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spam bait
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spamblock
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spam
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spam baitn.
Email addresses included in, or comprising the entirety of, a usenet message so that spammers mining a newsgroup with anaddress harvesterwill collect them. These addresses can be people who have offended or annoyed the poster, or who are included so that a spammer will spam an official, thereby causing himself trouble. One particularly effective form of spam bait is the address of ateergrube.
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spamblock
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spamhaus
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spamblock/spam'blok/ n.
[poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email address to render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For example, the address `jrandom@hacker.org' might be transformed to `jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org'. Adding spamblock to an address is often referred to as `munging' it (seemunge)-. This evasion tactic depends on the fact that most spammers collect names with some sort ofaddress harvesteron volumes too high to de-mung by hand, but individual humans reading an email message can readily spot and remove a spamblock in the from address.
Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life. In both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart address harvester from mining out the addresses in the message header and trace lines. Therefore the only people who can be protected are third parties mentioned by email address in the message - not a common enough case to interest spammers.
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spamhaus
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spamvertize
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spamblock
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spamhausspam'hows n.
Pejorative term for an internet service provider that permits or even encouragesspammailings from its systems. The plural is `spamhausen'. There is a web page devoted to tracking spamhausen.
The most notorious of the spamhausen was Sanford Wallace's Cyber Promotions Inc., shut down by a lawsuit on 16 October 1997. The anniversary of the shutdown is celebrated on Usenet as Spam Freedom Day, but lesser imitators of the Spamford still infest various murky corners of the net. Since prosecution of spammers became routine under the junk-fax laws and statues specifically targeting spam, spamhausen have declined in relative importance; today, hit-and-run attacks by spammers usingrelay rapeandthrowaway accounts on reputable ISPs seem to account for most of the flow.
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spamvertize
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spangle
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spamhaus
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spamvertizev.
To advertise usingspam. Pejorative.
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spangle
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spawn
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spamvertize
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spanglen.
[UK] The singular ofbells and whistles. See alsospungle.
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spawn
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special-case
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spangle
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spawnn.,vi.
1. [techspeak] In UNIX parlance, to create a child process from within a process. Technically this is a `fork'; the term `spawn' is a bit more general and is used for threads (lightweight processes) as well as traditional heavyweight processes. 2. In gaming, meant to indicate where (`spawn-point') and when a player comes to life (or `re-spawns') after being killed. Opposite offrag.
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special-case
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speedometer
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spawn
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special-casevt.
To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in a program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text entry or normal commands), or for processing ofhidden flags in the input of a batch program orfilter.
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speedometer
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spell
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special-case
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speedometern.
A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today) or nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is shifted left every N times the operating system goes through itsmain loop. A swiftly moving pattern indicates that the system is mostly idle; the speedometer slows down as the system becomes overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the wretched "Battlestar Galactica" TV series.
Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell 6000) actually had ananalogspeedometer on the front panel, calibrated in instructions executed per second.
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spell
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spelling flame
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speedometer
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spelln.
Syn.incantation.
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spelling flame
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spider
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spell
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spelling flamen. //
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (comparedictionary flame). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to thinkanycorrection is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
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spider
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spider food
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spider
The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for indexing in the search engine's database. Also called abot. The best-known spider is Scooter, the web-walker for the Alta Vista search engine.
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spider food
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spiffy
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spider
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spider foodn.
Keywords embedded (usually invisibly) into a web page to attract search engines (spiders). The intended result of including spider food in one's web page is to insure that the page appears high on the list of matching entries to a search engine query. There are right and wrong ways to do this; the right way is a discreet `meta keywords' tag, the wrong way is to embed many repeats of a keyword in comments (and many search engines now detect and ignore the latter).
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spiffy
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spike
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spiffy/spi'fee/ adj.
1. Said of programs having a pretty, clever, or exceptionally well-designed interface. "Have you seen the spiffyXversion ofempireyet?" 2. Said sarcastically of a program that is perceived to have little more than a flashy interface going for it. Which meaning should be drawn depends delicately on tone of voice and context. This word was common mainstream slang during the 1940s, in a sense close to 1.
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spike
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spin
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spikev.
To defeat a selection mechanism by introducing a (sometimes temporary) device that forces a specific result. The word is used in several industries; telephone engineers refer to spiking a relay by inserting a pin to hold the relay in either the closed or open state, and railroaders refer to spiking a track switch so that it cannot be moved. In programming environments it normally refers to a temporary change, usually for testing purposes (as opposed to a permanent change, which would be calledhardwired).
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spin
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spl
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spike
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spinvi.
Equivalent tobuzz. More common among C and Unix programmers. See the discussion of `spinlock' underbusy-wait.
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spl
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splash screen
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spin
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spl/S-P-L/
[abbrev, from Set Priority Level] The way traditional Unix kernels implement mutual exclusion by running code at high interrupt levels. Used in jargon to describe the act of tuning in or tuning out ordinary communication. Classically, spl levels run from 1 to 7; "Fred's at spl 6 today" would mean that he is very hard to interrupt. "Wait till I finish this; I'll spl down then." See alsointerrupts locked out.
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splash screen
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splat
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spl
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splash screenn.
[Mac users] Syn.banner, sense 3.
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splat
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splat out
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splatn.
1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk (*) character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive from the `squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers. 2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the#character (ASCII 0100011). 3. Thefeature keyon a Mac (same asalt, sense 2). 4. obs. Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character. This character is also called `blobby' and `frob', among other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation for `tensor product'. 5. obs. Name for the semi-mythical Stanford extended ASCII circle-plus character. See alsoASCII.
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splat out
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splat outv.
[Usenet] To partially obscure a potentially provocative word by substitutingsplatcharacters for some of its letters (usually, but not always, the vowels). The purpose is not to make the word unrecognizable but to make it a mention rather than a use, so that no flamewar ensues. Words often splatted out include N*z* (seeGodwin's Law), *v*l*t**n (anywhere fundamentalists might be lurking), *b*rt**n, and g*n c*ntr*l. CompareUNX.
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spod
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spoiler
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spodn.
[UK] 1. A lower form of life found ontalker systems andMUDs. The spod has few friends inRLand uses talkers instead, finding communication easier and preferable over the net. He has all the negative traits of thecomputer geekwithout having any interest in computers per se. Lacking any knowledge of or interest in how networks work, and considering his access a God-given right, he is a major irritant to sysadmins, clogging up lines in order to reach new MUDs, following passed-on instructions on how to sneak his way onto Internet ("Wow! It's in America!") and complaining when he is not allowed to use busy routes. A true spod will start any conversation with "Are you male or female?" (and follow it up with "Got any good numbers/IDs/passwords?") and will not talk to someone physically present in the same terminal room until they log onto the same machine that he is using and enter talk mode. Comparenewbie,tourist,weenie,twink,terminal junkie,warez d00dz. 2. Abackronymfor "Sole Purpose, Obtain a Degree"; according to some self-described spods, this term is used by indifferent students to condemn their harder-working fellows. Compare the defiant adoption of the term `geek' in the mid-1990s by people who would previously have been stigmatized by it (seecomputer geek). 3. [obs.] An ordinary person; arandom. This is the meaning with which the term was coined, but the inventor informs us he has himself accepted sense 1.
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spoiler
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spoiler space
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spoilern.
[Usenet] 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie. 2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see alsointeresting). Either sense readily forms compounds like `total spoiler', `quasi-spoiler' and even `pseudo-spoiler'.
By convention, articles which are spoilers in either sense should contain the word `spoiler' in the Subject: line, or guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information viarot13,spoiler spaceor some combination of these techniques.
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spoiler space
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sponge
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spoiler
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spoiler space
[also `spoiler spoo'] A screenful of blank lines (and, often, form-feeds) deliberately inserted in a message following aspoilerwarning, so the actual spoiler can't be seen without hitting a key.
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sponge
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spoof
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spongen.
[Unix] A special case of afilterthat reads its entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently overwrite the input file with the output data stream. If a file system has versioning (as ITS did and VMS does now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness, because directing filter output would just write a new version. See alsoslurp.
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spoof
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spool
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spoofvi.
To capture, alter, and retransmit a communication stream in a way that misleads the recipient. As used by hackers, refers especially to altering TCP/IP packet source addresses or other packet-header data in order to masquerade as a trusted machine. This term has become very widespread and is borderline techspeak.
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spool
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spool file
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spoolvi.
[from early IBM `Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line', but is widely thought to be abackronym] To send files to some device or program (a `spooler') that queues them up and does something useful with them later. Without qualification, the spooler is the `print spooler' controlling output of jobs to a printer; but the term has been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. See alsodemon.
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spool file
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spungle
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spool
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spool filen.
Any file to which data isspooled to await the next stage of processing. Especially used in circumstances where spooling the data copes with a mismatch between speeds in two devices or pieces of software. For example, when you send mail under Unix, it's typically copied to a spool file to await a transportdemon's attentions. This is borderline techspeak.
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spungle
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square tape
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spool file
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spunglen.
[Durham, UK; portmanteau,spangle+ bungle] Aspangleof no actual usefulness. Example: Roger the Bent Paperclip in Microsoft Word '98. A spungle's only virtue is that it looks pretty, unless you find creeping featurism ugly.