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egosurf
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eighty-column mind
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ed
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egosurfvi.
To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps connected to long-established SF-fan slang `egoscan', to search for one's name in a fanzine.
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eighty-column mind
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El Camino Bignum
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eighty-column mindn.
[IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition frompunched cardto 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 consoleOf hunger and thirst.Next day he was buried,Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of thekiller micro. SeeIBM,fear and loathing,card walloper. A copy of "The Last Bug" lives on the the GNU site at http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.
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El Camino Bignum
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elder days
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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 defineslogicalnorth 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. (Seebignum.)
[GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was in fact himself --ESR]
In recent years, the synonym `El Camino Virtual' has been reported as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley. Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard to refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as "El Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection is located near Moffett Field - where they keep all those complex planes.
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elder days
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elegant
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elder daysn.
The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of thePDP-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". CompareIron Age; see alsoelvishandGreat Worm.
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elegant
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elephantine
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elder days
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elegantadj.
[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever', `winning', or evencuspy.
The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 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."
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elephantine
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elevator controller
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elephantineadj.
Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuoushogs (owing perhaps to poor design founded onbrute force and ignorance) and exceedinglyhairyin 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 pejorativemonstrosity. See alsosecond-system effectandbaroque.
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elevator controller
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elite
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elevator controllern.
An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, liketoaster(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 requireprintf(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 severalholy wars.
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elite
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ELIZA effect
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eliteadj.
Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a general positive adjective. This term is not actually native hacker slang; it is used primarily by crackers andwarez d00dz, for which reason hackers use it only with heavy irony. The term used to refer to the folks allowed in to the "hidden" or "privileged" sections of BBSes in the early 1980s (which, typically, contained pirated software). Frequently, early boards would only let you post, or even see, a certain subset of the sections (or `boards') on a BBS. Those who got to the frequently legendary `triple super secret' boards were elite. Misspellings of this term in warez d00dz style abound; the forms `eleet', and `31337' (among others) have been sighted.
A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Opposelamer.
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ELIZA effect
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elvish
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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 aGood Thingwhen writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system. Comparead-hockery; see alsoAI-complete. Sources for a clone of the original Eliza are available atftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.
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elvish
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EMACS
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elvishn.
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 phoneticallyelegant) 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 alsoelder days. 2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called `Böcklin', an art-Noveau display font.
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EMACS
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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 inTECOunderITSat 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 "GNUEMACS" orGNUMACS, runs principally under Unix. (Its close relative XEmacs is the second most popular version.) It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail or news; many hackers spend up to 80% of theirtube timeinside it. Other variants includeGOSMACS, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS. (Though we use the original all-caps spelling here, it is nowadays very commonly `Emacs'.)
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 tooheavyweightandbaroquefor their taste, and expand the name as `Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated withbucky bits. Other spoof expansions include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping' (from when that was a lot ofcore), `Eventuallymalloc()s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow' (seerecursive acronym). See alsovi.
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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. Contrastsnail-mail,paper-net,voice-net. Seenetwork 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 `émaillé' (enameled) and related to Old French `emmailleüre' (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.
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emoticon
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emoticon/ee-moh'ti-kon/ n.
[common] 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 bynewbies), resulting in arguments andflame wars.
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 alsobixie. OnUsenet, `smiley' is often used as a generic term synonymous withemoticon, as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon.
It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on the CMUbboardsystems sometime between early 1981 and mid-1982. 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 thenewbie: 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.
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empire
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EMP/E-M-P/
Seespam.
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empire
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empiren.
Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. A number of 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. Of various commercial derivatives the best known is probably "Empire Deluxe" on PCs and Amigas.
Modern empire is a real-time wargame played over the internet by up to 120 players. Typical games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple of months (long term). The amount of sleep you can get while playing is a function of the rate at which updates occur and the number of co-rulers of your country. Empire server software is available for unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other platforms. A comprehensive history of the game is available at http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. The Empire resource site is at http://www.empire.cx/.
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engine
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English
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enginen.
1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind offront 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 hacker 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'.
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English
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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. Today the prefereed shorthand is sinplysource. 2. The official name of the database language used by the old Pick Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of grandeur. The name permittedmarketroids to say "Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorantsuits without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.
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enhancement
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ENQ
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enhancementn.
Commonmarketroid-speak for a bugfix. 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 afeature-- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself to be a feature.
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ENQ
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ENQ/enkw/ or /enk/
[from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After opening atalk modeconnection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might typeSYN SYN ENQ?(the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return ofACKorNAKdepending on whether or not the person felt interruptible. Compareping,finger, and the usage ofFOO?listed undertalk mode.
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EOF
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EOL
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EOF/E-O-F/ n.
[abbreviation, `End Of File'] 1. [techspeak] Theout-of-bandvalue returned by C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is usually -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was originally 0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few Amiga hackers think it's ^\. 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 aJCLmanual." See alsoEOL.
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EOL
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