The New Hacker's Dictionary

151

the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold [1467]boot to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also [1468]Blue Screen of Death, which has become rather more common.

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Black Thursday n.

February 8th, 1996 - the day of the signing into law of the [1472]CDA, so called by analogy with the catastrophic "Black Friday" in 1929 that began the Great Depression.

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blammo v.

[Oxford Brookes University and alumni, UK] To forcibly remove someone from any interactive system, especially talker systems. The operators, who may remain hidden, may `blammo' a user who is misbehaving. Very similar to MIT [1476]gun; in fact, the `blammo-gun' is a notional device used to `blammo' someone. While in actual fact the only incarnation of the blammo-gun is the command used to forcibly eject a user, operators speak of different levels of blammo-gun fire; e.g., a blammo-gun to `stun' will temporarily remove someone, but a blammo-gun set to `maim' will stop someone coming back on for a while.

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bletcherous /blech'*-r*s/ adj.

Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) See [1500]losing, [1501]cretinous, [1502]bagbiting, [1503]bogus, and [1504]random. The term [1505]bletcherous applies to the esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for [1506]cretinous. By contrast, something that is `losing' or `bagbiting' may be failing to meet objective criteria. See also [1507]bogus and [1508]random, which have richer and wider shades of meaning than any of the above.

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blink vi.,n.

To use a navigator or off-line message reader to minimize time spent on-line to a commercial network service (a necessity in many places outside the U.S. where the telecoms monopolies charge per-minute for local calls). This term attained wide use in the UK, but is rare or unknown in the US.

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blinkenlights /blink'*n-li:tz/ n.

155

See also [1516]geef.

Old-time hackers sometimes get nostalgic for blinkenlights because they were so much more fun to look at than a blank panel. Sadly, very few computers still have them (the three LEDs on a PC keyboard certainly don't count). The obvious reasons (cost of wiring, cost of front-panel cutouts, almost nobody needs or wants to interpret machine-register states on the fly anymore) are only part of the story. Another part of it is that radio-frequency leakage from the lamp wiring was beginning to be a problem as far back as transistor machines. But the most fundamental fact is that there are very few signals slow enough to blink an LED these days! With slow CPUs, you could watch the bus register or instruction counter tick, but at 33/66/150MHz it's all a blur.

Finally, a version updated for the Internet has been seen on news.admin.net-abuse.email:

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und giffengrabben. Ist easy droppenpacket der routers und overloaden der backbone mit der spammen und der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das mausklicken sichtseeren keepen das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken.

This newest version partly reflects reports that the word `blinkenlights' is (in 1999) undergoing something of a revival in usage, but applied to networking equipment. The transmit and receive lights on routers, activity lights on switches and hubs, and other network equipment often blink in visually pleasing and seemingly coordinated ways. Although this is different in some ways from register readings, a tall stack of Cisco equipment or a 19-inch rack of ISDN terminals can provoke a similar feeling of hypnotic awe, especially in a darkened network operations center or server room.

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156

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blit /blit/ vt.

1. [common] To copy a large array of bits from one part of a computer's memory to another part, particularly when the memory is being used to determine what is shown on a display screen. "The storage allocator picks through the table and copies the good parts up into high memory, and then blits it all back down again." See [1520]bitblt, [1521]BLT, [1522]dd, [1523]cat, [1524]blast, [1525]snarf. More generally, to perform some operation (such as toggling) on a large array of bits while moving them. 2. [historical, rare] Sometimes all-capitalized as `BLIT': an early experimental bit-mapped terminal designed by Rob Pike at Bell Labs, later commercialized as the AT&T 5620. (The folk etymology from `Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal' is incorrect. Its creators liked to claim that "Blit" stood for the Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato.)

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blitter /blit'r/ n.

[common] A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform [1529]blit operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but since 1990 the trend has been away from them (however, see [1530]cycle of reincarnation). Syn. [1531]raster blaster.

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blivet /bliv'*t/ n.

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BLOB

1. n. [acronym: Binary Large OBject] Used by database people to refer to any random large block of bits that needs to be stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file. The essential point about a BLOB is that it's an object that cannot be interpreted within the database itself. 2. v. To [1542]mailbomb someone by sending a BLOB to him/her; esp. used as a mild threat. "If that program crashes again, I'm going to BLOB the core dump to you."

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block v.

[common; from process scheduling terminology in OS theory] 1. vi. To delay or sit idle while waiting for something. "We're blocking until everyone gets here." Compare [1546]busy-wait. 2. `block on' vt. To block, waiting for (something). "Lunch is blocked on Phil's arrival."

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block transfer computations n.

[from the television series "Dr. Who"] Computations so fiendishly subtle and complex that they could not be performed by machines. Used to refer to any task that should be expressible as an algorithm in theory, but isn't.

(The Z80's LDIR instruction, "Computed Block Transfer with increment", may also be relevant.)

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Bloggs Family n.

An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the old [1553]DEC Telephone Directory. Compare [1554]Dr. Fred Mbogo; [1555]J. Random Hacker; [1556]Fred Foobar.

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blow an EPROM /bloh *n ee'prom/ v.

(alt. `blast an EPROM', `burn an EPROM') To program a read-only memory, e.g. for use with an embedded system. This term arose because the programming process for the Programmable Read-Only Memories (PROMs) that preceded present-day Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories (EPROMs) involved intentionally blowing tiny electrical fuses on the chip. The usage lives on (it's too vivid and expressive to discard) even though the write process on EPROMs is nondestructive.

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blow away vt.