= F =
firehose syndromen.
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. Compareoverrun,buffer overflow.
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firewall code
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firewall machine
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firehose syndrome
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= F =
firewall coden.
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 acan't happenerror. 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.
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firewall machine
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fireworks mode
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firewall code
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= F =
firewall machinen.
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 fromcrackers. 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 completeiron boxkeyable to particular incoming IDs or activity patterns. Syn.flytrap,Venus flytrap.
[When first coined in the mid-1980s this term was pure jargon. Now (1999) it is techspeak, and has been retained only as an example of uptake --ESR]
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fireworks mode
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firmware
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firewall machine
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= F =
fireworks moden.
1. The mode a machine is sometimes said to be in when it is performing acrash and burnoperation. 2. There is (or was) a more specific meaning of this term in the Amiga community. The word fireworks described the effects of a particularly serious crash which prevented the video pointer(s) from getting reset at the start of the vertical blank. This caused the DAC to scroll through the entire contents of CHIP (video or video+CPU) memory. Since each bit plane would scroll separately this was quite a spectacular effect.
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firmware
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firmy
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fireworks mode
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= F =
firmware/ferm'weir/ n.
Embedded software contained in EPROM or flash memory. It isn't quite hardware, but at least doesn't have to be loaded from a disk like regular software. Hacker usage differs from straight techspeak in that hackers don't normally apply it to stuff that you can't possibly get at, such as the program that runs a pocket calculator. Instead, it implies that the firmware could be changed, even if doing so would mean opening a box and plugging in a new chip. A computer's BIOS is the classic example, although nowadays there is firmware in disk controllers, modems, video cards and even CD-ROM drives.
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firmy
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fish
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firmware
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= F =
firmy/fer'mee/ n.
Syn.stiffy(a 3.5-inch floppy disk).
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fish
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FISH queue
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firmy
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= F =
fishn.
[Adelaide University, Australia] 1. Anothermetasyntactic variable. Seefoo. 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'.
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FISH queue
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FITNR
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fish
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= F =
FISH queuen.
[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.
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FITNR
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fix
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FISH queue
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= F =
FITNR// adj.
[Thinking Machines, Inc.] Fixed In The Next Release. A written-only notation attached to bug reports. Often wishful thinking.
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fix
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FIXME
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FITNR
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= F =
fixn.,v.
What one does when a problem has been reported too many times to be ignored.
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FIXME
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flag
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fix
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= F =
FIXMEimp.
[common] A standard tag often put in C comments near a piece of code that needs work. The point of doing so is that agrepor a similar pattern-matching tool can find all such places quickly.
/* FIXME: note this is common inGNUcode. */
CompareXXX.
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flag
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flag day
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FIXME
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flagn.
[very common] 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 tobit. See alsohidden flag,mode bit.
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flag day
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flaky
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flag
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flag dayn.
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 wordflagto mean a variable that has two values. It came into use when a massive change was made to theMulticstimesharing system to convert from the short-lived 1965 version of the ASCII code to the 1967 version (in draft at the time); this was scheduled for Flag Day (a U.S. holiday), June 14, 1966. The actual change moved the code point for the ASCII newline character; this required that all of the Multics source code, documentation, and device drivers be changed simultaneously. See alsobackward combatability.
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flaky
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flamage
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flag day
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flakyadj.
(var sp. `flakey') Subject to frequentlossage. 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 prefersdodgyorwonky.
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flamage
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flame
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flaky
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flamage/flay'm*j/ n.
[very common] Flaming verbiage, esp. high-noise, low-signal postings toUsenetor other electronicfora. Often in the phrase `the usual flamage'. `Flaming' is the act itself; `flamage' the content; a `flame' is a single flaming message. Seeflame, alsodahmum.
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flame
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flame bait
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flamage
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flame
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole'] 1. vi. To post an email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
The term may have been independently invented at several different places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI (among many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the University of Virginia in the early 1960s.
It is possible that the hackish sense of `flame' is much older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida", Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.
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flame bait
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flame on
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flame
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flame baitn.
[common] A posting intended to trigger aflame war, or one that invites flames in reply. See alsotroll.
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flame on
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flame war
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flame bait
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flame onvi.,interj.
1. To begin toflame. The punning reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized. 2. To continue to flame. Seerave,burble.
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flame war
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flamer
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flame on
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flame warn.
[common] (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute, especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such asUsenet.
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flamer
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flap
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flame war
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flamern.
[common] One who habituallyflames. Said esp. of obnoxiousUsenetpersonalities.
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flap
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flarp
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flamer
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flapvt.
1. [obs.] To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...). Old-time hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and DEC microtapes were 1, 2,...and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk. 2. By extension, to unload any magnetic tape. See alsomacrotape. Modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of its many tape-eating failure modes.)
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flarp
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flash crowd
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flap
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flarp/flarp/ n.
[Rutgers University] Yet anothermetasyntactic variable(seefoo). Among those who use it, it is associated with a legend that any program not containing the word `flarp' somewhere will not work. The legend is discreetly silent on the reliability of programs whichdocontain the magic word.
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flash crowd
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flat
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flarp
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flash crowd
Larry Niven's 1973 SF short story "Flash Crowd" predicted that one consequence of cheap teleportation would be huge crowds materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty years later the term passed into common use on the Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when one passes a certain threshold of popular interest (this may also be calledslashdot effect).
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flat
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flat-ASCII
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flash crowd
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flatadj.
1. [common] Lacking any complex internal structure. "Thatbitty boxhas only a flat filesystem, not a hierarchical one." The verb form isflatten. 2. Said of a memory architecture (like that of the VAX or 680x0) that is one big linear address space (typically with each possible value of a processor register corresponding to a unique core address), as opposed to a `segmented' architecture (like that of the 80x86) in which addresses are composed from a base-register/offset pair (segmented designs are generally consideredcretinous).
Note that sense 1 (at least with respect to filesystems) is usually used pejoratively, while sense 2 is aGood Thing.
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flat-ASCII
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flat-file
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flat
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flat-ASCIIadj.
[common] Said of a text file that contains only 7-bit ASCII characters and uses only ASCII-standard control characters (that is, has no embedded codes specific to a particular text formatter markup language, or output device, and nometa-characters). Syn.plain-ASCII. Compareflat-file.
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flat-file
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flatten
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flat-ASCII
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flat-fileadj.
Aflattened representation of some database or tree or network structure as a single file from which the structure could implicitly be rebuilt, esp. one inflat-ASCIIform. See alsosharchive.
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flatten
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flavor
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flat-file
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flattenvt.
[common] To remove structural information, esp. to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping toflat-ASCII. "This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalentcanonicalform."
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flavor
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flavorful
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flatten
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flavorn.
1. [common] Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and small green ones." "Linux is a flavor of Unix" Seevanilla. 2. The attribute that causes something to beflavorful. Usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavor". "This convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down." Seevanilla. This usage was certainly reinforced by the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) -- however, hackish use of `flavor' at MIT predated QCD. 3. The term for `class' (in the object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors design has been superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS facility), the term `flavor' is still used as a general synonym for `class' by some LISP hackers.