The New Hacker's Dictionary
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Node:'Snooze, Next:[12381]SO, Previous:[12382]snivitz, Up:[12383]= S =
'Snooze /snooz/ [FidoNet] n.
Fidonews, the weekly official on-line newsletter of FidoNet. As the editorial policy of Fidonews is "anything that arrives, we print", there are often large articles completely unrelated to FidoNet, which in turn tend to elicit [12384]flamage in subsequent issues.
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Node:SO, Next:[12385]social engineering, Previous:[12386]'Snooze, Up:[12387]= S =
SO /S-O/ n.
1. (also `S.O.') Abbrev. for Significant Other, almost invariably written abbreviated and pronounced /S-O/ by hackers. Used to refer to one's primary relationship, esp. a live-in to whom one is not married. See [12388]MOTAS, [12389]MOTOS, [12390]MOTSS. 2. [techspeak] The Shift Out control character in ASCII (Control-N, 0001110).
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Node:social engineering, Next:[12391]social science number, Previous:[12392]SO, Up:[12393]= S =
social engineering n.
Term used among [12394]crackers and [12395]samurai for cracking techniques that rely on weaknesses in [12396]wetware rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the [12397]tiger team story in the [12398]patch entry.
992
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Node:social science number, Next:[12399]sock puppet,
Previous:[12400]social engineering, Up:[12401]= S =
social science number n. //
[IBM] A statistic that is [12402]content-free, or nearly so. A measure derived via methods of questionable validity from data of a dubious and vague nature. Predictively, having a social science number in hand is seldom much better than nothing, and can be considerably worse. As a rule, [12403]management loves them. See also [12404]numbers, [12405]math-out, [12406]pretty pictures.
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Node:sock puppet, Next:[12407]sodium substrate, Previous:[12408]social science number, Up:[12409]= S =
sock puppet n.
[Usenet: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and talking to it and pretending it's talking back] In Usenet parlance, a [12410]pseudo through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original message to give the appearance that a number of people support the views held in the original message.
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Node:sodium substrate, Next:[12411]soft boot, Previous:[12412]sock puppet, Up:[12413]= S =
sodium substrate n.
Syn [12414]salt substrate.
993
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Node:soft boot, Next:[12415]softcopy, Previous:[12416]sodium substrate, Up:[12417]= S =
soft boot n.
See [12418]boot.
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Node:softcopy, Next:[12419]software bloat, Previous:[12420]soft boot, Up:[12421]= S =
softcopy /soft'kop-ee/ n.
[by analogy with `hardcopy'] A machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. See [12422]bits, [12423]machinable.
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Node:software bloat, Next:[12424]software hoarding,
Previous:[12425]softcopy, Up:[12426]= S =
software bloat n.
The results of [12427]second-system effect or [12428]creeping featuritis. Commonly cited examples include ls(1), [12429]X, [12430]BSD, [12431]Missed'em-five, and [12432]OS/2.
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Node:software hoarding, Next:[12433]software laser,
Previous:[12434]software bloat, Up:[12435]= S =
software hoarding n.
994
Pejorative term employed by members and adherents of the [12436]GNU project to describe the act of holding software proprietary, keeping it under trade secret or license terms which prohibit free redistribution and modification. Used primarily in Free Software Foundation propaganda. For a summary of related issues, see [12437]GNU.
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Node:software laser, Next:[12438]software rot, Previous:[12439]software hoarding, Up:[12440]= S =
software laser n.
An optical laser works by bouncing photons back and forth between two mirrors, one totally reflective and one partially reflective. If the lasing material (usually a crystal) has the right properties, photons scattering off the atoms in the crystal will excite cascades of more photons, all in lockstep. Eventually the beam will escape through the partially-reflective mirror. One kind of [12441]sorcerer's apprentice mode involving [12442]bounce messages can produce closely analogous results, with a [12443]cascade of messages escaping to flood nearby systems. By mid-1993 there had been at least two publicized incidents of this kind.
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Node:software rot, Next:[12444]softwarily, Previous:[12445]software laser, Up:[12446]= S =
software rot n.
Term used to describe the tendency of software that has not been used in a while to [12447]lose; such failure may be semi-humorously ascribed to [12448]bit rot. More commonly, `software rot' strikes when a program's assumptions become out of date. If the design was insufficiently [12449]robust, this may cause it to fail in mysterious ways. Syn. `code rot'. See also [12450]link rot.
995
For example, owing to endemic shortsightedness in the design of COBOL programs, a good number of them succumbed to software rot when their 2-digit year counters underwent [12451]wrap around at the beginning of the year 2000. Actually, related lossages often afflict centenarians who have to deal with computer software designed by unimaginative clods. One such incident became the focus of a minor public flap in 1990, when a gentleman born in 1889 applied for a driver's license renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina. The new system refused to issue the card, probably because with 2-digit years the ages 101 and 1 cannot be distinguished.
Historical note: Software rot in an even funnier sense than the mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g., the R1; see [12452]grind crank). If a program that depended on a peculiar instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once did. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. We can [12453]snarf this opcode, right? No one uses it.")
Another classic example of this sprang from the time an MIT hacker found a simple way to double the speed of the unconditional jump instruction on a PDP-6, so he patched the hardware. Unfortunately, this broke some fragile timing software in a music-playing program, throwing its output out of tune. This was fixed by adding a defensive initialization routine to compare the speed of a timing loop with the real-time clock; in other words, it figured out how fast the PDP-6 was that day, and corrected appropriately.
Compare [12454]bit rot.
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Node:softwarily, Next:[12455]softy, Previous:[12456]software rot, Up:[12457]= S =
softwarily /soft-weir'i-lee/ adv.
996
In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily unreliable." The adjective **`softwary' is not used. See [12458]hardwarily.
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Node:softy, Next:[12459]some random X, Previous:[12460]softwarily, Up:[12461]= S =
softy n.
[IBM] Hardware hackers' term for a software expert who is largely ignorant of the mysteries of hardware.
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Node:some random X, Next:[12462]sorcerer's apprentice mode, Previous:[12463]softy, Up:[12464]= S =
some random X adj.
Used to indicate a member of class X, with the implication that Xs are interchangeable. "I think some random cracker tripped over the guest timeout last night." See also [12465]J. Random.
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Node:sorcerer's apprentice mode, Next:[12466]SOS, Previous:[12467]some random X, Up:[12468]= S =
sorcerer's apprentice mode n.
[from Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling" via Paul Dukas's "L'apprenti sorcier" the film "Fantasia"] A bug in a protocol where, under some circumstances, the receipt of a message causes multiple messages to be sent, each of which, when received, triggers the same bug. Used esp. of such behavior caused by [12469]bounce message loops in [12470]email software.
997
Compare [12471]broadcast storm, [12472]network meltdown, [12473]software laser, [12474]ARMM.
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Node:SOS, Next:[12475]source, Previous:[12476]sorcerer's apprentice mode, Up:[12477]= S =
SOS /S-O-S/
n.,obs. An infamously [12478]losing text editor. Once, back in the 1960s, when a text editor was needed for the PDP-6, a hacker crufted together a [12479]quick-and-dirty `stopgap editor' to be used until a better one was written. Unfortunately, the old one was never really discarded when new ones came along. SOS is a descendant (`Son of Stopgap') of that editor, and many PDP-10 users gained the dubious pleasure of its acquaintance. Since then other programs similar in style to SOS have been written, notably the early font editor BILOS /bye'lohs/, the Brother-In-Law Of Stopgap (the alternate expansion `Bastard Issue, Loins of Stopgap' has been proposed).
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Node:source, Next:[12480]source of all good bits, Previous:[12481]SOS, Up:[12482]= S =
source n.
[very common] In reference to software, `source' is invariably shorthand for `source code', the preferred human-readable and human-modifiable form of the program. This is as opposed to object code, the derived binary executable form of a program. This shorthand readily takes derivative forms; one may speak of "the sources of a system" or of "having source".
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998
Node:source of all good bits, Next:[12483]space-cadet keyboard, Previous:[12484]source, Up:[12485]= S =
source of all good bits n.
A person from whom (or a place from which) useful information may be obtained. If you need to know about a program, a [12486]guru might be the source of all good bits. The title is often applied to a particularly competent secretary.
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Node:space-cadet keyboard, Next:[12487]spaceship operator, Previous:[12488]source of all good bits, Up:[12489]= S =
space-cadet keyboard n.
A now-legendary device used on MIT LISP machines, which inspired several still-current jargon terms and influenced the design of [12490]EMACS. It was equipped with no fewer than seven shift keys: four keys for [12491]bucky bits (`control', `meta', `hyper', and `super') and three like regular shift keys, called `shift', `top', and `front'. Many keys had three symbols on them: a letter and a symbol on the top, and a Greek letter on the front. For example, the `L' key had an `L' and a two-way arrow on the top, and the Greek letter lambda on the front. By pressing this key with the right hand while playing an appropriate `chord' with the left hand on the shift keys, you could get the following results:
L lowercase l
shift-L uppercase L
front-L lowercase lambda
front-shift-L uppercase lambda
999
top-L two-way arrow (front and shift are ignored)
And of course each of these might also be typed with any combination of the control, meta, hyper, and super keys. On this keyboard, you could type over 8000 different characters! This allowed the user to type very complicated mathematical text, and also to have thousands of single-character commands at his disposal. Many hackers were actually willing to memorize the command meanings of that many characters if it reduced typing time (this attitude obviously shaped the interface of EMACS). Other hackers, however, thought having that many bucky bits was overkill, and objected that such a keyboard can require three or four hands to operate. See [12492]bucky bits, [12493]cokebottle, [12494]double bucky, [12495]meta bit, [12496]quadruple bucky.
Note: early versions of this entry incorrectly identified the space-cadet keyboard with the `Knight keyboard'. Though both were designed by Tom Knight, the latter term was properly applied only to a keyboard used for ITS on the PDP-10 and modeled on the Stanford keyboard (as described under [12497]bucky bits). The true space-cadet keyboard evolved from the first Knight keyboard.
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Node:spaceship operator, Next:[12498]SPACEWAR, Previous:[12499]space-cadet keyboard, Up:[12500]= S =
spaceship operator n.
The glyph <=>, so-called apparently because in the low-resolution constant-width font used on many terminals it vaguely resembles a flying saucer. [12501]Perl uses this to denote the signum-of-difference operation.
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Node:SPACEWAR, Next:[12502]spaghetti code,
Previous:[12503]spaceship operator, Up:[12504]= S =
1000
SPACEWAR n.
A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. This game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. In 1968-69, a descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became [12505]Unix. Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are still [12506]feeping in video arcades everywhere.
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Node:spaghetti code, Next:[12507]spaghetti inheritance,
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spaghetti code n.
Code with a complex and tangled control structure, esp. one using many GOTOs, exceptions, or other `unstructured' branching constructs. Pejorative. The synonym `kangaroo code' has been reported, doubtless because such code has so many jumps in it.
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Node:spaghetti inheritance, Next:[12510]spam, Previous:[12511]spaghetti code, Up:[12512]= S =
spaghetti inheritance n.
[encountered among users of object-oriented languages that use inheritance, such as Smalltalk] A convoluted class-subclass graph, often resulting from carelessly deriving subclasses from other classes just for the sake of reusing their code. Coined in a (successful) attempt to discourage such practice, through guilt-by-association with [12513]spaghetti code.