The New Hacker's Dictionary
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[from Unix tar(1)] To create a transportable archive from a group of files by first sticking them together with tar(1) (the Tape ARchiver) and then compressing the result (see [13138]compress). The latter action is dubbed `feathering' partly for euphony and (if only for contrived effect) by analogy to what you do with an airplane propeller to decrease wind resistance, or with an oar to reduce water resistance; smaller files, after all, slip through comm links more easily. Compare the more common [13139]tarball.
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tarball n.
[very common; prob. based on the "tar baby" in the Uncle Remus folk tales] An archive, created with the Unix tar(1) utility, containing myriad related files. "Here, I'll just ftp you a tarball of the whole project." Tarballs have been the standard way to ship around source-code distributions since the mid-1980s; in retrospect it seems odd that this term did not enter common usage until the late 1990s.
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tardegy
n. [deliberate mangling of `tragedy'] An incident in which someone who clearly deserves to be selected out of the gene pool on grounds of extreme stupidity meets with a messy end. Coined on the Darwin list, which is dedicated to chronicling such incidents; but almost all hackers would instantly recognize the intention of the term and laugh.
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Node:taste, Next:[13146]tayste, Previous:[13147]tardegy, Up:[13148]= T =
taste [primarily MIT] n.
1. The quality in a program that tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also `tasty', `tasteful', `tastefulness'. "This feature comes in N tasty flavors." Although `tasty' and `flavorful' are essentially synonyms, `taste' and [13149]flavor are not. Taste refers to sound judgment on the part of the creator; a program or feature can exhibit taste but cannot have taste. On the other hand, a feature can have [13150]flavor. Also, [13151]flavor has the additional meaning of `kind' or `variety' not shared by `taste'. The marked sense of [13152]flavor is more popular than `taste', though both are widely used. See also [13153]elegant. 2. Alt. sp. of [13154]tayste.
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tayste /tayst/
n. Two bits; also as [13158]taste. Syn. [13159]crumb, [13160]quarter. See [13161]nybble.
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TCB /T-C-B/ n.
[IBM] 1. Trouble Came Back. An intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect or [13165]shotgun debugging. Compare [13166]heisenbug. Not to be confused with: 2. Trusted Computing Base, an `official' jargon term from the [13167]Orange Book.
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TCP/IP /T'C-P I'P/ n.
1. [Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol] The wide-area-networking protocol that makes the Internet work, and the only one most hackers can speak the name of without laughing or retching. Unlike such allegedly `standard' competitors such as X.25, DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by actually being used, rather than being handed down from on high by a vendor or a heavily-politicized standards committee. Consequently, it (a) works, (b) actually promotes cheap cross-platform connectivity, and (c) annoys the hell out of corporate and governmental empire-builders everywhere. Hackers value all three of these properties. See [13171]creationism. 2. [Amateur Packet Radio] Formerly expanded as "The Crap Phil Is Pushing". The reference is to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context was an ongoing technical/political war between the majority of sites still running AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.
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TechRef /tek'ref/ n.
[MS-DOS] The original "IBM PC Technical Reference Manual", including the BIOS listing and complete schematics for the PC. The only PC documentation in the original-issue package that was considered serious by real hackers.
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TECO /tee'koh/ n.,v. obs.
1. [originally an acronym for `[paper] Tape Editor and COrrector'; later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor developed at MIT and modified by just about everybody. With all the dialects included, TECO may have been the most prolific editor in use before [13178]EMACS, to which it was directly ancestral. Noted for its powerful programming-language-like features and its unspeakably hairy syntax. It is literally the case that every string of characters is a valid TECO program (though probably not a useful one); one common game used to be mentally working out what the TECO commands corresponding to human names did. 2. vt. Originally, to edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite variations (see below). 3. vt.,obs. To edit even when TECO is not the editor being used! This usage is rare and now primarily historical.
As an example of TECO's obscurity, here is a TECO program that takes a list of names such as: Loser, J. Random Quux, The Great Dick, Moby
sorts them alphabetically according to surname, and then puts the surname last, removing the comma, to produce the following: Moby Dick J. Random Loser The Great Quux
The program is [1 J^P$L$$ J <.-Z; .,(S,$ -D .)FX1 @F^B $K :L I $ G1 L>$$
(where ^B means `Control-B' (ASCII 0000010) and $ is actually an [13179]alt or escape (ASCII 0011011) character).
In fact, this very program was used to produce the second, sorted list from the first list. The first hack at it had a [13180]bug: GLS (the author) had accidentally omitted the @ in front of F^B, which as anyone can see is clearly the [13181]Wrong Thing. It worked fine the second time. There is no space to describe all the features of TECO, but it may be of interest that ^P means `sort' and J<.-Z; ... L> is an idiomatic series of commands for `do
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once for every line'.
In mid-1991, TECO is pretty much one with the dust of history, having been replaced in the affections of hackerdom by [13182]EMACS. Descendants of an early (and somewhat lobotomized) version adopted by DEC can still be found lurking on VMS and a couple of crufty PDP-11 operating systems, however, and ports of the more advanced MIT versions remain the focus of some antiquarian interest. See also [13183]retrocomputing, [13184]write-only language.
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Node:tee, Next:[13185]teergrube, Previous:[13186]TECO, Up:[13187]= T
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tee n.,vt.
[Purdue] A carbon copy of an electronic transmission. "Oh, you're sending him the [13188]bits to that? Slap on a tee for me." From the Unix command tee(1), itself named after a pipe fitting (see [13189]plumbing). Can also mean `save one for me', as in "Tee a slice for me!" Also spelled `T'.
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Node:teergrube, Next:[13190]teledildonics, Previous:[13191]tee,
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teergrube /teer'groob/ n.
[German for `tar pit'] A trap set to punish spammers who use an [13193]address harvester; a mail server deliberately set up to be really, really slow. To activate it, scatter addresses that look like users on the teergrube's host in places where the address harvester will be trolling (one popular way is to embed the fake address in a Usenet sig block next to a human-readable warning not to send mail to it). The address harvester will dutifully collect the address. When the spammer tries to mailbomb it, his
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mailer will get stuck.
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Node:teledildonics, Next:[13194]Telerat, Previous:[13195]teergrube,
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teledildonics /tel`*-dil-do'-niks/ n.
Sex in a computer simulated virtual reality, esp. computer-mediated sexual interaction between the [13197]VR presences of two humans. This practice is not yet possible except in the rather limited form of erotic conversation on [13198]MUDs and the like. The term, however, is widely recognized in the VR community as a [13199]ha ha only serious projection of things to come. "When we can sustain a multi-sensory surround good enough for teledildonics, then we'll know we're getting somewhere." See also [13200]hot chat.
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Node:Telerat, Next:[13201]TELNET, Previous:[13202]teledildonics,
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Telerat /tel'*-rat/ n. obs.
Unflattering hackerism for `Teleray', a now-extinct line of extremely losing terminals. Compare [13204]AIDX, [13205]Macintrash [13206]Nominal Semidestructor, [13207]ScumOS, [13208]sun-stools, [13209]HP-SUX, [13210]Slowlaris.
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TELNET /tel'net/ vt.
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(also commonly lowercased as `telnet') To communicate with another Internet host using the TELNET ([13214]RFC 854) protocol (usually using a program of the same name). TOPS-10 people used the word IMPCOM, since that was the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN /T-N/. "I usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News."
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Node:ten-finger interface, Next:[13215]tense, Previous:[13216]TELNET, Up:[13217]= T =
ten-finger interface n.
The interface between two networks that cannot be directly connected for security reasons; refers to the practice of placing two terminals side by side and having an operator read from one and type into the other.
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Node:tense, Next:[13218]tentacle, Previous:[13219]ten-finger interface, Up:[13220]= T =
tense adj.
Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly [13221]bummed, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever routine by Mike Kazar, once a grad-student hacker at CMU: "This routine is so tense it will bring tears to your eyes." A tense programmer is one who produces tense code.
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tentacle n.
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A covert [13225]pseudo, sense 1. An artificial identity created in cyberspace for nefarious and deceptive purposes. The implication is that a single person may have multiple tentacles. This term was originally floated in some paranoid ravings on the cypherpunks list (see [13226]cypherpunk), and adopted in a spirit of irony by other, saner members. It has since shown up, used seriously, in the documentation for some remailer software, and is now (1994) widely recognized on the net.
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Node:tenured graduate student, Next:[13227]tera-,
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tenured graduate student n.
One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the usual maximum is 5 or 6): a `ten-yeared' student (get it?). Actually, this term may be used of any grad student beginning in his seventh year. Students don't really get tenure, of course, the way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate student has probably been around the university longer than any untenured professor.
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tera- /te'r*/ pref.
[SI] See [13233]quantifiers.
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teraflop club /te'r*-flop kluhb/ n.
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[FLOP = Floating Point Operation] A mythical association of people who consume outrageous amounts of computer time in order to produce a few simple pictures of glass balls with intricate ray-tracing techniques. Caltech professor James Kajiya is said to have been the founder. Compare [13237]Knights of the Lambda Calculus.
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terminak /ter'mi-nak`/ n.
[Caltech, ca. 1979] Any malfunctioning computer terminal. A common failure mode of Lear-Siegler ADM 3a terminals caused the `L' key to produce the `K' code instead; complaints about this tended to look like "Terminak #3 has a bad keyboard. Pkease fix." Compare [13241]dread high-bit disease, [13242]frogging; see also [13243]AIDX, [13244]Nominal Semidestructor, [13245]ScumOS, [13246]sun-stools, [13247]Telerat, [13248]HP-SUX, [13249]Slowlaris.
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terminal brain death n.
The extreme form of [13253]terminal illness (sense 1). What someone who has obviously been hacking continuously for far too long is said to be suffering from.
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terminal illness n.
1. Syn. [13257]raster burn. 2. The `burn-in' condition your CRT tends to get if you don't have a screen saver.
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terminal junkie n.
[UK] A [13261]wannabee or early [13262]larval stage hacker who spends most of his or her time wandering the directory tree and writing [13263]noddy programs just to get a fix of computer time. Variants include `terminal jockey', `console junkie', and [13264]console jockey. The term `console jockey' seems to imply more expertise than the other three (possibly because of the exalted status of the [13265]console relative to an ordinary terminal). See also [13266]twink, [13267]read-only user. Appropriately, this term was used in the works of William S. Burroughs to describe a heroin addict with an unlimited supply.
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terpri /ter'pree/ vi.
[from LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP)] To output a [13271]newline. Now rare as jargon, though still used as techspeak in Common LISP. It is a contraction of `TERminate PRInt line', named for the fact that, on some early OSes and hardware, no characters would be printed until a complete line was formed, so this operation terminated the line and emitted the output.