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burble
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buried treasure
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bump
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burblev.
[from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"] Likeflame, but connotes that the source is truly clueless and ineffectual (mere flamers can be competent). A term of deep contempt. "There's some guy on the phone burbling about how he got a DISK FULL error and it's all our comm software's fault." This is mainstream slang in some parts of England.
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buried treasure
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burn-in period
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burble
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buried treasuren.
A surprising piece of code found in some program. While usually not wrong, it tends to vary fromcruftytobletcherous, and has lain undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however horrible it is. Used sarcastically, because what is found is anythingbuttreasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "I just found that the scheduler sorts its queue usingbubble sort! Buried treasure!"
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burn-in period
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burst page
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buried treasure
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= B =
burn-in periodn.
1. A factory test designed to catch systems withmarginalcomponents before they get out the door; the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of thebathtub curve(seeinfant mortality). 2. A period of indeterminate length in which a person using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning: Excessive burn-in can lead to burn-out. Seehack mode,larval stage.
Historical note: the origin of "burn-in" (sense 1) is apparently the practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes on fire, then extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold better. This was done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane, the U-2.
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burst page
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busy-wait
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burn-in period
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burst pagen.
Syn.banner, sense 1.
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busy-wait
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buzz
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burst page
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= B =
busy-waitvi.
Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy waiting for someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and thus cannot do anything else at the moment. "Can't talk now, I'm busy-waiting till Bill gets off the phone."
Technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event byspinning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. In applications this is a wasteful technique, and best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program mayhogthe processor. However, it is often unavoidable in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel busy-waits are usually referred to as `spinlocks'.
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buzz
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BWQ
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busy-wait
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= B =
buzzvi.
1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing appears to becatatonic, but never gets out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "The program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into order." Seespin; see alsogrovel. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity, esp. by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail an AC buzz test. 3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a terminator type."
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BWQ
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by hand
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buzz
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= B =
BWQ/B-W-Q/ n.
[IBM: abbreviation, `Buzz Word Quotient'] The percentage of buzzwords in a speech or documents. Usually roughly proportional tobogosity. SeeTLA.
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by hand
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byte
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BWQ
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= B =
by handadv.
[common] 1. Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial, and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. "My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand." This does not necessarily mean the speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say, dropping into a subshell from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox file, reading that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of the message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting `>' characters on each line, writing the file, leaving the editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and later remembering to delete the file. Compareeyeball search. 2. By extension, writing code which does something in an explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine ought to have been available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't supply a decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."
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byte
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byte sex
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by hand
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= B =
byte/bi:t/ n.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes have become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally it was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used 6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360. The word was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally misspelled asbit. See alsonybble.
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byte sex
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bytesexual
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byte
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byte sexn.
[common] The byte sex of hardware isbig-endianorlittle-endian; see those entries.
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bytesexual
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Bzzzt! Wrong.
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byte sex
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= B =
bytesexual/bi:t`sek'shu-*l/ adj.
[rare] Said of hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data in eitherbig-endianorlittle-endianformat (depending, presumably, on amode bitsomewhere). See alsoNUXI problem.
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Bzzzt! Wrong.
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C
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bytesexual
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= B =
Bzzzt! Wrong./bzt rong/ excl.
[common; Usenet/Internet; punctuation varies] From a Robin Williams routine in the movie "Dead Poets Society" spoofing radio or TV quiz programs, such asTruth or Consequences, where an incorrect answer earns one a blast from the buzzer and condolences from the interlocutor. A way of expressing mock-rude disagreement, usually immediately following an included quote from another poster. The less abbreviated "*Bzzzzt*, wrong, but thank you for playing" is also common; capitalization and emphasis of the buzzer sound varies.
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= C =
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= D =
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= B =
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The Jargon Lexicon
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C
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C Programmer's Disease
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Bzzzt! Wrong.