Chapter 15

:elder days: /n./ The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the {PDP-10}, {TECO}, {{ITS}}, and the ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings". Compare {Iron Age}; see also {elvish} and {Great Worm, the}.

:elegant: /adj./ [from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever', `winning', or even {cuspy}.

The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery, probably best known for his classic children's book "The Little Prince", was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he said "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

:elephantine: /adj./ Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous {hog}s (owing perhaps to poor design founded on {brute force and ignorance}) and exceedingly {hairy} in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare `has the elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative {monstrosity}. See also {second-system effect} and {baroque}.

:elevator controller: /n./ An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like {toaster} (which superseded it). During one period (1983--84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't require `printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library -- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several {holy wars}.

:elite: /adj./ Clueful. Plugged-in. One of the cognoscenti. Also used as a general positive adjective. This term is not actually hacker slang in the strict sense; it is used primarily by crackers and {warez d00dz}. Cracker usage is probably related to a 19200cps modem called the `Courier Elite' that was widely popular on pirate boards before the V.32bis standard. A true hacker would be more likely to use `wizardly'. Oppose {lamer}.

:ELIZA effect: /*-li:'z* *-fekt'/ /n./ [AI community] The tendency of humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol `+' that makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that people associate it with addition. Using `+' or `plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.

This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system. Compare {ad-hockery}; see also {AI-complete}.

:elvish: /n./ 1. The Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book of Kells". Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The Lord of The Rings" as an orthography for his fictional `elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically {elegant}) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be intrigued by artificial languages in general). It is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the like to support a Feanorian typeface as one of their demo items. See also {elder days}. 2. By extension, any odd or unreadable typeface produced by a graphics device. 3. The typeface mundanely called `B"ocklin', an art-decoish display font.

:EMACS: /ee'maks/ /n./ [from Editing MACroS] The ne plus ultra of hacker editors, a programmable text editor with an entire LISP system inside it. It was originally written by Richard Stallman in {TECO} under {{ITS}} at the MIT AI lab; AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor". It has since been reimplemented any number of times, by various hackers, and versions exist that run under most major operating systems. Perhaps the most widely used version, also written by Stallman and now called "{GNU} EMACS" or {GNUMACS}, runs principally under Unix. It includes facilities to run compilation subprocesses and send and receive mail; many hackers spend up to 80% of their {tube time} inside it. Other variants include {GOSMACS}, CCA EMACS, UniPress EMACS, Montgomery EMACS, jove, epsilon, and MicroEMACS.

Some EMACS versions running under window managers iconify as an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one feature the editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some hackers find EMACS too {heavyweight} and {baroque} for their taste, and expand the name as `Escape Meta Alt Control Shift' to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated with {bucky bits}. Other spoof expansions include `Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping', `Eventually `malloc()'s All Computer Storage', and `EMACS Makes A Computer Slow' (see {{recursive acronym}}). See also {vi}.

:email: /ee'mayl/ (also written `e-mail' and `E-mail') 1. /n./ Electronic mail automatically passed through computer networks and/or via modems over common-carrier lines. Contrast {snail-mail}, {paper-net}, {voice-net}. See {network address}. 2. /vt./ To send electronic mail.

Oddly enough, the word `emailed' is actually listed in the OED; it means "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a net or open work". A use from 1480 is given. The word is probably derived from French `'emaill'e' (enameled) and related to Old French `emmaille"ure' (network). A French correspondent tells us that in modern French, `email' is a hard enamel obtained by heating special paints in a furnace; an `emailleur' (no final e) is a craftsman who makes email (he generally paints some objects (like, say, jewelry) and cooks them in a furnace).

There are numerous spelling variants of this word. In Internet traffic up to 1995, `email' predominates, `e-mail' runs a not-too-distant second, and `E-mail' and `Email' are a distant third and fourth.

:emoticon: /ee-moh'ti-kon/ /n./ An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually required under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums such as Usenet; the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by {newbie}s), resulting in arguments and {flame war}s.

Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are in common use. These include:

:-) `smiley face' (for humor, laughter, friendliness, occasionally sarcasm)

:-( `frowney face' (for sadness, anger, or upset)

;-) `half-smiley' ({ha ha only serious}); also known as `semi-smiley' or `winkey face'.

:-/ `wry face'

(These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head sideways, to the left.)

The first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered. Hyphenless forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also {bixie}. On {Usenet}, `smiley' is often used as a generic term synonymous with {emoticon}, as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon.

It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman on the CMU {bboard} systems around 1980. He later wrote: "I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting something that would soon pollute all the world's communication channels." [GLS confirms that he remembers this original posting].

Note for the {newbie}: Overuse of the smiley is a mark of loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign that you've gone over the line.

:empire: /n./ Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by Peter Langston many years ago. Five or six multi-player variants of varying degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player version implemented for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even available as MS-DOS freeware. All are notoriously addictive.

:engine: /n./ 1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}. Today we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser printer. 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.

The hackish senses of `engine' are actually close to its original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.

:English: 1. /n. obs./ The source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to the linkable or executable binary produced from it by a compiler. The idea behind the term is that to a real hacker, a program written in his favorite programming language is at least as readable as English. Usage: mostly by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. 2. The official name of the database language used by the Pick Operating System, actually a sort of crufty, brain-damaged SQL with delusions of grandeur. The name permits {marketroid}s to say "Yes, and you can program our computers in English!" to ignorant {suit}s without quite running afoul of the truth-in-advertising laws.

:enhancement: /n./ Common {marketroid}-speak for a bug {fix}. This abuse of language is a popular and time-tested way to turn incompetence into increased revenue. A hacker being ironic would instead call the fix a {feature} -- or perhaps save some effort by declaring the bug itself to be a feature.

:ENQ: /enkw/ or /enk/ [from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a {talk mode} connection to someone apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type `SYN SYN ENQ?' (the SYNs representing notional synchronization bytes), and expect a return of {ACK} or {NAK} depending on whether or not the person felt interruptible. Compare {ping}, {finger}, and the usage of `FOO?' listed under {talk mode}.

:EOF: /E-O-F/ /n./ [abbreviation, `End Of File'] 1. [techspeak] The {out-of-band} value returned by C's sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value is -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was originally 0. 2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually control-D, the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) that is mapped by the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3. Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go further. "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a {JCL} manual." See also {EOL}.

:EOL: /E-O-L/ /n./ [End Of Line] Syn. for {newline}, derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the example entry under {BNF}. See also {EOF}.

:EOU: /E-O-U/ /n./ The mnemonic of a mythical ASCII control character (End Of User) that would make an ASR-33 Teletype explode on receipt. This construction parodies the numerous obscure delimiter and control characters left in ASCII from the days when it was associated more with wire-service teletypes than computers (e.g., FS, GS, RS, US, EM, SUB, ETX, and esp. EOT). It is worth remembering that ASR-33s were big, noisy mechanical beasts with a lot of clattering parts; the notion that one might explode was nowhere near as ridiculous as it might seem to someone sitting in front of a {tube} or flatscreen today.

:epoch: /n./ [Unix: prob. from astronomical timekeeping] The time and date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and timestamp values. Under most Unix versions the epoch is 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of November 17, 1858 (base date of the U.S. Naval Observatory's ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning January 1 1904. System time is measured in seconds or {tick}s past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a rare event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed 32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The 1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until January 18, 2038, assuming at least some software continues to consider it signed and that word lengths don't increase by then. See also {wall time}.

:epsilon: [see {delta}] 1. /n./ A small quantity of anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. /adj./ Very small, negligible; less than {marginal}. "We can get this feature for epsilon cost." 3. `within epsilon of': close enough to be indistinguishable for all practical purposes, even closer than being `within delta of'. "That's not what I asked for, but it's within epsilon of what I wanted." Alternatively, it may mean not close enough, but very little is required to get it there: "My program is within epsilon of working."

:epsilon squared: /n./ A quantity even smaller than {epsilon}, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is {epsilon}, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare {lost in the underflow}, {lost in the noise}.

:era, the: /n./ Syn. {epoch}. Webster's Unabridged makes these words almost synonymous, but `era' more often connotes a span of time rather than a point in time, whereas the reverse is true for {epoch}. The {epoch} usage is recommended.

:Eric Conspiracy: /n./ A shadowy group of mustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1987; this was doubtless influenced by the numerous `Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the `Allman style' described under {indent style}) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about fifteen others by email, and the organization line `Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' now emanates regularly from more than one site. See the Eric Conspiracy Web Page at http://www.ccil.org/~esr/ecsl.html for full details.

:Eris: /e'ris/ /n./ The Greek goddess of Chaos, Discord, Confusion, and Things You Know Not Of; her name was latinized to Discordia and she was worshiped by that name in Rome. Not a very friendly deity in the Classical original, she was reinvented as a more benign personification of creative anarchy starting in 1959 by the adherents of {Discordianism} and has since been a semi-serious subject of veneration in several `fringe' cultures, including hackerdom. See {Discordianism}, {Church of the SubGenius}.

:erotics: /ee-ro'tiks/ /n./ [Helsinki University of Technology, Finland] /n./ English-language university slang for electronics. Often used by hackers in Helsinki, maybe because good electronics excites them and makes them warm.

:error 33: [XEROX PARC] /n./ 1. Predicating one research effort upon the success of another. 2. Allowing your own research effort to be placed on the critical path of some other project (be it a research effort or not).

:evil: /adj./ As used by hackers, implies that some system, program, person, or institution is sufficiently maldesigned as to be not worth the bother of dealing with. Unlike the adjectives in the {cretinous}/{losing}/{brain-damaged} series, `evil' does not imply incompetence or bad design, but rather a set of goals or design criteria fatally incompatible with the speaker's. This usage is more an esthetic and engineering judgment than a moral one in the mainstream sense. "We thought about adding a {Blue Glue} interface but decided it was too evil to deal with." "{TECO} is neat, but it can be pretty evil if you're prone to typos." Often pronounced with the first syllable lengthened, as /eeee'vil/. Compare {evil and rude}.

:evil and rude: /adj./ Both {evil} and {rude}, but with the additional connotation that the rudeness was due to malice rather than incompetence. Thus, for example: Microsoft's Windows NT is evil because it's a competent implementation of a bad design; it's rude because it's gratuitously incompatible with Unix in places where compatibility would have been as easy and effective to do; but it's evil and rude because the incompatibilities are apparently there not to fix design bugs in Unix but rather to lock hapless customers and developers into the Microsoft way. Hackish evil and rude is close to the mainstream sense of `evil'.

:exa-: /ek's*/ /pref./ [SI] See {{quantifiers}}.

:examining the entrails: /n./ The process of {grovel}ling through a {core dump} or hex image in an attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare {runes}, {incantation}, {black art}, {desk check}.

:EXCH: /eks'ch*/ or /eksch/ /vt./ To exchange two things, each for the other; to swap places. If you point to two people sitting down and say "Exch!", you are asking them to trade places. EXCH, meaning EXCHange, was originally the name of a PDP-10 instruction that exchanged the contents of a register and a memory location. Many newer hackers are probably thinking instead of the {{PostScript}} exchange operator (which is usually written in lowercase).

:excl: /eks'kl/ /n./ Abbreviation for `exclamation point'. See {bang}, {shriek}, {{ASCII}}.

:EXE: /eks'ee/ or /eek'see/ or /E-X-E/ /n./ An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among Unix programmers even though Unix executables don't have any required suffix.

:exec: /eg-zek'/ or /eks'ek/ vt., /n./ 1. [Unix: from `execute'] Synonym for {chain}, derives from the `exec(2)' call. 2. [from `executive'] obs. The command interpreter for an {OS} (see {shell}); term esp. used around mainframes, and prob. derived from UNIVAC's archaic EXEC 2 and EXEC 8 operating systems. 3. At IBM and VM/CMS shops, the equivalent of a shell command file (among VM/CMS users).

The mainstream `exec' as an abbreviation for (human) executive is *not* used. To a hacker, an `exec' is a always a program, never a person.

:exercise, left as an: /adj./ [from technical books] Used to complete a proof when one doesn't mind a {handwave}, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or `the rest'] is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humor or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.

:Exon: /eks'on/ /excl./ A generic obscenity that quickly entered wide use on the Internet and Usenet after {Black Thursday}. From the last name of Senator James Exon (Democrat-Nevada), primary author of the {CDA}.

:external memory: /n./ A memo pad, palmtop computer, or written notes. "Hold on while I write that to external memory". The analogy is with store or DRAM versus nonvolatile disk storage on computers.

:eye candy: /i:' kand`ee/ /n./ [from mainstream slang "ear candy"] A display of some sort that's presented to {luser}s to keep them distracted while the program performs necessary background tasks. "Give 'em some eye candy while the back-end {slurp}s that {BLOB} into core."

:eyeball search: /n.,v./ To look for something in a mass of code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matching software like {grep} or any other automated search tool. Also called a {vgrep}; compare {vdiff}, {desk check}.

= F = =====

:face time: /n./ Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links). "Oh, yeah, I spent some face time with him at the last Usenix."

:factor: /n./ See {coefficient of X}.

:fall over: /vi./ [IBM] Yet another synonym for {crash} or {lose}. `Fall over hard' equates to {crash and burn}.

:fall through: /v./ (n. `fallthrough', var. `fall-through') 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e., by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of code. 3. In C, `fall-through' occurs when the flow of execution in a switch statement reaches a `case' label other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a `break'. A trivial example:

switch (color) { case GREEN: do_green(); break; case PINK: do_pink(); /* FALL THROUGH */ case RED: do_red(); break; default: do_blue(); break; }

The variant spelling `/* FALL THRU */' is also common.