The New Hacker's Dictionary
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*[858]boustrophedon:
*[859]box:
*[860]boxed comments:
*[861]boxen:
*[862]boxology:
*[863]bozotic:
*[864]BQS:
*[865]brain dump:
*[866]brain fart:
*[867]brain-damaged:
*[868]brain-dead:
*[869]braino:
*[870]branch to Fishkill:
*[871]bread crumbs:
*[872]break:
*[873]break-even point:
*[874]breath-of-life packet:
*[875]breedle:
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*[876]Breidbart Index:
*[877]bring X to its knees:
*[878]brittle:
*[879]broadcast storm:
*[880]brochureware:
*[881]broken:
*[882]broken arrow:
*[883]BrokenWindows:
*[884]broket:
*[885]Brooks's Law:
*[886]brown-paper-bag bug:
*[887]browser:
*[888]BRS:
*[889]brute force:
*[890]brute force and ignorance:
*[891]BSD:
*[892]BSOD:
*[893]BUAF:
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*[894]BUAG:
*[895]bubble sort:
*[896]bucky bits:
*[897]buffer chuck:
*[898]buffer overflow:
*[899]bug:
*[900]bug-compatible:
*[901]bug-for-bug compatible:
*[902]bug-of-the-month club:
*[903]buglix:
*[904]bulletproof:
*[905]bullschildt:
*[906]bum:
*[907]bump:
*[908]burble:
*[909]buried treasure:
*[910]burn-in period:
*[911]burst page:
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*[912]busy-wait:
*[913]buzz:
*[914]BWQ:
*[915]by hand:
*[916]byte:
*[917]byte sex:
*[918]bytesexual:
*[919]Bzzzt! Wrong.:
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Node:B5, Next:[920]back door, Previous:[921]awk, Up:[922]= B =
B5 //
[common] Abbreviation for "Babylon 5", a science-fiction TV series as revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.
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Node:back door, Next:[923]backbone cabal, Previous:[924]B5, Up:[925]= B =
back door n.
[common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the
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vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. [926]trap door; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also [927]iron box, [928]cracker, [929]worm, [930]logic bomb.
Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.
The talk that suggested this truly moby hack was published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", "Communications of the ACM 27", 8 (August 1984), pp. 761-763 (text available at [931]http://www.acm.org/classics). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one late-night login across the network by someone using the login name `kt'.
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Node:backbone cabal, Next:[932]backbone site, Previous:[933]back door, Up:[934]= B =
backbone cabal n.
A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the [935]Great Renaming and reined in the chaos of [936]Usenet during most of the 1980s. During most of its lifetime, the Cabal (as it was sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost obligatory for anyone privy to their secrets to respond "There is no Cabal" whenever the existence or activities of the group were speculated on in public.
The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery. Even a decade after the cabal [937]mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only gone deeper underground with its power intact.
This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later satirized in ways that took on a life of their own. See [938]Eric Conspiracy for one example.
See [939]NANA for the subsequent history of "the Cabal".
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Node:backbone site, Next:[940]backgammon, Previous:[941]backbone cabal, Up:[942]= B =
backbone site n.,obs.
Formerly, a key Usenet and email site, one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1993, when this sense of the term was beginning to pass out of general use due to
107
wide availability of cheap Internet connections, included uunet and the mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, [943]DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare [944]rib site, [945]leaf site.
[1996 update: This term is seldom heard any more. The UUCP network world that gave it meaning has nearly disappeared; everyone is on the Internet now and network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today one might see references to a `backbone router' instead --ESR]
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Node:backgammon, Next:[946]background, Previous:[947]backbone site, Up:[948]= B =
backgammon
See [949]bignum (sense 3), [950]moby (sense 4), and [951]pseudoprime.
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Node:background, Next:[952]backreference, Previous:[953]backgammon,
Up:[954]= B =
background n.,adj.,vt.
[common] To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever [955]foreground matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare [956]amp off,
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[957]slopsucker.
Technically, a task running in background is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose [958]foreground. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with [959]Unix, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on OS/360.
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Node:backreference, Next:[960]backronym, Previous:[961]background,
Up:[962]= B =
backreference n.
1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was matched within grouping parentheses parentheses. 2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched text. 3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has been seen or discussed before. "When you said `she' just now, who were you backreferencing?"
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Node:backronym, Next:[963]backspace and overstrike,
Previous:[964]backreference, Up:[965]= B =
backronym n.
[portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what linguists call `back formation'. Examples are given under [966]BASIC, [967]recursive acronym (Cygnus), [968]Acme, and [969]mung. Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare [970]retcon.
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Node:backspace and overstrike, Next:[971]backward combatability, Previous:[972]backronym, Up:[973]= B =
backspace and overstrike interj.
[rare] Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. Once common among APL programmers; may now be obsolete.
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Node:backward combatability, Next:[974]BAD, Previous:[975]backspace and overstrike, Up:[976]= B =
backward combatability /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ n.
[CMU, Tektronix: from `backward compatibility'] A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of `new and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backwards compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing can lead to extreme [977]software bloat. See also [978]flag day.
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Node:BAD, Next:[979]Bad and Wrong, Previous:[980]backward combatability, Up:[981]= B =
BAD /B-A-D/ adj.
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[IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is [982]bogus because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See [983]working as designed.
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Node:Bad and Wrong, Next:[984]Bad Thing, Previous:[985]BAD,
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Bad and Wrong adj.
[Durham, UK] Said of something that is both badly designed and wrongly executed. This common term is the prototype of, and is used by contrast with, three less common terms - Bad and Right (a kludge, something ugly but functional); Good and Wrong (an overblown GUI or other attractive nuisance); and (rare praise) Good and Right. These terms entered common use at Durham c.1994 and may have been imported from elsewhere; they are also in use at Oxford, and the emphatic form "Evil, Bad and Wrong" (abbreviated EBW) is reported fromm there. There are standard abbreviations: they start with B&R, a typo for "Bad and Wrong". Consequently, B&W is actually "Bad and Right", G&R = "Good and Wrong", and G&W = "Good and Right". Compare [987]evil and rude, [988]Good Thing, [989]Bad Thing.
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Node:Bad Thing, Next:[990]bag on the side, Previous:[991]Bad and Wrong, Up:[992]= B =
Bad Thing n.
[very common; from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody "1066 And All That"] Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing". Oppose [993]Good Thing. British correspondents confirm that [994]Bad Thing and [995]Good