to do with it, but I wish there were."
The hacks above are verifiable history; they can be proved to have happened. Many other classic-hack stories from MIT and elsewhere, though retold as history, have the characteristics of what Jan Brunvand has called `urban folklore' (see {FOAF}). Perhaps the best known of these is the legend of the infamous trolley-car hack, an alleged incident in which engineering students are said to have welded a trolley car to its tracks with thermite. Numerous versions of this have been recorded from the 1940s to the present, most set at MIT but at least one very detailed version set at CMU.
Brian Leibowitz has researched MIT hacks both real and mythical extensively; the interested reader is referred to his delightful pictorial compendium `The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery, and Pranks' (MIT Museum, 1990; ISBN 0-917027-03-5).
Finally, here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks.
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.
The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch.
Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted.
They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs' (daemons, in UNIX terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.
One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These included the following:
* Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in themiddle of a job.* Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that theywould attempt to walk across the floor (see {walking drives}).* The card-punch output device would occasionally start up ofitself and punch a {lace card}. These would usually jam inthe punch.* The console would print snide and insulting messages fromRobin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.* The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could beinstructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A(unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card wasplaced into stacker B). One of the patches installed by theghosts added some code to the card-reader driver… afterreading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker.As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half whenthey were read, leaving the operator to recollate themmanually.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X'ed them… and were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was X'ed, the following sequence of events took place:
!X id1
id1: Friar Tuck… I am under attack! Pray save me! id1: Off (aborted)
id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff of Nottingham's men!
id1: Thank you, my good fellow!
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.
Finally, the system programmers did the latter —- only to find that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel file, in UNIX terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time.