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text
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thanks in advance
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TeX
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textn.
1. [techspeak] Executable code, esp. a `pure code' portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking OS. CompareEnglish. 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinaryASCIIorEBCDICrepresentation (seeflat-ASCII). "Those are text files; you can review them using the editor." These two contradictory senses confuse hackers, too.
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thanks in advance
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That's not a bug that's a feature!
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text
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thanks in advance
[Usenet] Conventional net.politeness ending a posted request for information or assistance. Sometimes written `advTHANKSance' or `aTdHvAaNnKcSe' or abbreviated `TIA'. Seenet.-,netiquette.
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That's not a bug that's a feature!
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the literature
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thanks in advance
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That's not a bug, that's a feature!
Thecanonicalfirst parry in a debate about a purported bug. The complainant, if unconvinced, is likely to retort that the bug is then at best amisfeature. See alsofeature.
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the literature
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the network
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the literaturen.
Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes istrivial. Thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." OpposeKnuth, which has no connotation of triviality.
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the network
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the X that can be Y is not the true X
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the literature
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the networkn.
1. Historicaslly, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet,BITNET, and the virtual UUCP andUsenet`networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site is generally considered `on the network' if it can be reached through some combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. SeeInternet,bang path,Internet address,network address. 2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, "the network" is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before the second wave of wide-area computer networking began around 1980). 3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel "Schrödinger's Cat", to which many hackers have subsequently decided they belong (this is an example ofha ha only serious).
In sense 1, `the network' is often abbreviated to `the net'. "Are you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
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the X that can be Y is not the true X
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theology
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the network
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the X that can be Y is not the true X
Yet another instance of hackerdom's peculiar attraction to mystical references -- a common humorous way of making exclusive statements about a class of things. The template is from the "Tao te Ching": "The Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao." The implication is often that the X is a mystery accessible only to the enlightened. See thetrampolineentry for an example, and comparehas the X nature.
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theology
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theory
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theologyn.
1. Ironically or humorously used to refer toreligious issues. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, esp. those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relativelymarginalwith respect to actual use of a design or system. Used esp. around software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.
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theory
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thinko
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theology
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theoryn.
The consensus, idea, plan, story, or set of rules that is currently being used to inform a behavior. This usage is a generalization and (deliberate) abuse of the technical meaning. "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner tonight?" ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory on letting lusers on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw...."
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thinko
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This can't happen
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theory
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thinko/thing'koh/ n.
[by analogy with `typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn.braino; see alsobrain fart. Comparemouso.
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This can't happen
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This time for sure!
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thinko
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This can't happen
Less clipped variant ofcan't happen.
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This time for sure!
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thrash
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This time, for sure!excl.
Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g., attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" Thecanonicalresponse is, of course, "But that trickneverworks!" Seehacker humor.
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thrash
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thread
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thrashvi.
To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Paging or swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation) and are therefore said to thrash. Someone who keeps changing his mind (esp. about what to work on next) is said to be thrashing. A person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be described as thrashing. Comparemultitask.
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thread
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three-finger salute
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threadn.
[Usenet, GEnie, CompuServe] Common abbreviation of `topic thread', a more or less continuous chain of postings on a single topic. To `follow a thread' is to read a series of Usenet postings sharing a common subject or (more correctly) which are connected by Reference headers. The better newsreaders can present news in thread order automatically. Not to be confused with the techspeak sense of `thread', e.g. a lightweight process.
Interestingly, this is far from a neologism. The OED says: "That which connects the successive points in anything, esp. a narrative, train of thought, or the like; the sequence of events or ideas continuing throughout the whole course of anything;" Citations are given going back to 1642!
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three-finger salute
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throwaway account
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thread
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three-finger saluten.
Syn.Vulcan nerve pinch.
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throwaway account
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thud
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three-finger salute
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throwaway accountn.
1. An inexpensive Internet account purchased on a legitimateISPfor the the sole purpose of spewingspam. 2. An inexpensive Internet account obtained for the sole purpose of doing something which requires a valid email address but being able to ignore spam since the user will not look at the account again.
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thud
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thumb
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throwaway account
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thudn.
1. Yet anothermetasyntactic variable(seefoo). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was `foo', `bar', `thud', `blat'. 2. Rare term for the hash character, `#' (ASCII 0100011). SeeASCIIfor other synonyms.
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thumb
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thundering herd problem
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thud
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thumbn.
The slider on a window-system scrollbar. So called because moving it allows you to browse through the contents of a text window in a way analogous to thumbing through a book.
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thundering herd problem
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thunk
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thundering herd problem
Scheduler thrashing. This can happen under Unix when you have a number of processes that are waiting on a single event. When that event (a connection to the web server, say) happens, every process which could possibly handle the event is awakened. In the end, only one of those processes will actually be able to do the work, but, in the meantime, all the others wake up and contend for CPU time before being put back to sleep. Thus the system thrashes briefly while a herd of processes thunders through. If this starts to happen many times per second, the performance impact can be significant.
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thunk
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thunk/thuhnk/ n.
1. [obs.]"A piece of coding which provides an address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding actual parameters to their formal definitions in Algol-60 procedure calls. If a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a formal parameter, the compiler generates a thunk which computes the expression and leaves the address of the result in some standard location. 2. Later generalized into: an expression, frozen together with its environment, for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to what in techspeak is called a `closure'). The process of unfreezing these thunks is called `forcing'. 3. Astubroutine, in an overlay programming environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Comparetrampoline. 4. People and activities scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by a thunk -- I frequently need to be forced to completion." -- paraphrased from aplan file.
Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is that it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator. Yet another suggests that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the inventors, it was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 could be figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had `already been thought of'; thus it was christened a `thunk', which is "the past tense of `think' at two in the morning".
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tick
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tick-list features
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tickn.
1. Ajiffy(sense 1). 2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is the ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is often pejoratively referred to as `tick-tick-tick' simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long, independent chains of causes ishandwaved. 3. In the FORTH language, a single quote character.
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tick-list features
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tickle a bug
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tick
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tick-list featuresn.
[Acorn Computers] Features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). The American equivalent would be `checklist features', but this jargon sense of the phrase has not been reported.
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tickle a bug
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tiger team
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tickle a bugvt.
To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some known series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in the Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow reverse video."
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tiger team
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time bomb
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tiger teamn.
[U.S. military jargon] 1. Originally, a team (ofsneakers) whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next morning for a `security review' and finds the sign, note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see thepatchentry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or specialfirefightinggroup called in to look at a problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professionalcrackers, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly `secure' comm channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense.
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time bomb
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time sink
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time bombn.
A subspecies oflogic bombthat is triggered by reaching some preset time, either once or periodically. There are numerous legends about time bombs set up by programmers in their employers' machines, to go off if the programmer is fired or laid off and is not present to perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.
Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been pointed to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union in 1986! A disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile Plant (where the Fiat clones called Ladas were manufactured) planted a time bomb which, a week after he'd left on vacation, stopped the entire main assembly line for a day. The case attracted lots of attention in the Soviet Union because it was the first cracking case to make it to court there. The perpetrator got a suspended sentence of 3 years in jail and was barred from future work as a programmer.
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time sink
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time T
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time bomb
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time sinkn.
[poss. by analogy with `heat sink' or `current sink'] A project that consumes unbounded amounts of time.
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time T
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times-or-divided-by
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time sink
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time T/ti:m T/ n.
1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet on campus at time T or at Louie's at time T+1" means, in the context of going out for dinner: "We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we can meet at Louie's itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto that was a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been used instead of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel time from campus to Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time T is (and that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time. See alsosince time T equals minus infinity.