Chapter 44

An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based technology include improved `write-once' update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit colored pigment. All these devices require an operator skilled at so-called `handwriting' technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.

Node:Pentagram Pro, Next:Pentium, Previous:pencil and paper, Up:= P =

Pentagram Pro n.

A humorous corruption of "Pentium Pro", with a Satanic reference, implying that the chip is inherently evil. Often used with "666 MHz"; there is a T-shirt. See Pentium

Node:Pentium, Next:peon, Previous:Pentagram Pro, Up:= P =

Pentium n.

The name given to Intel's P5 chip, the successor to the 80486. The name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like titanium". Among hackers, the plural is frequently `pentia'. See also Pentagram Pro.

Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling a chip with "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been called `Pentium II' and `Pentium III'.

Node:peon, Next:percent-S, Previous:Pentium, Up:= P =

peon n.

A person with no special (root or wheel) privileges on a computer system. "I can't create an account on foovax for you; I'm only a peon there."

Node:percent-S, Next:perf, Previous:peon, Up:= P =

percent-S /per-sent' es'/ n.

[From the code in C's printf(3) library function used to insert an arbitrary string argument] An unspecified person or object. "I was just talking to some percent-s in administration." Compare random.

Node:perf, Next:perfect programmer syndrome, Previous:percent-S, Up:= P =

perf /perf/ n.

Syn. chad (sense 1). The term `perfory' /per'f*-ree/ is also heard. The term perf may also refer to the perforations themselves, rather than the chad they produce when torn (philatelists use it this way).

Node:perfect programmer syndrome, Next:Perl, Previous:perf, Up:= P =

perfect programmer syndrome n.

Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native ability but relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at solving toy problems). "Of course my program is correct, there is no need to test it." "Yes, I can see there may be a problem here, but I'll never type rm -r / while in root mode."

Node:Perl, Next:person of no account, Previous:perfect programmer syndrome, Up:= P =

Perl /perl/ n.

[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a. Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister] An interpreted language developed by Larry Wall (author of patch(1) and rn(1)) and distributed over Usenet. Superficially resembles awk, but is much hairier, including many facilities reminiscent of sed(1) and shells and a comprehensive Unix system-call interface. Unix sysadmins, who are almost always incorrigible hackers, generally consider it one of the languages of choice, and it is by far the most widely used tool for making `live' web pages via CGI. Perl has been described, in a parody of a famous remark about lex(1), as the "Swiss-Army chainsaw" of Unix programming. Though Perl is very useful, it would be a stretch to describe it as pretty or elegant; people who like clean, spare design generally prefer Python. See also Camel Book, TMTOWTDI.

Node:person of no account, Next:pessimal, Previous:Perl, Up:= P =

person of no account n.

[University of California at Santa Cruz] Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.

Node:pessimal, Next:pessimizing compiler, Previous:person of no account, Up:= P =

pessimal /pes'im-l/ adj.

[Latin-based antonym for `optimal'] Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal situation." Also `pessimize' vt. To make as bad as possible. These words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for `optimal' and `optimize', but for some reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries, although `pessimize' is listed in the OED.

Node:pessimizing compiler, Next:peta-, Previous:pessimal, Up:= P =

pessimizing compiler /pes'*-mi:z`ing k*m-pi:l'r/ n.

A compiler that produces object [antonym of techspeak `optimizing compiler'] code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.

Node:peta-, Next:PETSCII, Previous:pessimizing compiler, Up:= P =

peta- /pe't*/ pref

[SI] See quantifiers.

Node:PETSCII, Next:PFY, Previous:peta-, Up:= P =

PETSCII /pet'skee/ n. obs.

[abbreviation of PET ASCII] The variation (many would say perversion) of the ASCII character set used by the Commodore Business Machines PET series of personal computers and the later Commodore C64, C16, C128, and VIC20 machines. The PETSCII set used left-arrow and up-arrow (as in old-style ASCII) instead of underscore and caret, placed the unshifted alphabet at positions 65-90, put the shifted alphabet at positions 193-218, and added graphics characters.

Node:PFY, Next:phage, Previous:PETSCII, Up:= P =

PFY n.

[Usenet; common] Abbreviation for `Pimply-Faced Youth'. A BOFH in training, esp. one apprenticed to an elder BOFH aged in evil.

Node:phage, Next:phase, Previous:PFY, Up:= P =

phage n.

A program that modifies other programs or databases in unauthorized ways; esp. one that propagates a virus or Trojan horse. See also worm, mockingbird. The analogy, of course, is with phage viruses in biology.

Node:phase, Next:phase of the moon, Previous:phage, Up:= P =

phase

1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going to wrap around to the day schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in `night mode'. (The term `day mode' is also (but less frequently) used, meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or, more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of altering one's cycle is called `changing phase'; `phase shifting' has also been recently reported from Caltech. 2. `change phase the hard way': To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a different phase. 3. `change phase the easy way': To stay asleep, etc. However, some claim that either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it is shortening your day or night that is really hard (see wrap around). The `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who cross many time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very like jet lag without traveling.

Node:phase of the moon, Next:phase-wrapping, Previous:phase, Up:= P =

phase of the moon n.

Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug.

True story: Once upon a time there was a program bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a LISP program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon!

The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter `corrected' it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.

However, beware of assumptions. A few years ago, engineers of CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) were baffled by some errors in experiments conducted with the LEP particle accelerator. As the formidable amount of data generated by such devices is heavily processed by computers before being seen by humans, many people suggested the software was somehow sensitive to the phase of the moon. A few desperate engineers discovered the truth; the error turned out to be the result of a tiny change in the geometry of the 27km circumference ring, physically caused by the deformation of the Earth by the passage of the Moon! This story has entered physics folklore as a Newtonian vengeance on particle physics and as an example of the relevance of the simplest and oldest physical laws to the most modern science.

Node:phase-wrapping, Next:PHB, Previous:phase of the moon, Up:= P =

phase-wrapping n.

[MIT] Syn. wrap around, sense 2.

Node:PHB, Next:phreaker, Previous:phase-wrapping, Up:= P =

PHB /P-H-B/

[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss". From the Dilbert character, the archetypal halfwitted middle-management type. See also pointy-haired.

Node:phreaker, Next:phreaking, Previous:PHB, Up:= P =

phreaker /freek'r/ n.

One who engages in phreaking. See also blue box.

Node:phreaking, Next:pico-, Previous:phreaker, Up:= P =

phreaking /freek'ing/ n.

[from `phone phreak'] 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see cracking).

At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.

Node:pico-, Next:pig-tail, Previous:phreaking, Up:= P =

pico- pref.

[SI: a quantifier meaning * 10^-12] Smaller than nano-; used in the same rather loose connotative way as nano- and micro-. This usage is not yet common in the way nano- and micro- are, but should be instantly recognizable to any hacker. See also quantifiers, micro-.

Node:pig-tail, Next:pilot error, Previous:pico-, Up:= P =

pig-tail

[radio hams] A short piece of cable with two connectors on each end for converting between one connector type and another. Common pig-tails are 9-to-25-pin serial-port converters and cables to connect PCMCIA network cards to an RJ-45 network cable.

Node:pilot error, Next:ping, Previous:pig-tail, Up:= P =

pilot error n.

[Sun: from aviation] A user's misconfiguration or misuse of a piece of software, producing apparently buglike results (compare UBD). "Joe Luser reported a bug in sendmail that causes it to generate bogus headers." "That's not a bug, that's pilot error. His sendmail.cf is hosed."

Node:ping, Next:Ping O' Death, Previous:pilot error, Up:= P =

ping

[from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse] 1. n. Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the presence and alertness of another. The Unix command ping(8) can be used to do this manually (note that ping(8)'s author denies the widespread folk etymology that the name was ever intended as acronym for `Packet INternet Groper'). Occasionally used as a phone greeting. See ACK, also ENQ. 2. vt. To verify the presence of. 3. vt. To get the attention of. 4. vt. To send a message to all members of a mailing list requesting an ACK (in order to verify that everybody's addresses are reachable). "We haven't heard much of anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK both times I pinged jargon-friends." 5. n. A quantum packet of happiness. People who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one can intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party (e.g., a depressed person). This sense of ping may appear as an exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting a quantum of happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of happiness). The form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people who exude pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language, "pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose blargh.

The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by Steve Hayman on the Usenet group _comp.sys.next_. He was trying to isolate a faulty cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to a NeXT machine, and got tired of having to run back to his console after each cabling tweak to see if the ping packets were getting through. So he used the sound-recording feature on the NeXT, then wrote a script that repeatedly invoked ping(8), listened for an echo, and played back the recording on each returned packet. Result? A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over, "Ping ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was up. He turned the volume to maximum, ferreted through the building with one ear cocked, and found a faulty tee connector in no time.

Node:Ping O' Death, Next:ping storm, Previous:ping, Up:= P =

Ping O' Death n.

A notorious exploit that (when first discovered) could be easily used to crash a wide variety of machines by overunning size limits in their TCP/IP stacks. First revealed in late 1996. The open-source Unix community patched its systems to remove the vulnerability within days or weeks, the closed-source OS vendors generally took months. While the difference in response times repeated a pattern familiar from other security incidents, the accompanying glare of Web-fueled publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors and so passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer to any nudge delivered by network wizards over the network that causes bad things to happen on the system being nudged. For the full story on the original exploit, see http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html.

Compare with 'kamikaze packet,' 'Finger of Death' and 'Chernobyl packet.'

Node:ping storm, Next:pink wire, Previous:Ping O' Death, Up:= P =

ping storm n.

A form of DoS attack consisting of a flood of ping requests (normally used to check network conditions) designed to disrupt the normal activity of a system. This act is sometimes called `ping lashing' or `ping flood'. Compare mail storm, broadcast storm.

Node:pink wire, Next:pipe, Previous:ping storm, Up:= P =

pink wire n.

[from the pink PTFE wire used in military equipment] As blue wire, but used in military applications. 2. vi. To add a pink wire to a board.

Node:pipe, Next:pistol, Previous:pink wire, Up:= P =

pipe n.

[common] Idiomatically, one's connection to the Internet; in context, the expansion "bit pipe" is understood. A "fat pipe" is a line with T1 or higher capacity. A person with a 28.8 modem might be heard to complain "I need a bigger pipe".

Node:pistol, Next:pixel sort, Previous:pipe, Up:= P =

pistol n.

[IBM] A tool that makes it all too easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. "Unix rm * makes such a nice pistol!"

Node:pixel sort, Next:pizza box, Previous:pistol, Up:= P =

pixel sort n.

[Commodore users] Any compression routine which irretrievably loses valuable data in the process of crunching it. Disparagingly used for `lossy' methods such as JPEG. The theory, of course, is that these methods are only used on photographic images in which minor loss-of-data is not visible to the human eye. The term `pixel sort' implies distrust of this theory. Compare bogo-sort.

Node:pizza box, Next:plaid screen, Previous:pixel sort, Up:= P =

pizza box n.

[Sun] The largish thin box housing the electronics in (especially Sun) desktop workstations, so named because of its size and shape and the dimpled pattern that looks like air holes.

Two meg single-platter removable disk packs used to be called pizzas, and the huge drive they were stuck into was referred to as a pizza oven. It's an index of progress that in the old days just the disk was pizza-sized, while now the entire computer is.

Node:plaid screen, Next:plain-ASCII, Previous:pizza box, Up:= P =

plaid screen n.

[XEROX PARC] A `special effect' that occurs when certain kinds of memory smashes overwrite the control blocks or image memory of a bit-mapped display. The term "salt and pepper" may refer to a different pattern of similar origin. Though the term as coined at PARC refers to the result of an error, some of the X demos induce plaid-screen effects deliberately as a display hack.

Node:plain-ASCII, Next:plan file, Previous:plaid screen, Up:= P =

plain-ASCII /playn-as'kee/

Syn. flat-ASCII.

Node:plan file, Next:platinum-iridium, Previous:plain-ASCII, Up:= P =

plan file n.

[Unix] On systems that support finger, the `.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes (like a sig block). See also Hacking X for Y.

A recent innovation in plan files has been the introduction of "scrolling plan files" which are one-dimensional animations made using only the printable ASCII character set, carriage return and line feed, avoiding terminal specific escape sequences, since the finger command will (for security reasons; see letterbomb) not pass the escape character.

Scrolling .plan files have become art forms in miniature, and some sites have started competitions to find who can create the longest running, funniest, and most original animations. Various animation characters include:

Centipede:

mmmmme

Lorry/Truck:

oo-oP

Andalusian Video Snail:

_@/

and a compiler (ASP) is available on Usenet for producing them. See also twirling baton.

Node:platinum-iridium, Next:playpen, Previous:plan file, Up:= P =

platinum-iridium adj.

Standard, against which all others of the same category are measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. (From 1889 to 1960, the meter was defined to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in that same vault -- this replaced an earlier definition as 10^(-7) times the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The kilogram is now the only unit of measure officially defined in terms of a unique artifact.) "This garbage-collection algorithm has been tested against the platinum-iridium cons cell in Paris." Compare golden.

Node:playpen, Next:playte, Previous:platinum-iridium, Up:= P =

playpen n.

[IBM] A room where programmers work. Compare salt mines.

Node:playte, Next:plingnet, Previous:playpen, Up:= P =

playte /playt/

16 bits, by analogy with nybble and byte. Usage: rare and extremely silly. See also dynner and crumb. General discussion of such terms is under nybble.

Node:plingnet, Next:plokta, Previous:playte, Up:= P =

plingnet /pling'net/ n.

Syn. UUCPNET. Also see Commonwealth Hackish, which uses `pling' for bang (as in bang path).

Node:plokta, Next:plonk, Previous:plingnet, Up:= P =

plokta /plok't*/ v.

[acronym: Press Lots Of Keys To Abort] To press random keys in an attempt to get some response from the system. One might plokta when the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to figure out if the system is just sluggish or really hung. Plokta can also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation. Someone going into `plokta mode' usually places both hands flat on the keyboard and mashes them down, hoping for some useful response.

A slightly more directed form of plokta can often be seen in mail messages or Usenet articles from new users -- the text might end with

^X^C q quit :q ^C end x exit ZZ ^D ? help

as the user vainly tries to find the right exit sequence, with the incorrect tries piling up at the end of the message....

Node:plonk, Next:plug-and-pray, Previous:plokta, Up:= P =

plonk excl.,vt.

[Usenet: possibly influenced by British slang `plonk' for cheap booze, or `plonker' for someone behaving stupidly (latter is lit. equivalent to Yiddish `schmuck')] The sound a newbie makes as he falls to the bottom of a kill file. While it originated in the newsgroup _talk.bizarre_, this term (usually written "*plonk*") is now (1994) widespread on Usenet as a form of public ridicule.

Node:plug-and-pray, Next:plugh, Previous:plonk, Up:= P =

plug-and-pray adj.,vi.

Parody of the techspeak term `plug-and-play', describing a PC peripheral card which is claimed to have no need for hardware configuration via DIP switches, and which should be work as soon as it is inserted in the PC. Unfortunately, even the PCI bus is not up to pulling this off reliably, and people who have to do installation or troubleshoot PCs soon find themselves longing for the DIP switches.

Node:plugh, Next:plumbing, Previous:plug-and-pray, Up:= P =

plugh /ploogh/ v.

[from the ADVENT game] See xyzzy.

Node:plumbing, Next:PM, Previous:plugh, Up:= P =

plumbing n.