The New Hacker's Dictionary

171

resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1-4. See also [1698]bogosity, [1699]bogus; compare [1700]psyton, [1701]fat electrons, [1702]magic smoke.

The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of [1703]randomness, or sometimes of lameness). These are not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard joke or linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. And these imply nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof (we might note parenthetically that this is a generalization from "(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!). Perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls and wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to construct explanatory myths. Of course, playing on an existing word (as in the `futon') yields additional flavor. Compare [1704]magic smoke.

---

Node:bogon filter, Next:[1705]bogon flux, Previous:[1706]bogon, Up:[1707]= B =

bogon filter /boh'gon fil'tr/ n.

Any device, software or hardware, that limits or suppresses the flow and/or emission of bogons. "Engineering hacked a bogon filter between the Cray and the VAXen, and now we're getting fewer dropped packets." See also [1708]bogosity, [1709]bogus.

173

To make or become bogus. A program that has been changed so many times as to become completely disorganized has become bogotified. If you tighten a nut too hard and strip the threads on the bolt, the bolt has become bogotified and you had better not use it any more. This coinage led to the notional `autobogotiphobia' defined as `the fear of becoming bogotified'; but is not clear that the latter has ever been `live' jargon rather than a self-conscious joke in jargon about jargon. See also [1730]bogosity, [1731]bogus.

---

Node:bogue out, Next:[1732]bogus, Previous:[1733]bogotify, Up:[1734]= B =

bogue out /bohg owt/ vi.

To become bogus, suddenly and unexpectedly. "His talk was relatively sane until somebody asked him a trick question; then he bogued out and did nothing but [1735]flame afterwards." See also [1736]bogosity, [1737]bogus.

---

Node:bogus, Next:[1738]Bohr bug, Previous:[1739]bogue out, Up:[1740]= B =

bogus adj.

1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Unbelievable. "You claim to have solved the halting problem for Turing Machines? That's totally bogus." 6. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas."

Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific

174

problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of [1741]random -- mostly the negative ones.)

It is claimed that `bogus' was originally used in the hackish sense at Princeton in the late 1960s. It was spread to CMU and Yale by Michael Shamos, a migratory Princeton alumnus. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized there about 1975-76. These coinages spread into hackerdom from CMU and MIT. Most of them remained wordplay objects rather than actual vocabulary items or live metaphors. Examples: `amboguous' (having multiple bogus interpretations); `bogotissimo' (in a gloriously bogus manner); `bogotophile' (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus); `paleobogology' (the study of primeval bogosity).

Some bogowords, however, obtained sufficient live currency to be listed elsewhere in this lexicon; see [1742]bogometer, [1743]bogon, [1744]bogotify, and [1745]quantum bogodynamics and the related but unlisted [1746]Dr. Fred Mbogo.

By the early 1980s `bogus' was also current in something like hacker usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".

---

Node:Bohr bug, Next:[1747]boink, Previous:[1748]bogus, Up:[1749]= B =

Bohr bug /bohr buhg/ n.

[from quantum physics] A repeatable [1750]bug; one that manifests reliably under a possibly unknown but well-defined set of conditions. Antonym of [1751]heisenbug; see also [1752]mandelbug, [1753]schroedinbug.

177

There is a tradition in hackerdom of informally tagging important textbooks and standards documents with the dominant color of their covers or with some other conspicuous feature of the cover. Many of these are described in this lexicon under their own entries. See [1785]Aluminum Book, [1786]Blue Book, [1787]Camel Book, [1788]Cinderella Book, [1789]Devil Book, [1790]Dragon Book, [1791]Green Book, [1792]Orange Book, [1793]Purple Book, [1794]Red Book, [1795]Silver Book, [1796]White Book, [1797]Wizard Book, [1798]Yellow Book, and [1799]bible; see also [1800]rainbow series. Since about 1983 this tradition has gotten a boost from the popular O'Reilly and Associates line of technical books, which usually feature some kind of exotic animal on the cover.

---

Node:boot, Next:[1801]Borg, Previous:[1802]book titles, Up:[1803]= B =

boot v.,n.

[techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To load and initialize the operating system on a machine. This usage is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still jargon.

The derivative `reboot' implies that the machine hasn't been down for long, or that the boot is a [1804]bounce (sense 4) intended to clear some state of [1805]wedgitude. This is sometimes used of human thought processes, as in the following exchange: "You've lost me." "OK, reboot. Here's the theory...."

This term is also found in the variants `cold boot' (from power-off condition) and `warm boot' (with the CPU and all devices already powered up, as after a hardware reset or software crash).

Another variant: `soft boot', reinitialization of only part of a system, under control of other software still running: "If you're running the [1806]mess-dos emulator, control-alt-insert will cause a soft-boot of the emulator, while leaving the rest of the system running."

178

Opposed to this there is `hard boot', which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have to hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." One often hard-boots by performing a [1807]power cycle.

Historical note: this term derives from `bootstrap loader', a short program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from the front panel switches. This program was always very short (great efforts were expended on making it short in order to minimize the labor and chance of error involved in toggling it in), but was just smart enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from a card or paper tape reader), to which it handed control; this program in turn was smart enough to read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer `pulled itself up by its bootstraps' to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the `boot block'. When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it.

---

Node:Borg, Next:[1808]borken, Previous:[1809]boot, Up:[1810]= B =

Borg n.

In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" the Borg is a species of cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life into itself; their slogan is "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." In hacker parlance, the Borg is usually [1811]Microsoft, which is thought to be trying just as ruthlessly to assimilate all computers and the entire Internet to itself (there is a widely circulated image of Bill Gates as a Borg). Being forced to use Windows or NT is often referred to as being "Borged". Interestingly, the [1812]Halloween Documents reveal that this jargon is live within Microsoft itself. (Other companies, notably Intel and UUNet, have also occasionally been equated to the Borg.) See also [1813]Evil Empire, [1814]Internet Exploiter.

179

In IETF circles, where direct pressure from Microsoft is not a daily reality, the Borg is sometimes Cisco. This usage commemmorates their tendency to pay any price to hire talent away from their competitors. In fact, at the Spring 1997 IETF, a large number of ex-Cisco employees, all former members of Routing Geeks, showed up with t-shirts printed with "Recovering Borg".

---

Node:borken, Next:[1815]bot, Previous:[1816]Borg, Up:[1817]= B =

borken adj.

(also `borked') Common deliberate typo for `broken'.

---

Node:bot, Next:[1818]bot spot, Previous:[1819]borken, Up:[1820]= B =

bot n

[common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from `robot'] 1. An [1821]IRC or [1822]MUD user who is actually a program. On IRC, typically the robot provides some useful service. Examples are NickServ, which tries to prevent random users from adopting [1823]nicks already claimed by others, and MsgServ, which allows one to send asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on. Also common are `annoybots', such as KissServ, which perform no useful function except to send cute messages to other people. Service bots are less common on MUDs; but some others, such as the `Julia' bot active in 1990-91, have been remarkably impressive Turing-test experiments, able to pass as human for as long as ten or fifteen minutes of conversation. 2. An AI-controlled player in a computer game (especially a first-person shooter such as Quake) which, unlike ordinary monsters, operates like a human-controlled player, with access to a player's weapons and abilities. An example can be found at [1824]http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/. 3. Term used, though less

180

commonly, for a web [1825]spider. The file for controlling spider behavior on your site is officially the "Robots Exclusion File" and its URL is "http://<somehost>/robots.txt")

Note that bots in all senses were `robots' when the terms first appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now habitual.

---

Node:bot spot, Next:[1826]bottom feeder, Previous:[1827]bot, Up:[1828]= B =

bot spot n.

[MUD] The user on a MUD with the longest connect time. Derives from the fact that [1829]bots on MUDS often stay constantly connected and appear at the bottom of the list.

---

Node:bottom feeder, Next:[1830]bottom-up implementation, Previous:[1831]bot spot, Up:[1832]= B =

bottom feeder n.

1. An Internet user that leeches off ISPs - the sort you can never provide good enough services for, always complains about the price, no matter how low it may be, and will bolt off to another service the moment there is even the slimmest price difference. While most bottom feeders infest free or almost free services such as AOL, MSN, and Hotmail, too many flock to whomever happens to be the cheapest regional ISP at the time. Bottom feeders are often the classic problem user, known for unleashing spam, flamage, and other breaches of [1833]netiquette. 2. Syn. for [1834]slopsucker, derived from the fishermen's and naturalists' term for finny creatures who subsist on the primordial ooze. (This sense is older.)