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netsplit
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netrock
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Netscrapen.
[sometimes elaborated to `Netscrape Fornicator', also `Nutscrape'] Standard name-of-insult for Netscape Navigator/Communicator, Netscape's overweight Web browser. CompareInternet Exploiter.
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netsplit
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netter
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Netscrape
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netsplitn.
Syn.netburp.
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netter
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network address
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netsplit
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nettern.
1. Loosely, anyone with anetwork address. 2. More specifically, aUsenetregular. Most often found in the plural. "If you postthatin a technical group, you're going to be flamed by angry netters for the rest of time!"
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network address
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network addressn.
(also `net address') As used by hackers, means an address on `the' network (seethe network; this used to includebang pathaddresses but now almost always implies anInternet address). Net addresses are often used in email text as a more concise substitute for personal names; indeed, hackers may come to know each other quite well by network names without ever learning each others' `legal' monikers. Indeed, display of a network address (e.g on business cards) used to function as an important hacker identification signal, like lodge pins among Masons or tie-dyed T-shirts among Grateful Dead fans. In the day of pervasive Internet this is less true, but you can still be fairly sure that anyone with a network address handwritten on his or her convention badge is a hacker.
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network meltdown
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New Jersey
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network meltdownn.
A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent ofthrashing. This may be induced by aChernobyl packet. See alsobroadcast storm,kamikaze packet.
Network meltdown is often a result of network designs that are optimized for a steady state of moderate load and don't cope well with the very jagged, bursty usage patterns of the real world. One amusing instance of this is triggered by the popular and very bloody shoot-'em-up gameDoomon the PC. When used in multiplayer mode over a network, the game uses broadcast packets to inform other machines when bullets are fired. This causes problems with weapons like the chain gun which fire rapidly -- it can blast the network into a meltdown state just as easily as it shreds opposing monsters.
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New Jersey
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New Testament
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network meltdown
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New Jerseyadj.
[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley] Brain-damaged or of poor design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C, C++, and Unix (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey). "This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from a compiler designed in New Jersey?" CompareBerkeley Quality Software. See alsoUnix conspiracy.
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New Testament
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New Testamentn.
[C programmers] The second edition of K&R's "The C Programming Language" (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI Standard C. SeeK&R; this version is also called `K&R2'.
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newbie/n[y]oo'bee/ n.
[verry common; orig. from British public-school and military slang variant of `new boy'] A Usenet neophyte. This term surfaced in thenewsgrouptalk.bizarrebut is now in wide use (the combination "clueless newbie" is especially common). Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The label `newbie' is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around Usenet for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue. SeeB1FF; see alsognubie.
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newline
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newgroup wars/n[y]oo'groop worz/ n.
[Usenet] The salvos of duelingnewgroupandrmgroupmessages sometimes exchanged by persons on opposite sides of a dispute over whether anewsgroupshould be created net-wide, or (even more frequently) whether an obsolete one should be removed. These usually settle out within a week or two as it becomes clear whether the group has a natural constituency (usually, it doesn't). At times, especially in the completely anarchicalthierarchy, the names of newsgroups themselves become a form of comment or humor; e.g., the groupalt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.borkwhich originated as a birthday joke for a Muppets fan, or any number of specialized abuse groups named after particularly notoriousflamers, e.g.,alt.weemba.
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newline/n[y]oo'li:n/ n.
1. [techspeak, primarily Unix] The ASCII LF character (0001010), used underUnixas a text line terminator. Though the term `newline' appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before Unix. 2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a text record or separate lines. Seecrlf,terpri.
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NeWS/nee'wis/, /n[y]oo'is/ or /n[y]ooz/ n.
[acronym; the `Network Window System'] The road not taken in window systems, an elegantPostScript-based environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war withXif it hadn't beenproprietaryto Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS from Usenet news (thenetnewssoftware).
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newsfroup// n.
[Usenet] Silly synonym fornewsgroup, originally a typo but now in regular use on Usenet's talk.bizarre, and other lunatic-fringe groups. Comparehing,grilf,pr0nandfilk.
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newsgroupn.
[Usenet] One ofUsenet's huge collection of topic groups orfora. Usenet groups can be `unmoderated' (anyone can post) or `moderated' (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups have parallelmailing lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as `digests', with groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting with an index.
Among the best-known arecomp.lang.c(the C-language forum),comp.arch(on computer architectures),comp.unix.wizards(for Unix wizards),rec.arts.sf.writtenand siblings (for science-fiction fans), andtalk.politics.misc(miscellaneous political discussions andflamage).
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nickn.
[IRC; very common] Short for nickname. OnIRC, every user must pick a nick, which is sometimes the same as the user's real name or login name, but is often more fanciful. Comparehandle,screen name.
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nickle/ni'kl/ n.
[from `nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin] Anybble+ 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM. See alsodeckle, andnybblefor names of other bit units.
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night moden.
Seephase(of people).
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Nightmare File Systemn.
Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higherspllevel). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen -- worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a greatmisfeature). (ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s.) See alsobroadcast storm.
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NIL/nil/
No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the `-P' convention. Most hackers assume this derives simply from LISP terminology for `false' (see alsoT), but NIL as a negative reply was well-established among radio hams decades before the advent of LISP. The historical connection between early hackerdom and the ham radio world was strong enough that this may have been an influence.
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Ninety-Ninety Rulen.
"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon Bentley's September 1985 "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" column in "Communications of the ACM". It was there called the "Rule of Credibility", a name which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in the same vein include the law attributed to the early British computer scientist Douglas Hartree: "The time from now until the completion of the project tends to become constant."
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nipple mousen.
Var. `clit mouse, clitoris' Common term for the pointing device used on IBM ThinkPads and a few other laptop computers. The device, which sits between the `g' and `h' keys on the keyboard, indeed resembles a rubber nipple intended to be tweaked by a forefinger. Many hackers consider these superior to the glide pads found on most laptops, which are harder to control precisely.
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NMI/N-M-I/ n.
Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 80[1234]86. In contrast with apriority interrupt(which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI isneverignored. Except, that is, oncloneboxes, where NMI is often ignored on the motherboard because flaky hardware can generate many spurious ones.
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no-op/noh'op/ n.,v.
alt. NOP /nop/ [no operation] 1. A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be removed in binaries). 2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. As in "He's a no-op." 3. Any operation or sequence of operations with no effect, such as circling the block without finding a parking space, or putting money into a vending machine and having it fall immediately into the coin-return box, or asking someone for help and being told to go away. "Oh, well, that was a no-op." Hot-and-sour soup (seegreat-wall) that is insufficiently either is `no-op soup'; so is wonton soup if everybody else is having hot-and-sour.
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noddy/nod'ee/ adj.
[UK: from the children's books] 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program ishello world. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This editor's a bit noddy." 2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes ahacksufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll just throw together a noddyawkscript to dump all the first fields." In North America this might be called amickey mouse program. Seetoy program.
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noden.
1. [Internet, UUCP] A host machine on the network. 2. [MS-DOS BBSes] A dial-in line on a BBS. Thus an MS-DOSsysopmight say that his BBS has 4 nodes even though it has a single machine and no Internet link, confusing an Internet hacker no end.
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Nominal Semidestructorn.
Soundalike slang for `National Semiconductor', found among other places in the Networking/2 networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the NS16000 and NS32000 and several variants. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors. CompareHP-SUX,AIDX,buglix,Macintrash,Telerat,ScumOS,sun-stools,Slowlaris,Internet Exploder.
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