Chapter L (2)

:thread: /n./ [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.

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!

:three-finger salute: /n./ Syn. {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

:thud: /n./ 1. Yet another {metasyntactic variable} (see
{foo}). 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). See
{ASCII} for other synonyms.

:thumb: /n./ 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.

:thunk: /thuhnk/ /n./ 1. "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. A
{stubroutine}, in an overlay programming environment, that loads
and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare {trampoline}.
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 a {plan 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".

:tick: /n./ 1. A {jiffy} (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 is {handwave}d. 3. In the FORTH
language, a single quote character.

:tick-list features: /n./ [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.

:tickle a bug: /vt./ 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."

:tiger team: /n./ [U.S. military jargon] 1. Originally, a team
(of {sneaker}s) 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 the {patch} entry for
an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official
inspection team or special {firefighting} group called in to
look at a problem.

A subset of tiger teams are professional {cracker}s, 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.

:time bomb: /n./ A subspecies of {logic bomb} that 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.

:time sink: /n./ [poss. by analogy with `heat sink' or
`current sink'] A project that consumes unbounded amounts of
time.

: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 also {since time T equals minus
infinity}.

:times-or-divided-by: /quant./ [by analogy with
`plus-or-minus'] Term occasionally used when describing the
uncertainty associated with a scheduling estimate, for either
humorous or brutally honest effect. For a software project, the
scheduling uncertainty factor is usually at least 2.

:Tinkerbell program: /n./ [Great Britain] A monitoring program
used to scan incoming network calls and generate alerts when calls
are received from particular sites, or when logins are attempted
using certain IDs. Named after `Project Tinkerbell', an
experimental phone-tapping program developed by British Telecom in
the early 1980s.

:tip of the ice-cube: /n./ [IBM] The visible part of
something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in
situations where `tip of the iceberg' might be appropriate if the
subject were at all important.

:tired iron: /n./ [IBM] Hardware that is perfectly functional but far
enough behind the state of the art to have been superseded by new
products, presumably with sufficient improvement in bang-per-buck
that the old stuff is starting to look a bit like a {dinosaur}.

:tits on a keyboard: /n./ Small bumps on certain keycaps to
keep touch-typists registered (usually on the `5' of a numeric
keypad, and on the `F' and `J' of a {QWERTY} keyboard;
but the Mac, perverse as usual, has them on the `D' and
`K' keys).

:TLA: /T-L-A/ /n./ [Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Self-describing
abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is
infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP,
SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this
looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as
not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of
`ETLA' (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el
ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term
`SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See
also {YABA}.

The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is
often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a
random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin
"What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in
the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only
17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3
= 17,576.)

:TMRC: /tmerk'/ /n./ The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one
of the wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 "Dictionary of
the TMRC Language" compiled by Peter Samson included several terms
that became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. {foo},
{mung}, and {frob}).

By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity
(and has grown in the thirty years since; all the features
described here are still present). The control system alone
featured about 1200 relays. There were {scram switch}es located
at numerous places around the room that could be thwacked if
something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going
full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a
digital clock on the dispatch board, which was itself something of
a wonder in those bygone days before cheap LEDs and seven-segment
displays. When someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and
the display was replaced with the word `FOO'; at TMRC the scram
switches are therefore called `foo switches'.

Steven Levy, in his book "Hackers" (see the
{Bibliography} in Appendix C), gives a stimulating account of
those early years. TMRC's Power and Signals group included most of
the early PDP-1 hackers and the people who later became the core of
the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty years later that connection is still
very much alive, and this lexicon accordingly includes a number of
entries from a recent revision of the TMRC dictionary.

:TMRCie: /tmerk'ee/, /n./ [MIT] A denizen of {TMRC}.

:to a first approximation: /adj./ 1. [techspeak] When one is doing
certain numerical computations, an approximate solution may be
computed by any of several heuristic methods, then refined to a
final value. By using the starting point of a first approximation
of the answer, one can write an algorithm that converges more
quickly to the correct result. 2. In jargon, a preface to any
comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true.
The remark "To a first approximation, I feel good" might indicate
that deeper questioning would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g.,
a nagging cough still remains after an illness).

:to a zeroth approximation: [from `to a first
approximation'] A *really* sloppy approximation; a wild
guess. Compare {social science number}.

:toad: /vt./ [MUD] 1. Notionally, to change a {MUD} player into
a toad. 2. To permanently and totally exile a player from the MUD.
A very serious action, which can only be done by a MUD {wizard};
often involves a lot of debate among the other characters first.
See also {frog}, {FOD}.

:toast: 1. /n./ Any completely inoperable system or component,
esp. one that has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I
think the serial board is toast." 2. /vt./ To cause a system to
crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual
rebooting. "Rick just toasted the {firewall machine} again."
Compare {fried}.

:toaster: /n./ 1. The archetypal really stupid application for
an embedded microprocessor controller; often used in comments that
imply that a scheme is inappropriate technology (but see
{elevator controller}). "{DWIM} for an assembler? That'd
be as silly as running Unix on your toaster!" 2. A very, very
dumb computer. "You could run this program on any dumb toaster."
See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {beige
toaster}. 3. A Macintosh, esp. the Classic Mac. Some hold that
this is implied by sense 2. 4. A peripheral device. "I bought my
box without toasters, but since then I've added two boards and a
second disk drive."

:toeprint: /n./ A {footprint} of especially small size.

:toggle: /vt./ To change a {bit} from whatever state it is
in to the other state; to change from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. This
comes from `toggle switches', such as standard light switches,
though the word `toggle' actually refers to the mechanism that
keeps the switch in the position to which it is flipped rather than
to the fact that the switch has two positions. There are four
things you can do to a bit: set it (force it to be 1), clear (or
zero) it, leave it alone, or toggle it. (Mathematically, one would
say that there are four distinct boolean-valued functions of one
boolean argument, but saying that is much less fun than talking
about toggling bits.)

:tool: 1. /n./ A program used primarily to create, manipulate,
modify, or analyze other programs, such as a compiler or an editor
or a cross-referencing program. Oppose {app}, {operating
system}. 2. [Unix] An application program with a simple,
`transparent' (typically text-stream) interface designed
specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools
(see {filter}, {plumbing}). 3. [MIT: general to students
there] /vi./ To work; to study (connotes tedium). The TMRC
Dictionary defined this as "to set one's brain to the
grindstone". See {hack}. 4. /n./ [MIT] A student who studies
too much and hacks too little. (MIT's student humor magazine
rejoices in the name "Tool and Die".)

:toolsmith: /n./ The software equivalent of a tool-and-die
specialist; one who specializes in making the {tool}s with which
other programmers create applications. Many hackers consider this
more fun than applications per se; to understand why, see
{uninteresting}. Jon Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer
Science" chapter of his book "More Programming Pearls",
quotes Dick Sites from DEC as saying "I'd rather write programs to
write programs than write programs".

:topic drift: /n./ Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other
electronic fora to describe the tendency of a {thread} to drift
away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the
Subject header of the originating message), or the results of that
tendency. Often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has
strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question
about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual
habits of the common marmoset. Now *that's* topic drift!"

:topic group: /n./ Syn. {forum}.

:TOPS-10:: /tops-ten/ /n./ DEC's proprietary OS for the
fabled {PDP-10} machines, long a favorite of hackers but now
effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix
A. See also {{ITS}}, {{TOPS-20}}, {{TWENEX}}, {VMS},
{operating system}. TOPS-10 was sometimes called BOTS-10 (from
`bottoms-ten') as a comment on the inappropriateness of describing
it as the top of anything.

:TOPS-20:: /tops-twen'tee/ /n./ See {{TWENEX}}.

:tourist: /n./ [ITS] A guest on the system, especially one who
generally logs in over a network from a remote location for
{comm mode}, email, games, and other trivial purposes. One step
below {luser}. Hackers often spell this {turist}, perhaps by
some sort of tenuous analogy with {luser} (this also expresses
the ITS culture's penchant for six-letterisms). Compare
{twink}, {read-only user}.

:tourist information: /n./ Information in an on-line display
that is not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewer's
gestalt of what's going on with the software or hardware behind it.
Whether a given piece of info falls in this category depends partly
on what the user is looking for at any given time. The `bytes
free' information at the bottom of an MS-DOS `dir' display is
tourist information; so (most of the time) is the TIME information
in a Unix `ps(1)' display.

:touristic: /adj./ Having the quality of a {tourist}. Often
used as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum'. Often
spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so that phrase might be more
properly rendered `lusing turistic scum'.

:toy: /n./ A computer system; always used with qualifiers.
1. `nice toy': One that supports the speaker's hacking style
adequately. 2. `just a toy': A machine that yields insufficient
{computron}s for the speaker's preferred uses. This is not
condemnatory, as is {bitty box}; toys can at least be fun. It
is also strongly conditioned by one's expectations; Cray XMP users
sometimes consider the Cray-1 a `toy', and certainly all RISC
boxes and mainframes are toys by their standards. See also {Get
a real computer!}.

:toy language: /n./ A language useful for instructional
purposes or as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of
computer-science theory, but inadequate for general-purpose
programming. {Bad Thing}s can result when a toy language is
promoted as a general purpose solution for programming (see
{bondage-and-discipline language}); the classic example is
{{Pascal}}. Several moderately well-known formalisms for
conceptual tasks such as programming Turing machines also qualify
as toy languages in a less negative sense. See also {MFTL}.

:toy problem: /n./ [AI] A deliberately oversimplified case of a
challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test
algorithms for a real problem. Sometimes used pejoratively. See
also {gedanken}, {toy program}.

:toy program: /n./ 1. One that can be readily comprehended;
hence, a trivial program (compare {noddy}). 2. One for which
the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through its life
cycle. See also {noddy}.

:trampoline: /n./ An incredibly {hairy} technique, found in
some {HLL} and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the
Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable
(and, likely as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection
between code sections. These pieces of {live data} are called
`trampolines'. Trampolines are notoriously difficult to
understand in action; in fact, it is said by those who use this
term that the trampoline that doesn't bend your brain is not the
true trampoline. See also {snap}.

:trap: 1. /n./ A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused
by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases,
the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.
2. /vi./ To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the
monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the
trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."

This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt'
or `exception' is more common among {HLL} programmers) and
appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of
assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to
computer architects and systems hackers (see {system},
sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable
exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).

:trap door: /n./ (alt. `trapdoor') 1. Syn. {back door}
-- a {Bad Thing}. 2. [techspeak] A `trap-door function' is
one which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the
inverse of. Such functions are {Good Thing}s with important
applications in cryptography, specifically in the construction of
public-key cryptosystems.

:trash: /vt./ To destroy the contents of (said of a data
structure). The most common of the family of near-synonyms
including {mung}, {mangle}, and {scribble}.

:trawl: /v./ To sift through large volumes of data (e.g.,
Usenet postings, FTP archives, or the Jargon File) looking for
something of interest.

:tree-killer: /n./ [Sun] 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes
paper. This epithet should be interpreted in a broad sense;
`wasting paper' includes the production of {spiffy} but
{content-free} documents. Thus, most {suit}s are
tree-killers. The negative loading of this term may reflect the
epithet `tree-killer' applied by Treebeard the Ent to the Orcs
in J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" (see also
{elvish}, {elder days}).

:treeware: /tree'weir/ /n./ Printouts, books, and other
information media made from pulped dead trees. Compare
{tree-killer}, see {documentation}.

:trit: /trit/ /n./ [by analogy with `bit'] One base-3
digit; the amount of information conveyed by a selection among one
of three equally likely outcomes (see also {bit}). Trits arise,
for example, in the context of a {flag} that should actually be
able to assume *three* values -- such as yes, no, or unknown.
Trits are sometimes jokingly called `3-state bits'. A trit may
be semi-seriously referred to as `a bit and a half', although it
is linearly equivalent to 1.5849625 bits (that is,
log2(3)
bits).

:trivial: /adj./ 1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not
worth the speaker's time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so
well known that anyone not utterly {cretinous} would have
thought of them already. 4. Any problem one has already solved
(some claim that hackish `trivial' usually evaluates to `I've
seen it before'). Hackers' notions of triviality may be quite at
variance with those of non-hackers. See {nontrivial},
{uninteresting}.

The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an
amazing degree (see his essay "Los Alamos From Below" in
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"), defined `trivial
theorem' as "one that has already been proved".

:troff:: /T'rof/ or /trof/ /n./ [Unix] The gray
eminence of Unix text processing; a formatting and phototypesetting
program, written originally in PDP-11 assembler and then in
barely-structured early C by the late Joseph Ossanna, modeled after
the earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled after Multics' RUNOFF by
Jerome Saltzer (*that* name came from the expression "to run
off a copy"). A companion program, {nroff}, formats output for
terminals and line printers.

In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent troff," AT&T CSTR
#97) explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's
"obvious deficiencies -- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious
and undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite
for computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme
hairiness of the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:

None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating Ossanna's
accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably robust
tool, taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors
and being forced into uses that were never conceived of in the
original design, all with considerable grace under fire.

The success of {{TeX}} and desktop publishing systems have
reduced `troff''s relative importance, but this tribute
perfectly captures the strengths that secured `troff' a place
in hacker folklore; indeed, it could be taken more generally as an
indication of those qualities of good programs that, in the long
run, hackers most admire.

:troglodyte: /n./ [Commodore] 1. A hacker who never leaves his
cubicle. The term `Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also
reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing
environment. The combination `ITS troglodyte' was flung around
some during the Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the
2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it
was intended to describe adopted it with pride.

:troglodyte mode: /n./ [Rice University] Programming with the
lights turned off, sunglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black
on white) because you've been up for so many days straight that
your eyes hurt (see {raster burn}). Loud music blaring from a
stereo stacked in the corner is optional but recommended. See
{larval stage}, {hack mode}.

:Trojan horse: /n./ [coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan
Edwards] A malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised
as something benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, game, or
(in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and
destroy viruses! See {back door}, {virus}, {worm},
{phage}, {mockingbird}.

:troll: /v.,n./ [From the Usenet group
alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on {Usenet}
designed to attract predictable responses or {flame}s. Derives
from the phrase "trolling for {newbie}s" which in turn comes
from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one
trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The
well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and
flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they
already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't
fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.

Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category
than {flame bait}, that a troll is categorized by containing
some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.

:tron: /v./ [NRL, CMU; prob. fr. the movie "Tron"] To
become inaccessible except via email or `talk(1)', especially
when one is normally available via telephone or in person.
Frequently used in the past tense, as in: "Ran seems to have
tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were able to
un-tron yourself". One may also speak of `tron mode'; compare
{spod}.

:true-hacker: /n./ [analogy with `trufan' from SF fandom] One
who exemplifies the primary values of hacker culture, esp.
competence and helpfulness to other hackers. A high compliment.
"He spent 6 hours helping me bring up UUCP and netnews on my
FOOBAR 4000 last week -- manifestly the act of a true-hacker."
Compare {demigod}, oppose {munchkin}.

:tty: /T-T-Y/, /tit'ee/ /n./ The latter pronunciation was
primarily ITS, but some Unix people say it this way as well; this
pronunciation is *not* considered to have sexual
undertones. 1. A terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by
a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor
print quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTYs themselves). See
also {bit-paired keyboard}. 2. [especially Unix] Any terminal
at all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal
controlling a given job. 3. [Unix] Any serial port, whether or not
the device connected to it is a terminal; so called because under
Unix such devices have names of the form tty*. Ambiguity between
senses 2 and 3 is common but seldom bothersome.

:tube: 1. /n./ A CRT terminal. Never used in the mainstream
sense of TV; real hackers don't watch TV, except for Loony Toons,
Rocky & Bullwinkle, Trek Classic, the Simpsons, and the occasional
cheesy old swashbuckler movie. 2. [IBM] To send a copy of
something to someone else's terminal. "Tube me that
note?"

:tube time: /n./ Time spent at a terminal or console. More
inclusive than hacking time; commonly used in discussions of what
parts of one's environment one uses most heavily. "I find I'm
spending too much of my tube time reading mail since I started this
revision."

:tunafish: /n./ In hackish lore, refers to the mutated
punchline of an age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the
manual pages of `tunefs(8)' in the original {BSD} 4.2
distribution. The joke was removed in later releases once
commercial sites started using 4.2. Tunefs relates to the
`tuning' of file-system parameters for optimum performance, and
at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was a `BUGS'
section consisting of the line "You can tune a file system, but
you can't tunafish". Variants of this can be seen in other BSD
versions, though it has been excised from some versions by
humorless management {droid}s. The [nt]roff source for SunOS
4.1.1 contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this:
"Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until
the `time_t''s wrap around."

[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish.
Usually at a canning factory... --ESR]

:tune: /vt./ [from automotive or musical usage] To optimize a
program or system for a particular environment, esp. by adjusting
numerical parameters designed as {hook}s for tuning, e.g., by
changing `#define' lines in C. One may `tune for time'
(fastest execution), `tune for space' (least memory use), or
`tune for configuration' (most efficient use of hardware). See
{bum}, {hot spot}, {hand-hacking}.

:turbo nerd: /n./ See {computer geek}.

:Turing tar-pit: /n./ 1. A place where anything is possible but
nothing of interest is practical. Alan Turing helped lay the
foundations of computer science by showing that all machines and
languages capable of expressing a certain very primitive set of
operations are logically equivalent in the kinds of computations
they can carry out, and in principle have capabilities that differ
only in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly
designed computers. However, no machine or language exactly
matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other than
possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly
slow and far too painful to use. A `Turing tar-pit' is any
computer language or other tool that shares this property. That
is, it's theoretically universal -- but in practice, the harder
you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies
suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline language}. 2. The
perennial {holy wars} over whether language A or B is the "most
powerful".

:turist: /too'rist/ /n./ Var. sp. of {tourist}, q.v. Also
in adjectival form, `turistic'. Poss. influenced by {luser}
and `Turing'.

:tweak: /vt./ 1. To change slightly, usually in reference to a
value. Also used synonymously with {twiddle}. If a program is
almost correct, rather than figure out the precise problem you
might just keep tweaking it until it works. See {frobnicate}
and {fudge factor}; also see {shotgun debugging}. 2. To
{tune} or {bum} a program; preferred usage in the U.K.

:tweeter: /n./ [University of Waterloo] Syn. {perf},
{chad} (sense 1). This term (like {woofer}) has been in use
at Waterloo since 1972 but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon,
the word refers to the treble speaker(s) on a hi-fi.

:TWENEX:: /twe'neks/ /n./ The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC
-- the second proprietary OS for the PDP-10 -- preferred by most
PDP-10 hackers over TOPS-10 (that is, by those who were not
{{ITS}} or {{WAITS}} partisans). TOPS-20 began in 1969 as Bolt,
Beranek & Newman's TENEX operating system using special paging
hardware. By the early 1970s, almost all of the systems on the
ARPANET ran TENEX. DEC purchased the rights to TENEX from BBN and
began work to make it their own. The first in-house code name for
the operating system was VIROS (VIRtual memory Operating System);
when customers started asking questions, the name was changed to
SNARK so DEC could truthfully deny that there was any project
called VIROS. When the name SNARK became known, the name was
briefly reversed to become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when
someone objected that `krans' meant `funeral wreath' in Swedish
(though some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply
`wreath'; this part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately
DEC picked TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it was
as TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of
its origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of `twenty
TENEX'), even though by this point very little of the original
TENEX code remained (analogously to the differences between AT&T V6
Unix and BSD). DEC people cringed when they heard "TWENEX", but
the term caught on nevertheless (the written abbreviation `20x'
was also used). TWENEX was successful and very popular; in fact,
there was a period in the early 1980s when it commanded as fervent
a culture of partisans as Unix or ITS -- but DEC's decision to
scrap all the internal rivals to the VAX architecture and its
relatively stodgy VMS OS killed the DEC-20 and put a sad end to
TWENEX's brief day in the sun. DEC attempted to convince TOPS-20
users to convert to {VMS}, but instead, by the late 1980s, most
of the TOPS-20 hackers had migrated to Unix.

:twiddle: /n./ 1. Tilde (ASCII 1111110, `~'). Also called
`squiggle', `sqiggle' (sic -- pronounced /skig'l/), and
`twaddle', but twiddle is the most common term. 2. A small and
insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and
generates several new ones (see also {shotgun debugging}).
3. /vt./ To change something in a small way. Bits, for example,
are
often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knob implies much less sense
of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see {frobnicate}. To
speak of twiddling a bit connotes aimlessness, and at best doesn't
specify what you're doing to the bit; `toggling a bit' has a more
specific meaning (see {bit twiddling}, {toggle}).

:twilight zone: /n./ [IRC] Notionally, the area of
cyberspace where {IRC} operators live. An {op} is said to
have a "connection to the twilight zone".

:twink: /twink/ /n./ [UCSC] Equivalent to {read-only
user}. Also reported on the Usenet group soc.motss; may derive
from gay slang for a cute young thing with nothing upstairs
(compare mainstream `chick').

:twirling baton: /n./ [PLATO] The overstrike sequence -/|\-/|\-
which produces an animated twirling baton. If you output it with a
single backspace between characters, the baton spins in place. If
you output the sequence BS SP between characters, the baton spins
from left to right. If you output BS SP BS BS between characters,
the baton spins from right to left.

The twirling baton was a popular component of animated signature
files on the pioneering PLATO educational timesharing system. The
`archie' Internet service is perhaps the best-known baton
program today; it uses the twirling baton as an idler indicating
that the program is working on a query.

:two pi: /quant./ The number of years it takes to finish one's
thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form: "He started on
his thesis; 2 pi years later..."

:two-to-the-N: /quant./ An amount much larger than {N} but
smaller than {infinity}. "I have 2-to-the-N things to
do before I can go out for lunch" means you probably won't show
up.

:twonkie: /twon'kee/ /n./ The software equivalent of a
Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang with
a small t) the male equivalent of `chick'); a useless
`feature' added to look sexy and placate a {marketroid}
(compare {Saturday-night special}). The term may also be
related to "The Twonky", title menace of a classic SF short
story by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), first
published in the September 1942 "Astounding Science Fiction"
and subsequently much anthologized.

= U = =====

:u-: /pref./ Written shorthand for {micro-}; techspeak when
applied to metric units, jargon when used otherwise. Derived from
the Greek letter "mu", the first letter of "micro" (and which
letter looks a lot like the English letter "u").

:UBD: /U-B-D/ /n./ [abbreviation for `User Brain Damage']
An abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to
utter cluelessness on the user's part. Compare {pilot error};
oppose {PBD}; see also {brain-damaged}.

:UN*X: /n./ Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a
trademark of AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly
{(TM)} typography.
Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating
systems. Ironically, lawyers now say that the requirement for the
TM-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is
entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a
psychological connection to practice in certain religions
(especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never
written out in full, e.g., `YHWH' or `G--d' is used. See also
{glob}.

:undefined external reference: /excl./ [Unix] A message from
Unix's linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling
references in an argument or discussion.

:under the hood: /adj./ [hot-rodder talk] 1. Used to introduce the
underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or
idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious
from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the
listener to {grok} it. "Let's now look under the hood to see
how ...." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is much
simpler than the appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we
are just fork/execing the shell." 3. Inside a chassis, as in
"Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!"

:undocumented feature: /n./ See {feature}.

:uninteresting: /adj./ 1. Said of a problem that, although
{nontrivial}, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient
resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution
would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and
code.

Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of
time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals. *Real*
hackers (see {toolsmith}) generalize uninteresting problems
enough to make them interesting and solve them -- thus solving the
original problem as a special case (and, it must be admitted,
occasionally turning a molehill into a mountain, or a mountain into
a tectonic plate). See {WOMBAT}, {SMOP}; compare {toy
problem}, oppose {interesting}.

:Unix:: /yoo'niks/ /n./ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun
on Multics"; very early on it was `UNICS'] (also `UNIX') An
interactive time-sharing system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson
after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could
play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of
C, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in
Unix's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C
during 1972--1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Unix
subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of
many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and
developer-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix had become the most
widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the
world. Many people consider this the most important victory yet of
hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {Unix weenie} and
{Unix conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). See
{Version 7}, {BSD}, {USG Unix}, {Linux}.

Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately
`UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably.
Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling originally happened in
CACM's 1974 paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" because "we
had a new typesetter and {troff} had just been invented and we
were intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr
tried to get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a couple of Bell
Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He
failed, and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the issue.
So, while the trademark today is `UNIX', both capitalizations are
grounded in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses `Unix' in deference
to dmr's wishes.

:Unix brain damage: /n./ Something that has to be done to break
a network program (typically a mailer) on a non-Unix system so that
it will interoperate with Unix systems. The hack may qualify as
`Unix brain damage' if the program conforms to published
standards and the Unix program in question does not. Unix brain
damage happens because it is much easier for other (minority)
systems to change their ways to match non-conforming behavior than
it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of Unix systems out
there.

An example of Unix brain damage is a {kluge} in a mail server to
recognize bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form
to the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return
followed by a line feed. Such things can make even a hardened
{jock} weep.

:Unix conspiracy: /n./ [ITS] According to a conspiracy theory
long popular among {{ITS}} and {{TOPS-20}} fans, Unix's growth is
the result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose
intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent
upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's
control. This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating
system that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also
relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing
upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent a substantial impetus in
1984 by the paper referenced in the {back door} entry.

In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the first computer
viruses (see {virus}) -- but a virus spread to computers
indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly
through disks and networks. Adherents of this `Unix virus' theory
like to cite the fact that the well-known quotation "Unix is snake
oil" was uttered by DEC president Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC
began actively promoting its own family of Unix workstations.
(Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.)

[If there was ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the
plotters' control after 1990. AT&T sold its UNIX operation to
Novell around the same time {Linux} and other free-UNIX
distributions were beginning to make noise. --ESR]

:Unix weenie: /n./ [ITS] 1. A derogatory play on `Unix wizard',
common among hackers who use Unix by necessity but would prefer
alternatives. The implication is that although the person in
question may consider mastery of Unix arcana to be a wizardly
skill, the only real skill involved is the ability to tolerate (and
the bad taste to wallow in) the incoherence and needless complexity
that is alleged to infest many Unix programs. "This shell script
tries to parse its arguments in 69 bletcherous ways. It must have
been written by a real Unix weenie." 2. A derogatory term for
anyone who engages in uncritical praise of Unix. Often appearing
in the context "stupid Unix weenie". See {Weenix}, {Unix
conspiracy}. See also {weenie}.

:unixism: /n./ A piece of code or a coding technique that
depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively
low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory Unix
systems. Common {unixism}s include: gratuitous use of
`fork(2)'; the assumption that certain undocumented but
well-known features of Unix libraries such as `stdio(3)' are
supported elsewhere; reliance on {obscure} side-effects of
system calls (use of `sleep(2)' with a 0 argument to clue the
scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for
example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed;
and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from
never `free()'ing memory. Compare {vaxocentrism}; see also
{New Jersey}.

:unswizzle: /v./ See {swizzle}.

:unwind the stack: /vi./ 1. [techspeak] During the execution of
a procedural language, one is said to `unwind the stack' from a
called procedure up to a caller when one discards the stack frame
and any number of frames above it, popping back up to the level of
the given caller. In C this is done with
`longjmp'/`setjmp', in LISP with `throw/catch'.
See also {smash the stack}. 2. People can unwind the stack as
well, by quickly dealing with a bunch of problems: "Oh heck, let's
do lunch. Just a second while I unwind my stack."

:unwind-protect: /n./ [MIT: from the name of a LISP operator] A
task you must remember to perform before you leave a place or
finish a project. "I have an unwind-protect to call my advisor."

:up: /adj./ 1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is
up." Oppose {down}. 2. `bring up': /vt./ To create a working
version and start it. "They brought up a down system."
3. `come up' /vi./ To become ready for production use.

:upload: /uhp'lohd/ /v./ 1. [techspeak] To transfer programs
or data over a digital communications link from a smaller or
peripheral `client' system to a larger or central `host' one.
A transfer in the other direction is, of course, called a
{download} (but see the note about ground-to-space comm under
that entry). 2. [speculatively] To move the essential patterns and
algorithms that make up one's mind from one's brain into a
computer. Those who are convinced that such patterns and
algorithms capture the complete essence of the self view this
prospect with pleasant anticipation.

:upthread: /adv./ Earlier in the discussion (see {thread}),
i.e., `above'. "As Joe pointed out upthread, ..." See
also {followup}.

:urchin: /n./ See {munchkin}.

:URL: /U-R-L/ or /erl/ /n./ Uniform Resource Locator, an
address widget that identifies a document or resource on the
World Wide Web. This entry is here primarily to record the fact
that the term is commonly pronounced both /erl/, and /U-R-L/
(the latter predominates in more formal contexts).

:Usenet: /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ /n./ [from `Users'
Network'; the original spelling was USENET, but the mixed-case form
is now widely preferred] A distributed {bboard} (bulletin board)
system supported mainly by Unix machines. Originally implemented
in 1979--1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve
Daniel at Duke University, it has swiftly grown to become
international in scope and is now probably the largest
decentralized information utility in existence. As of early 1996,
it hosts over 10,000 {newsgroup}s and an average of over 500
megabytes (the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of new
technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage}
every day.

By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the original
UUCP transport for Usenet was fading out of use (see {UUCPNET})
-- almost all Usenet connections were over Internet links. A lot
of newbies and journalists began to refer to "Internet
newsgroups" as though Usenet was and always had been just another
Internet service. This ignorance greatly annoys experienced
Usenetters.

:user: /n./ 1. Someone doing `real work' with the computer,
using it as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a
computer. See {real user}. 2. A programmer who will believe
anything you tell him. One who asks silly questions. [GLS
observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask
questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep.
Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently
because the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the
documentation before bothering the maintainer.] See {luser}.
3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully,
without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports
bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them.

The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes
of people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers)
and {luser}s. The users are looked down on by hackers to some
extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the
system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as
`real winners'.) The term is a relative one: a skilled hacker
may be a user with respect to some program he himself does not
hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who
uses LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who
uses LISP, whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap
between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by
context.

:user-friendly: /adj./ Programmer-hostile. Generally used by
hackers in a critical tone, to describe systems that hold the
user's hand so obsessively that they make it painful for the more
experienced and knowledgeable to get any work done. See
{menuitis}, {drool-proof paper}, {Macintrash},
{user-obsequious}.

:user-obsequious: /adj./ Emphatic form of {user-friendly}.
Connotes a system so verbose, inflexible, and determinedly
simple-minded that it is nearly unusable. "Design a system any
fool can use and only a fool will want to use it." See {WIMP
environment}, {Macintrash}.

:USG Unix: /U-S-G yoo'niks/ /n./ Refers to AT&T Unix
commercial versions after {Version 7}, especially System III and
System V releases 1, 2, and 3. So called because during most of
the lifespan of those versions AT&T's support crew was called the
`Unix Support Group'. See {BSD}, {{Unix}}.

:UTSL: // /n./ [Unix] On-line acronym for `Use the Source, Luke' (a
pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use the Force, Luke!" in "Star
Wars") -- analogous to {RTFS} (sense 1), but more polite. This
is a common way of suggesting that someone would be better off
reading the source code that supports whatever feature is causing
confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the
manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven't attracted
{wizard}s to answer them.

Once upon a time in {elder days}, everyone running Unix had
source. After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this
objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at associates
of some outfit with a Unix source license. In practice, bootlegs
of Unix source code (made precisely for reference purposes) were so
ubiquitous that one could utter it at almost anyone on the network
without concern.

Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed
that anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed
is certainly Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD
distributions running second. Cheap commercial Unixes with source
such as BSD/OS are accelerating this trend.

:UUCPNET: /n. obs./ The store-and-forward network consisting of all
the world's connected Unix machines (and others running some clone
of the UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) software). Any machine reachable
only via a {bang path} is on UUCPNET. This term has been
rendered obsolescent by the spread of cheap Internet connections in
the 1990s; the few remaining UUCP links are essentially slow
channels to the Internet rather than an autonomous network. See
{network address}.

= V = =====

:V7: /V'sev'en/ /n./ See {Version 7}.

:vadding: /vad'ing/ /n./ [from VAD, a permutation of ADV
(i.e., {ADVENT}), used to avoid a particular {admin}'s
continual search-and-destroy sweeps for the game] A leisure-time
activity of certain hackers involving the covert exploration of the
`secret' parts of large buildings -- basements, roofs, freight
elevators, maintenance crawlways, steam tunnels, and the like. A
few go so far as to learn locksmithing in order to synthesize
vadding keys. The verb is `to vad' (compare {phreaking}; see
also {hack}, sense 9). This term dates from the late 1970s,
before which such activity was simply called `hacking'; the older
usage is still prevalent at MIT.

The most extreme and dangerous form of vadding is `elevator
rodeo', a.k.a. `elevator surfing', a sport played by wrasslin'
down a thousand-pound elevator car with a 3-foot piece of
string, and then exploiting this mastery in various stimulating
ways (such as elevator hopping, shaft exploration, rat-racing, and
the ever-popular drop experiments). Kids, don't try this at home!
See also {hobbit} (sense 2).

:vanilla: /adj./ [from the default flavor of ice cream in the
U.S.] Ordinary {flavor}, standard. When used of food, very
often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract!
For example, `vanilla wonton soup' means ordinary wonton soup, as
opposed to hot-and-sour wonton soup. Applied to hardware and
software, as in "Vanilla Version 7 Unix can't run on a vanilla
11/34." Also used to orthogonalize chip nomenclature; for
instance, a 74V00 means what TI calls a 7400, as distinct from a
74LS00, etc. This word differs from {canonical} in that the
latter means `default', whereas vanilla simply means
`ordinary'. For example, when hackers go on a {great-wall},
hot-and-sour soup is the {canonical} soup to get (because that
is what most of them usually order) even though it isn't the
vanilla (wonton) soup.

:vannevar: /van'*-var/ /n./ A bogus technological prediction
or a foredoomed engineering concept, esp. one that fails by
implicitly assuming that technologies develop linearly,
incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in fact the
learning curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions are
common, and competition is the rule. The prototype was Vannevar
Bush's prediction of `electronic brains' the size of the Empire
State Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for
their tubes and relays, a prediction made at a time when the
semiconductor effect had already been demonstrated. Other famous
vannevars have included magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines,
{videotex}, and a paper from the late 1970s that computed a
purported ultimate limit on areal density for ICs that was in fact
less than the routine densities of 5 years later.

:vaporware: /vay'pr-weir/ /n./ Products announced far in
advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place).
See also {brochureware}.

:var: /veir/ or /var/ /n./ Short for `variable'.
Compare {arg}, {param}.

:VAX: /vaks/ /n./ 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The
most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly
excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release
in 1978 and its eclipse by {killer micro}s after about 1986, the
VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp.
after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix (see {BSD}). Esp.
noted for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set
-- an asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution.
2. A major brand of vacuum cleaner in Britain. Cited here because
its sales pitch, "Nothing sucks like a VAX!" became a sort of
battle-cry of RISC partisans. It is even sometimes claimed that
DEC actually entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax
people that allowed them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in
return for not challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the
U.S.

A rival brand actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was
"Nothing sucks like Electrolux". It has apparently become a
classic
example (used in advertising textbooks) of the perils of not
knowing
the local idiom. But in 1996, the press manager of Electrolux AB,
while confirming that the company used this slogan in the late
1960s,
also tells us that their marketing people were fully aware of the
possible double entendre and intended it to gain attention.

And gain attention it did -- the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought
the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British
hackers report that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we
have one report from a New Zealander that the infamous slogan
surfaced there in TV ads for the product in 1992.

:VAXectomy: /vak-sek't*-mee/ /n./ [by analogy with
`vasectomy'] A VAX removal. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are
much slower than newer RISC-based workstations such as the SPARC.
Thus, if one knows one has a replacement coming, VAX removal can be
cause for celebration.

:VAXen: /vak'sn/ /n./ [from `oxen', perhaps influenced by
`vixen'] (alt. `vaxen') The plural canonically used among
hackers for the DEC VAX computers. "Our installation has four
PDP-10s and twenty vaxen." See {boxen}.

:vaxherd: /vaks'herd/ /n. obs./ [from `oxherd'] A VAX
operator. The image is reinforced because VAXen actually did tend
to come in herds, technically known as `clusters'.

:vaxism: /vak'sizm/ /n./ A piece of code that exhibits
{vaxocentrism} in critical areas. Compare {PC-ism},
{unixism}.