The Jargon File - Eric S. Raymond (best books for 8th graders .txt) 📗
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he awoke, RPG said, "Gee, JONL, you must have slept all the way
over the bridge!", referring to the one spanning San Francisco Bay.
Just then we came to a sign that said "University Avenue". I
mumbled something about working our way over to Telegraph Avenue;
RPG said "Right!" and maneuvered some more. Eventually we pulled up
in front of an Uncle Gaylord's.
Now, I hadn't really been paying attention because I was so sleepy,
and I didn't really understand what was happening until RPG let me
in on it a few moments later, but I was just alert enough to notice
that we had somehow come to the Palo Alto Uncle Gaylord's after
all.
JONL noticed the resemblance to the Palo Alto store, but hadn't
caught on. (The place is lit with red and yellow lights at night,
and looks much different from the way it does in daylight.) He
said, "This isn't the Uncle Gaylord's I went to in Berkeley! It
looked like a barn! But this place looks just like the one back in
Palo Alto!"
RPG deadpanned, "Well, this is the one I always come to when I'm in
Berkeley. They've got two in San Francisco, too. Remember, they're
a chain."
JONL accepted this bit of wisdom. And he was not totally ignorant
-- he knew perfectly well that University Avenue was in Berkeley,
not far from Telegraph Avenue. What he didn't know was that there
is a completely different University Avenue in Palo Alto.
JONL went up to the counter and asked for ginger honey. The guy at
the counter asked whether JONL would like to taste it first,
evidently their standard procedure with that flavor, as not too
many people like it.
JONL said, "I'm sure I like it. Just give me a cone." The guy
behind the counter insisted that JONL try just a taste first. "Some
people think it tastes like soap." JONL insisted, "Look, I love
ginger. I eat Chinese food. I eat raw ginger roots. I already went
through this hassle with the guy back in Palo Alto. I know I like
that flavor!"
At the words "back in Palo Alto" the guy behind the counter got a
very strange look on his face, but said nothing. KBT caught his eye
and winked. Through my stupor I still hadn't quite grasped what was
going on, and thought RPG was rolling on the floor laughing and
clutching his stomach just because JONL had launched into his spiel
("makes rotten meat a dish for princes") for the forty-third time.
At this point, RPG clued me in fully.
RPG, KBT, and I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our
chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream
with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream
shops and generally having a good old time.
At length the g.b.t.c. said, "How's the ginger honey?" JONL said,
"Fine! I wonder what exactly is in it?" Now Uncle Gaylord publishes
all his recipes and even teaches classes on how to make his ice
cream at home. So the g.b.t.c. got out the recipe, and he and JONL
pored over it for a while. But the g.b.t.c. could contain his
curiosity no longer, and asked again, "You really like that stuff,
huh?" JONL said, "Yeah, I've been eating it constantly back in Palo
Alto for the past two days. In fact, I think this batch is about as
good as the cones I got back in Palo Alto!"
G.b.t.c. looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're in Palo
Alto!"
JONL turned slowly around, and saw the three of us collapse in a
fit of giggles. He clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed,
"I've been hacked!"
[My spies on the West Coast inform me that there is a close relative
of the raspberry found out there called an `ollalieberry' --ESR]
[Ironic footnote: the [11739]meme about ginger vs. rotting meat is an
urban legend. It's not borne out by an examination of medieval recipes
or period purchase records for spices, and appears full-blown in the
works of Samuel Pegge, a gourmand and notorious flake case who
originated numerous food myths. The truth seems to be that ginger was
used to cover not rot but the extreme salt taste of meat packed in
brine, which was the best method available before refrigeration.
--ESR]
Node:sagan, Next:[11740]SAIL, Previous:[11741]saga, Up:[11742]= S =
sagan /say'gn/ n.
[from Carl Sagan's TV series "Cosmos"; think "billions and billions"]
A large quantity of anything. "There's a sagan different ways to tweak
EMACS." "The U.S. Government spends sagans on bombs and welfare --
hard to say which is more destructive."
Node:SAIL, Next:[11743]salescritter, Previous:[11744]sagan,
Up:[11745]= S =
SAIL /sayl/, not /S-A-I-L/ n.
The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. An important site in theearly development of LISP; with the MIT AI Lab, BBN, CMU, XEROX PARC,
and the Unix community, one of the major wellsprings of technical
innovation and hacker-culture traditions (see the [11746]WAITS entry
for details). The SAIL machines were shut down in late May 1990, scant
weeks after the MIT AI Lab's ITS cluster was officially
decommissioned. 2. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language used
at SAIL (sense 1). It was an Algol-60 derivative with a coroutining
facility and some new data types intended for building search trees
and association lists.
Node:salescritter, Next:[11747]salt, Previous:[11748]SAIL, Up:[11749]=
S =
salescritter /sayls'kri`tr/ n.
Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson. Hackers tell the
following joke:
Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a
computer salesman?
A. The used-car dealer knows he's lying. [Some versions add:
...and probably knows how to drive.]
This reflects the widespread hacker belief that salescritters are
self-selected for stupidity (after all, if they had brains and the
inclination to use them, they'd be in programming). The terms
salesthing' andsalesdroid' are also common. Compare
[11750]marketroid, [11751]suit, [11752]droid.
Node:salt, Next:[11753]salt mines, Previous:[11754]salescritter,
Up:[11755]= S =
salt n.
A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much regularity
would be undesirable; a data [11756]frob (sense 1). For example, the
Unix crypt(3) man page mentions that "the salt string is used to
perturb the DES algorithm in one of 4096 different ways."
Node:salt mines, Next:[11757]salt substrate, Previous:[11758]salt,
Up:[11759]= S =
salt mines n.
Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long hours
on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in
N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine. Compare [11760]playpen,
[11761]sandbox.
Node:salt substrate, Next:[11762]same-day service,
Previous:[11763]salt mines, Up:[11764]= S =
salt substrate n.
[MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels,
saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a
carrier for sodium chloride. Also `sodium substrate'. From the
technical term `chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon on the
top of which the active parts of integrated circuits are deposited.
Node:same-day service, Next:[11765]samizdat, Previous:[11766]salt
substrate, Up:[11767]= S =
same-day service n.
Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with
respect to [11768]MS-DOS system calls (which ought to require only a
tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such response time is a major
incentive for programmers to write programs that are not
[11769]well-behaved. See also [11770]PC-ism.
Node:samizdat, Next:[11771]samurai, Previous:[11772]same-day service,
Up:[11773]= S =
samizdat /sahm-iz-daht/ n.
[Russian, literally "self publishing"] The process of disseminating
documentation via underground channels. Originally referred to
underground duplication and distribution of banned books in the Soviet
Union; now refers by obvious extension to any less-than-official
promulgation of textual material, esp. rare, obsolete, or
never-formally-published computer documentation. Samizdat is obviously
much easier when one has access to high-bandwidth networks and
high-quality laser printers. Note that samizdat is properly used only
with respect to documents which contain needed information (see also
[11774]hacker ethic) but which are for some reason otherwise
unavailable, but not in the context of documents which are available
through normal channels, for which unauthorized duplication would be
unethical copyright violation. See [11775]Lions Book for a historical
example.
Node:samurai, Next:[11776]sandbender, Previous:[11777]samizdat,
Up:[11778]= S =
samurai n.
A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions
in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and
First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to
need an electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the
existence of a loose-knit culture of samurai that meets electronically
on BBS systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they
have modeled themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan
and on the "net cowboys" of William Gibson's [11779]cyberpunk novels.
Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their
employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal
crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote
Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic of historical
samurai doctrine, in support of these principles. See also
[11780]sneaker, [11781]Stupids, [11782]social engineering,
[11783]cracker, [11784]hacker ethic, and [11785]dark-side hacker.
Node:sandbender, Next:[11786]sandbox, Previous:[11787]samurai,
Up:[11788]= S =
sandbender n.
[IBM] A person involved with silicon lithography and the physical
design of chips. Compare [11789]ironmonger, [11790]polygon pusher.
Node:sandbox, Next:[11791]sanity check, Previous:[11792]sandbender,
Up:[11793]= S =
sandbox n.
(also `sandbox, the') Common term for the R&D department at manysoftware and computer companies (where hackers in commercial
environments are likely to be found). Half-derisive, but reflects the
truth that research is a form of creative play. Compare
[11794]playpen. 2. Syn. [11795]link farm. 3. A controlled environment
within which potentially dangerous programs are run. Used esp. in
reference to Java implementations.
Node:sanity check, Next:[11796]Saturday-night special,
Previous:[11797]sandbox, Up:[11798]= S =
sanity check n.
[very common] 1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything
else, e.g., a Usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies
that the check is to make sure the author was sane when it was
written; e.g., if a piece of scientific software relied on a
particular formula and was giving unexpected results, one might first
look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a
`sanity check', before looking at the more complex I/O or data
structure manipulation routines, much less the algorithm itself.
Compare [11799]reality check. 2. A run-time test, either validating
input or ensuring that the program hasn't screwed up internally
(producing an inconsistent value or state).
Node:Saturday-night special, Next:[11800]say, Previous:[11801]sanity
check, Up:[11802]= S =
Saturday-night special n.
[from police slang for a cheap handgun] A [11803]quick-and-dirty
program or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline,
and in response to pressure from a [11804]salescritter. Such hacks are
dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production
release after insufficient review.
Node:say, Next:[11805]scag, Previous:[11806]Saturday-night special,
Up:[11807]= S =
say vt.
To type to a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, you have tosay ls -l." Tends to imply a [11808]newline-terminated command (a
sentence'). 2. A computer may also be said tosay' things to you,
even if it doesn't have a speech synthesizer, by displaying them on a
terminal in response to your commands. Hackers find it odd that this
usage confuses [11809]mundanes.
Node:scag, Next:[11810]scanno, Previous:[11811]say, Up:[11812]= S =
scag vt.
To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the filesystem or
by causing media damage. "That last power hit scagged the system
disk." Compare [11813]scrog, [11814]roach.
Node:scanno, Next:[11815]scary devil monastery, Previous:[11816]scag,
Up:[11817]= S =
scanno /skan'oh/ n.
An error in a document caused by a scanner glitch, analogous to a typo
or [11818]thinko.
Node:scary devil monastery, Next:[11819]schroedinbug,
Previous:[11820]scanno, Up:[11821]= S =
scary devil monastery n.
Anagram frequently used to refer to the newsgroup
alt.sysadmin.recovery, which is populated with characters that rather
justify the reference.
Node:schroedinbug, Next:[11822]science-fiction fandom,
Previous:[11823]scary devil monastery, Up:[11824]= S =
schroedinbug /shroh'din-buhg/ n.
[MIT: from the Schroedinger's Cat thought-experiment in quantum
physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't
manifest until someone reading source or using the
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