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warlording
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= W =
warm bootn.
Seeboot.
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wart
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washing machine
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warm boot
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wartn.
A small,crockyfeaturethat sticks out of an otherwisecleandesign. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some versions ofcsh(1), single quotes literalize every character inside them except!. In ANSI C, the??syntax used for obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See alsomiswart.
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washing machine
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washing software
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wart
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washing machinen.
1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See alsowalking drives. The thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (seehose, sense 3). 2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively forwashing software. CMU has clusters of these.
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washing software
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water MIPS
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washing machine
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washing softwaren.
The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and merge together all of the various changes that have been made to the source.
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water MIPS
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wave a dead chicken
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washing software
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water MIPSn.
(seeMIPS, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditionalmainframetype.
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wave a dead chicken
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weasel
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water MIPS
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wave a dead chickenv.
To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Comparevoodoo programming,rain dance; see alsocasting the runes.
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weasel
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web pointer
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wave a dead chicken
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weaseln.
[Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous withloser.
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web pointer
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web toaster
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weasel
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web pointern.
A World Wide WebURL. See alsohotlink, which has slightly different connotations.
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web toaster
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webify
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web pointer
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web toastern.
A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or keyboard or any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be controlled through an Ethernet port and function as a WWW server. Products of this kind (for example the Cobalt Qube) are often about the size of a toaster. Seetoaster; comparevideo toaster.
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webify
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webmaster
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web toaster
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webifyn.
To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW. Frequently used for papers ("Why don't you webify all your publications?") or for demos ("They webified their 6.866 final project"). This term seems to have been (rather logically) independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.
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webmaster
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web ring
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webify
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webmastern.
[WWW: frompostmaster] The person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.
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web ring
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wedged
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webmaster
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web ringn.
Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between sites sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques have the topology of a ring, in order to make it easy for visitors to navigate through all of them.
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wedged
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wedgie
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web ring
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wedgedadj.
1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if itdeadlocks with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See alsogronk,locked up,hosed,hung(wedged is more severe thanhung). 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged -- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older `hot-press' printing technology in which physical type elements were locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.
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wedgie
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wedgitude
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wedged
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wedgien.
[Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related towedged.
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wedgitude
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weeble
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wedgie
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wedgitude/wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n.
The quality or state of beingwedged.
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weeble
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weeds
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wedgitude
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weeble/weeb'l/ interj.
[Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble...." Comparegurfle.
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weeds
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weenie
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weeble
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weedsn.
1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds...." 2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds' was equivalent to IBM'sbranch to Fishkilland mainstream hackerdom'sjump off into never-never land.
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weenie
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weenien.
1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing version ofB1FFthat infests manyBBSsystems. The typical weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiosehandlederived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among sysops, `the weenie problem' refers to the marginally literate and profanity-ladenflamageweenies tend to spew all over a newly-discovered BBS. Comparespod,computer geek,terminal junkie,warez d00dz. 2. [Among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as inUnix weenie, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See alsobigot. 3. The semicolon character,;(ASCII 0111011).
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Weenix
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Weenix/wee'niks/ n.
1. [ITS] A derogatory term forUnix, derived fromUnix weenie. According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system preferred by Unix Weenies: typified by poor modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion, no file version numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are all advantages". (Some ITS fans behave as though they believe Unix stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. SeeITS, sense 2.) 2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for tutorial purposes at Brown University. See http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html. Named independently of the ITS usage.
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well-behaved
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well-connected
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Weenix
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well-behavedadj.
1. [primarilyMS-DOS] Said of software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards. Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics. Opposeill-behaved. 2. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as atoolby other software. Seecat. 3. Said of an algorithm that doesn'tcrashorblow up, even when givenpathologicalinput. Implies that the stability of the algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this somewhat different frombulletproof.
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well-connected
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wetware
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well-connectedadj.
Said of a computer installation, asserts that it has reliable email links with the network and/or that it relays a large fraction of availableUsenetnewsgroups. `Well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive service or active Usenet users).
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wetware
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whack
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wetware/wet'weir/ n.
[prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers." 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. Seeliveware,meatware.
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whack
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whack-a-mole
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wetware
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whackv.
According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer ofNeWS,GOSMACSand Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works." (Seewhacker.) It is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you are very good atglarking things from context. As a trivial example, it is relatively easy to change allstderrwrites tostdoutwrites in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwise mysterious.
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whack-a-mole
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whacker
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whack
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whack-a-molen.
[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from their holes.] 1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers'throwaway accounts and drop boxes to be terminated. 2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such combinations as `whack-a-mole windows'; the obnoxious pop-ip advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surg to sites like Geocities or Tripod.
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whacker
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whales
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whackern.
[University of Maryland: fromhacker] 1. A person, similar to ahacker, who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends up whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are often quite egotistical and eager to claimwizardstatus, regardless of the views of their peers. 2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly and ineptly.
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whales
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whalesong
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whacker
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whalesn.
Seelike kicking dead whales down the beach.
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whalesong
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What's a spline?
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whales
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whalesongn.
The peculiar clicking and whooshing sounds made by a PEP modem such as the Telebit Trailblazer as it tries to synchronize with another PEP modem for their special high-speed mode. This sound isn't anything like the normal two-tone handshake between conventional V-series modems and is instantly recognizable to anyone who has heard it more than once. It sounds, in fact, very much like whale songs. This noise is also called "the moose call" or "moose tones".
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What's a spline?
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wheel
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whalesong