Here are the
slang and idioms collected by Comp1, Course 6110, Group
3, Academic Year 1997-8.
terminal illness, i.e.
The 'burn out' condition your monitor
tends to get if you don't have a screen
saver. Terminal is from computer
terminal. This is different from a
medical terminal (fatal) illness of a
person.
back door n.
A hole in the security of a system deliberately
left in place by designers or maintainers. The
motivation for such holes is not always sinister,
some operating systems, for example, come out of
the box with privileged accounts intended for use
by field service technicans or the vendor's
maintenance programmers. Synonyms: trap door, may
be called a 'wormhole'.
head down adj.
Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long
that everything outside the focus area is missed.
content-free adj (zero
content) Used of a message that adds nothing to
the recipient's knowledge. eg."Content-free?
Uh.... that's anything printed on lossy
paper."
angry fruit salad A bad
visual-interface design that uses too many
colors. (This term derives, of course, from the
bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit
salad.) Too often one sees similar effects from
interface designers using color window systems
such as X; there is a tendency to create displays
that are flashy and attention-getting but
uncomfortable for long-term use. Click here for source.
washing
machine 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. Click here for source.
disk farm (n) (also laundromat) A large
room or rooms filled with disk drives
(esp.washing machines)
snail
mail Paper mail, as opposed to
electronic. Sometimes written as the
single word SnailMail'. One's postal
address is, correspondingly, a `snail
address'. Derives from earlier coinage
`USnail' (from `U.S. Mail'), for which
there have even been parody posters and
stamps made. Click here for source.
treeware Printouts,
books, and other information media made from
pulped dead trees. Click here for source.
blinding/blinder - used
to describe something amazing or wonderful.
eg."We had a right blinding time last night
dahn the pub".
blower - slang for
telephone.
eg."I' ve got John on the blower".
cabbaged - used for tired
or stoned.
eg."I feel totally cabbaged". Can also
be used for stoned or drunk.
bell - a telephone call.
eg."Give us a bell later".
a bummer- Something
upsetting or depressing.
Example: "Oh no! My computer crashed before
I could save my essay!"
Response: "What a bummer!"
a spitting image - A very
close resemblance.
Example: "Your new baby is gorgeous!"
"I know, he's a real spitting image of his
father, isn't he?"
Really? Who's the father?
in the red - To be in
debt; to operate a business at a financial
deficit
or loss; to have a negative net worth.
Example: "Have you heard the bad news about
the company?"
"No. What is it?"
"It lost a lot of money."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it's been in the red for over six
months."
in the works - Not yet
completed; unfinished.
Example: "Have you finished your project
yet?"
"No, not yet, it's still in the works."
"Isn't it due tomorrow?"
"Yeah, it's going to be a late night for me,
I'm afraid."
big iron (n) Large,
expensive, ultra-fast computer. Used generally of
number-crunching supercomputers such as Crays,
but can include more conventional big commercial
IBM-ish mainframes . Term of approval.
mailbomb (also mail bomb)[Usenet]
1.(v).. To send, or urge others to send , massive
amounts of email to single system or person, esp.
with intent to crash or spam the recipient's
system. Sometimes done in retaliation for a
perceived serious offense. Mailbombing is itself
widely regarded as a serious offense-it can
disrupt email traffic or other facilities for
innocent users on the victim's system, and in
extreme cases, even at upstream sites.
2.(n). An automatic procedure with a similar
effect.
3.(n). The mail sent.
mickey mouse program (n). North American
equivalent of a noddy (that is, trivial) program.
Doesn't necessarily have the belittling
connotations of mainstream slang, "Oh,
that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes
trivial programs can be very useful.
language lawyer (n)- a person usually an
experienced or senior software engineer, who is
intimately familiar with many of the numerous
restrictions and features applicable to one or
more computer programming languages.
e.g. Brian W. Kernigham, the author of The C
Programming Language, is a language lawyer.
killer micro (n) - a
microprocessor-based machine that infringes on
mini; mainframe or super computer performance
turf.
e.g. No one will survive the attack of the killer
micros.
jack in (v) - to log on to a machine or
connect to a network.
e.g. All users have to jack in the network before
using any software.
drop on the floor- to react to an error
condition by silently discarding messages or
other valuable data.
e.g. The computer ran out of memory, so it just
started dropping packets on the floor.
war dialer (n) - a cracking tool, a
program that calls a given list or range of phone
numbers and records those which answer with
handshake tones.
e.g. War dialer may be entry points to computer
or tele communications system
vaporware (n) - products announced for
in advance of any release.
e.g. Windows 98, a new operating system, can be
considered as vaporware.
return from the dead
- to regain access to the net after a long
absence.
e.g. Gary was returned from the dead.
to zen (v) - to figure out something by
meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment.
Originally applied to bugs, but occasionlly
applied to
problems of life in general.
e.g. "How'd you figure out the memory
allocation problem ?"
"Oh, I zenned it."
kluge up (n)
- to lash together a quick hack to perform a
task.
e.g. "I've klugged up this routine to dump
the buffer contents to a safe place."
dread high-bit disease (n) - a condition
endemic to PRIME minicomputers that results in
all the characters having their high (0x80) bit
ON rather than OFF.