Chapter 47

randomness n.

1. An inexplicable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance. 2. A hack or crock that depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or, possibly, the combination upon which the crock depends for its accidental failure to malfunction). "This hack can output characters 40-57 by putting the character in the four-bit accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting six bits -- the low 2 bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!" 3. Of people, synonymous with `flakiness'. The connotation is that the person so described is behaving weirdly, incompetently, or inappropriately for reasons which are (a) too tiresome to bother inquiring into, (b) are probably as inscrutable as quantum phenomena anyway, and (c) are likely to pass with time. "Maybe he has a real complaint, or maybe it's just randomness. See if he calls back."

Despite the negative connotations jargon uses of this term have, it is worth noting that randomness can actually be a valuable resource, very useful for applications in cryptography and elsewhere. Computers are so thoroughly deterministic that they have a hard time generating high-quality randomess, so hackers have sometimes felt the need to built special-purpose contraptions for this purpose alone. One well-known website offers random bits generated by radioactive decay. Another derives random bits from images of Lava Lite lamps. (Hackers invariably find the latter hilarious. If you have to ask why, you'll never get it.)

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rape vt.

1. To screw someone or something, violently; in particular, to destroy a program or information irrecoverably. Often used in describing file-system damage. "So-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping the master directory." 2. To strip a piece of hardware for parts. 3. [CMU/Pitt] To mass-copy files from an anonymous ftp site. "Last night I raped Simtel's dskutl directory."

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rare mode adj.

[Unix] CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled). Distinguished from raw mode and cooked mode; the phrase "a sort of half-cooked (rare?) mode" is used in the V7/BSD manuals to describe the mode. Usage: rare.

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raster blaster n.

[Cambridge] Specialized hardware for bitblt operations (a blitter). Allegedly inspired by `Rasta Blasta', British slang for the sort of portable stereo Americans call a `boom box' or `ghetto blaster'.

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raster burn n.

Eyestrain brought on by too many hours of looking at low-res, poorly tuned, or glare-ridden monitors, esp. graphics monitors. See terminal illness.

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rasterbation n.

[portmanteau: raster + masturbation] The gratuituous use of comuputer generated images and effects in movies and graphic art which would have been better without them. Especially employed as a term of abuse by Photoshop/GIMP users and graphic artists.

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rat belt n.

A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable ties are `mouse belts'.

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rat dance n.

[From the Dilbert comic strip of November 14, 1995] A hacking run that produces results which, while superficially coherent, have little or nothing to do with its original objectives. There are strong connotations that the coding process and the objectives themselves were pretty random. (In the original comic strip, the Ratbert is invited to dance on Dilbert's keyboard in order to produce bugs for him to fix, and authors a Web browser instead.) Compare Infinite-Monkey Theorem.

This term seems to have become widely recognized quite rapidly after the original strip, a fact which testifies to Dilbert's huge popularity among hackers. All too many find the perverse incentives and Kafkaesque atmosphere of Dilbert's mythical workplace reflective of their own experiences.

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ratio site

[warez d00dz] A FTP site storing pirated files where one must first upload something before being able to download. There is a ratio, based on bytes or files count, between the uploads and download. For instance, on a 2:1 site, to download a 4 Mb file, one must first upload at least 2 Mb of files. The hotter the contents of the server are, the smaller the ratio is. More often than not, the server refuses uploads because its disk is full, making it useless for downloading - or the connection magically breaks after one has uploaded a large amount of files, just before the downloading phase begins. See also banner site, leech mode.

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rave vi.

[WPI] 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject. 2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little. 3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person verbally. 5. To evangelize. See flame. 6. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. `Rave' differs slightly from flame in that `rave' implies that it is the persistence or obliviousness of the person speaking that is annoying, while flame implies somewhat more strongly that the tone or content is offensive as well.

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rave on! imp.

Sarcastic invitation to continue a rave, often by someone who wishes the raver would get a clue but realizes this is unlikely.

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ravs /ravz/, also `Chinese ravs' n.

[primarily MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie (pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and (around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term `rav' is short for `ravioli', and among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell, but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has a pork-vegetable filling (good ones include Chinese chives), and is cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the pan-fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and has to be scraped off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three orders of ravs." See also oriental food.

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raw mode n.

A mode that allows a program to transfer bits directly to or from an I/O device (or, under bogus operating systems that make a distinction, a disk file) without any processing, abstraction, or interpretation by the operating system. Compare rare mode, cooked mode. This is techspeak under Unix, jargon elsewhere.

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RBL /R-B-L/

Abbreviation: "Realtime Blackhole List". A service that allows people to blacklist sites for emitting spam, and makes the blacklist available in real time to electronic-mail transport programs that know how to use RBL so they can filter out mail from those sites. Drastic (and controversial) but effective. There is an RBL home page.

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rc file /R-C fi:l/ n.

[Unix: from `runcom files' on the CTSS system 1962-63, via the startup script /etc/rc] Script file containing startup instructions for an application program (or an entire operating system), usually a text file containing commands of the sort that might have been invoked manually once the system was running but are to be executed automatically each time the system starts up. See also dot file, profile (sense 1).

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RE /R-E/ n.

Common spoken and written shorthand for regexp.

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read-only user n.

Describes a luser who uses computers almost exclusively for reading Usenet, bulletin boards, and/or email, rather than writing code or purveying useful information. See twink, terminal junkie, lurker.

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README file n.

Hacker's-eye introduction traditionally included in the top-level directory of a Unix source distribution, containing a pointer to more detailed documentation, credits, miscellaneous revision history, notes, etc. (The file may be named README, or READ.ME, or rarely ReadMe or readme.txt or some other variant.) In the Mac and PC worlds, software is not usually distributed in source form, and the README is more likely to contain user-oriented material like last-minute documentation changes, error workarounds, and restrictions. When asked, hackers invariably relate the README convention to the famous scene in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" in which Alice confronts magic munchies labeled "Eat Me" and "Drink Me".

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real adj.

Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to virtual in any of its jargon senses.

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real estate n.

May be used for any critical resource measured in units of area. Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the area available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see also nanoacre). May also be used of floor space in a dinosaur pen, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether physical or electronic).

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real hack n.

A crock. This is sometimes used affectionately; see hack.

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real operating system n.

The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a real operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a real operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a real operating system?" Only MS-DOS is universally considered unreal. See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!

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Real Programmer n.

[indirectly, from the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The archetypal `Real Programmer' likes to program on the bare metal and is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been bummed into a state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers -- because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their successors generally consider it a Good Thing that there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see "The Story of Mel" in Appendix A. The term itself was popularized by a 1983 Datamation article "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" by Ed Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line form. You can browse "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" from the Datamation home page http://www.datamation.com.

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Real Soon Now adv.

[orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's column in "BYTE"] 1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical. 2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated RSN. Compare copious free time.

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real time

1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical plant is the canonical example. Such applications often require special operating systems (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware. 2. adv. In jargon, refers to doing something while people are watching or waiting. "I asked her how to find the calling procedure's program counter on the stack and she came up with an algorithm in real time."

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real user n.

1. A commercial user. One who is paying real money for his computer usage. 2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration. See user. Hackers who are also students may also be real users. "I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user." See also luser.

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Real World n.

1. Those institutions at which `programming' may be used in the same sentence as `FORTRAN', `COBOL', `RPG', `IBM', `DBASE', etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices. 2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see code grinder). 4. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is also noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in England, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label `REALITY CHECKPOINT'. It marks the boundary between university and the Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. This joke is funnier because the Cambridge `campus' is actually coextensive with the center of Cambridge town. See also fear and loathing, mundane, and uninteresting.

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reality check n.

1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get 4. The software equivalent of a smoke test. 2. The act of letting a real user try out prototype software. Compare sanity check.

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reality-distortion field n.

An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers become passionately committed to possibly insane projects, without regard to the practicality of their implementation or competitive forces in the marketpace.

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reaper n.

A prowler that GFRs files. A file removed in this way is said to have been `reaped'.

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recompile the world

The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as the result of any small but globally visible program change. "The world" may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in theory refer to every program of a certain class in the entire known universe. For instance, "Add one #define to stdio.h, and you have to recompile the world." This means that any minor change to the standard-I/O header file theoretically mandates recompiling every C program in existence, even if only to verify that the change didn't screw something else up. In practice, you may not actually have to recompile the world, but the implication is that some human cleverness is required to figure out what parts can be safely left out.

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rectangle slinger n.

See polygon pusher.

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recursion n.

See recursion. See also tail recursion.

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recursive acronym n.

A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms/abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" -- and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus people say this is a backronym). See also mung, EMACS.

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Red Book n.

1. Informal name for one of the four standard references on PostScript ("PostScript Language Reference Manual", Adobe Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1985; QA76.73.P67P67; ISBN 0-201-10174-2, or the 1990 second edition ISBN 0-201-18127-4); the others are known as the Green Book, the Blue Book, and the White Book (sense 2). 2. Informal name for one of the 3 standard references on Smalltalk ("Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming Environment" by Adele Goldberg (Addison-Wesley, 1984; QA76.8.S635G638; ISBN 0-201-11372-4); this too is associated with blue and green books). 3. Any of the 1984 standards issued by the CCITT eighth plenary assembly. These include, among other things, the X.400 email spec and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. 4. The new version of the Green Book (sense 4) -- IEEE 1003.1-1990, a.k.a ISO 9945-1 -- is (because of the color and the fact that it is printed on A4 paper) known in the USA as "the Ugly Red Book That Won't Fit On The Shelf" and in Europe as "the Ugly Red Book That's A Sensible Size". 5. The NSA "Trusted Network Interpretation" companion to the Orange Book. 6. Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass, Hein; "Unix System Administration Handbook, Second Edition" (Prentice Hall PTR, New Jersey; 1995; QA76.76.063N45; ISBN 0-13-151051-7). See also book titles.

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red wire n.

[IBM] Patch wires installed by programmers who have no business mucking with the hardware. It is said that the only thing more dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a softy with a soldering iron.... Compare blue wire, yellow wire, purple wire.

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regexp /reg'eksp/ n.

[Unix] (alt. `regex' or `reg-ex') 1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for `regular expression', one of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as grep(1), sed(1), and awk(1). These use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. For purposes of this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow complemented character sets using ^; thus, one can specify `any non-alphabetic character' with [^A-Za-z]. 2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C, written by revered Usenetter Henry Spencer.

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register dancing n.

Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression evaluation. Some designs with this problem, like the Intel 80x86, do have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be pressed into service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is saved and then restored just before the official function (and value) of the special-purpose register is again needed.

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rehi

[IRC, MUD] "Hello again." Very commonly used to greet people upon returning to an IRC channel after channel hopping.

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reincarnation, cycle of n.

See cycle of reincarnation.

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reinvent the wheel v.

To design or implement a tool equivalent to an existing one or part of one, with the implication that doing so is silly or a waste of time. This is often a valid criticism. On the other hand, automobiles don't use wooden rollers, and some kinds of wheel have to be reinvented many times before you get them right. On the third hand, people reinventing the wheel do tend to come up with the moral equivalent of a trapezoid with an offset axle.

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relay rape n.

The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to deliver spam.

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religion of CHI /ki:/ n.

[Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also Church of the SubGenius, Discordianism). In the mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU were taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshipper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was considered harmful.

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religious issues n.

Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off holy wars, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon File?" See holy wars; see also theology, bigot.

This term is a prime example of ha ha only serious. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble Get a life! and leave -- unless, of course, one's own unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed.