Chapter 60

Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavor now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in larval stage, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular culture -- communities formed spontaneously around people who, as individuals, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focused desire to become similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people semi-consciously set out to be hackers and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.

Node:war dialer, Next:-ware, Previous:wannabee, Up:= W =

war dialer n.

A cracking tool, a program that calls a given list or range of phone numbers and records those which answer with handshake tones (and so might be entry points to computer or telecommunications systems). Some of these programs have become quite sophisticated, and can now detect modem, fax, or PBX tones and log each one separately. The war dialer is one of the most important tools in the phreaker's kit. These programs evolved from early demon dialers.

Node:-ware, Next:warez, Previous:war dialer, Up:= W =

-ware suff.

[from `software'] Commonly used to form jargon terms for classes of software. For examples, see annoyware, careware, crippleware, crudware, freeware, fritterware, guiltware, liveware, meatware, payware, psychedelicware, shareware, shelfware, vaporware, wetware.

Node:warez, Next:warez d00dz, Previous:-ware, Up:= W =

warez /weirz/ n.

Widely used in cracker subcultures to denote cracked version of commercial software, that is versions from which copy-protection has been stripped. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it themselves. See warez d00dz, courier, leech, elite.

Node:warez d00dz, Next:warez kiddies, Previous:warez, Up:= W =

warez d00dz /weirz doodz/ n.

A substantial subculture of crackers refer to themselves as `warez d00dz'; there is evidently some connection with B1FF here. As `Ozone Pilot', one former warez d00d, wrote:

Warez d00dz get illegal copies of copyrighted software. If it has copy protection on it, they break the protection so the software can be copied. Then they distribute it around the world via several gateways. Warez d00dz form badass group names like RAZOR and the like. They put up boards that distribute the latest ware, or pirate program. The whole point of the Warez sub-culture is to get the pirate program released and distributed before any other group. I know, I know. But don't ask, and it won't hurt as much. This is how they prove their poweress [sic]. It gives them the right to say, "I released King's Quest IVXIX before you so obviously my testicles are larger." Again don't ask...

The studly thing to do if one is a warez d00d, it appears, is emit `0-day warez', that is copies of commercial software copied and cracked on the same day as its retail release. Warez d00ds also hoard software in a big way, collecting untold megabytes of arcade-style games, pornographic JPGs, and applications they'll never use onto their hard disks. As Ozone Pilot acutely observes:

[BELONG] is the only word you will need to know. Warez d00dz want to belong. They have been shunned by everyone, and thus turn to cyberspace for acceptance. That is why they always start groups like TGW, FLT, USA and the like. Structure makes them happy. [...] Warez d00dz will never have a handle like "Pink Daisy" because warez d00dz are insecure. Only someone who is very secure with a good dose of self-esteem can stand up to the cries of fag and girlie-man. More likely you will find warez d00dz with handles like: Doctor Death, Deranged Lunatic, Hellraiser, Mad Prince, Dreamdevil, The Unknown, Renegade Chemist, Terminator, and Twin Turbo. They like to sound badass when they can hide behind their terminals. More likely, if you were given a sample of 100 people, the person whose handle is Hellraiser is the last person you'd associate with the name.

The contrast with Internet hackers is stark and instructive. See cracker, wannabee, handle, elite, courier, leech; compare weenie, spod.

Node:warez kiddies, Next:warlording, Previous:warez d00dz, Up:= W =

warez kiddies n.

Even more derogatory way of referring to warez d00dz; refers to the fact that most warez d00dz are around the age of puberty. Compare script kiddies.

Node:warlording, Next:warm boot, Previous:warez kiddies, Up:= W =

warlording v.

[from the Usenet group _alt.fan.warlord_] The act of excoriating a bloated, ugly, or derivative sig block. Common grounds for warlording include the presence of a signature rendered in a BUAF, over-used or cliched sig quotes, ugly ASCII art, or simply excessive size. The original `Warlord' was a B1FF-like newbie c.1991 who featured in his sig a particularly large and obnoxious ASCII graphic resembling the sword of Conan the Barbarian in the 1981 John Milius movie; the group name _alt.fan.warlord_ was sarcasm, and the characteristic mode of warlording is devastatingly sarcastic praise.

Node:warm boot, Next:wart, Previous:warlording, Up:= W =

warm boot n.

See boot.

Node:wart, Next:washing machine, Previous:warm boot, Up:= W =

wart n.

A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an otherwise clean design. Something conspicuous for localized ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a general rule. For example, in some versions of csh(1), single quotes literalize every character inside them except !. In ANSI C, the ?? syntax used for obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also miswart.

Node:washing machine, Next:washing software, Previous:wart, Up:= W =

washing machine n.

1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets. So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'. The washing-machine idiom transcends language barriers; it is even used in Russian hacker jargon. See also walking drives. The thick channel cables connecting these were called `bit hoses' (see hose, sense 3). 2. [CMU] A machine used exclusively for washing software. CMU has clusters of these.

Node:washing software, Next:water MIPS, Previous:washing machine, Up:= W =

washing software n.

The process of recompiling a software distribution (used more often when the recompilation is occuring from scratch) to pick up and merge together all of the various changes that have been made to the source.

Node:water MIPS, Next:wave a dead chicken, Previous:washing software, Up:= W =

water MIPS n.

(see MIPS, sense 2) Large, water-cooled machines of either today's ECL-supercomputer flavor or yesterday's traditional mainframe type.

Node:wave a dead chicken, Next:weasel, Previous:water MIPS, Up:= W =

wave a dead chicken v.

To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug." Compare voodoo programming, rain dance; see also casting the runes.

Node:weasel, Next:web pointer, Previous:wave a dead chicken, Up:= W =

weasel n.

[Cambridge] A naive user, one who deliberately or accidentally does things that are stupid or ill-advised. Roughly synonymous with loser.

Node:web pointer, Next:web toaster, Previous:weasel, Up:= W =

web pointer n.

A World Wide Web URL. See also hotlink, which has slightly different connotations.

Node:web toaster, Next:webify, Previous:web pointer, Up:= W =

web toaster n.

A small specialized computer, shipped with no monitor or keyboard or any other external peripherals, pre-configured to be controlled through an Ethernet port and function as a WWW server. Products of this kind (for example the Cobalt Qube) are often about the size of a toaster. See toaster; compare video toaster.

Node:webify, Next:webmaster, Previous:web toaster, Up:= W =

webify n.

To put a piece of (possibly already existing) material on the WWW. Frequently used for papers ("Why don't you webify all your publications?") or for demos ("They webified their 6.866 final project"). This term seems to have been (rather logically) independently invented multiple times in the early 1990s.

Node:webmaster, Next:web ring, Previous:webify, Up:= W =

webmaster n.

[WWW: from postmaster] The person at a site providing World Wide Web information who is responsible for maintaining the public pages and keeping the Web server running and properly configured.

Node:web ring, Next:wedged, Previous:webmaster, Up:= W =

web ring n.

Two or more web sites connected by prominent links between sites sharing a common interest or theme. Usually such cliques have the topology of a ring, in order to make it easy for visitors to navigate through all of them.

Node:wedged, Next:wedgie, Previous:web ring, Up:= W =

wedged adj.

1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it deadlocks with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also gronk, locked up, hosed, hung (wedged is more severe than hung). 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged -- he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.

There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older `hot-press' printing technology in which physical type elements were locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.

Node:wedgie, Next:wedgitude, Previous:wedged, Up:= W =

wedgie n.

[Fairchild] A bug. Prob. related to wedged.

Node:wedgitude, Next:weeble, Previous:wedgie, Up:= W =

wedgitude /wedj'i-t[y]ood/ n.

The quality or state of being wedged.

Node:weeble, Next:weeds, Previous:wedgitude, Up:= W =

weeble /weeb'l/ interj.

[Cambridge] Used to denote frustration, usually at amazing stupidity. "I stuck the disk in upside down." "Weeble...." Compare gurfle.

Node:weeds, Next:weenie, Previous:weeble, Up:= W =

weeds n.

1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from `off in the weeds'. Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds...." 2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase `go off in the weeds' was equivalent to IBM's branch to Fishkill and mainstream hackerdom's jump off into never-never land.

Node:weenie, Next:Weenix, Previous:weeds, Up:= W =

weenie n.

1. [on BBSes] Any of a species of luser resembling a less amusing version of B1FF that infests many BBS systems. The typical weenie is a teenage boy with poor social skills travelling under a grandiose handle derived from fantasy or heavy-metal rock lyrics. Among sysops, `the weenie problem' refers to the marginally literate and profanity-laden flamage weenies tend to spew all over a newly-discovered BBS. Compare spod, computer geek, terminal junkie, warez d00dz. 2. [Among hackers] When used with a qualifier (for example, as in Unix weenie, VMS weenie, IBM weenie) this can be either an insult or a term of praise, depending on context, tone of voice, and whether or not it is applied by a person who considers him or herself to be the same sort of weenie. Implies that the weenie has put a major investment of time, effort, and concentration into the area indicated; whether this is good or bad depends on the hearer's judgment of how the speaker feels about that area. See also bigot. 3. The semicolon character, ; (ASCII 0111011).

Node:Weenix, Next:well-behaved, Previous:weenie, Up:= W =

Weenix /wee'niks/ n.

1. [ITS] A derogatory term for Unix, derived from Unix weenie. According to one noted ex-ITSer, it is "the operating system preferred by Unix Weenies: typified by poor modularity, poor reliability, hard file deletion, no file version numbers, case sensitivity everywhere, and users who believe that these are all advantages". (Some ITS fans behave as though they believe Unix stole a future that rightfully belonged to them. See ITS, sense 2.) 2. [Brown University] A Unix-like OS developed for tutorial purposes at Brown University. See http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs167/weenix.html. Named independently of the ITS usage.

Node:well-behaved, Next:well-connected, Previous:Weenix, Up:= W =

well-behaved adj.

1. [primarily MS-DOS] Said of software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards. Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics. Oppose ill-behaved. 2. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a tool by other software. See cat. 3. Said of an algorithm that doesn't crash or blow up, even when given pathological input. Implies that the stability of the algorithm is intrinsic, which makes this somewhat different from bulletproof.

Node:well-connected, Next:wetware, Previous:well-behaved, Up:= W =

well-connected adj.

Said of a computer installation, asserts that it has reliable email links with the network and/or that it relays a large fraction of available Usenet newsgroups. `Well-known' can be almost synonymous, but also implies that the site's name is familiar to many (due perhaps to an archive service or active Usenet users).

Node:wetware, Next:whack, Previous:well-connected, Up:= W =

wetware /wet'weir/ n.

[prob. from the novels of Rudy Rucker] 1. The human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. "Wetware has 7 plus or minus 2 temporary registers." 2. Human beings (programmers, operators, administrators) attached to a computer system, as opposed to the system's hardware or software. See liveware, meatware.

Node:whack, Next:whack-a-mole, Previous:wetware, Up:= W =

whack v.

According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of NeWS, GOSMACS and Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works." (See whacker.) It is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you are very good at glarking things from context. As a trivial example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr writes to stdout writes in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwise mysterious.

Node:whack-a-mole, Next:whacker, Previous:whack, Up:= W =

whack-a-mole n.

[from the carnival game which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from their holes.] 1. The practice of repeatedly causing spammers' throwaway accounts and drop boxes to be terminated. 2. After sense 1 became established in the mid-1990s the term passed into more generalized use, and now is commonly found in such combinations as `whack-a-mole windows'; the obnoxious pop-ip advertisement windows spawned in flocks when you surg to sites like Geocities or Tripod.

Node:whacker, Next:whales, Previous:whack-a-mole, Up:= W =

whacker n.

[University of Maryland: from hacker] 1. A person, similar to a hacker, who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends up whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are often quite egotistical and eager to claim wizard status, regardless of the views of their peers. 2. A person who is good at programming quickly, though rather poorly and ineptly.

Node:whales, Next:whalesong, Previous:whacker, Up:= W =

whales n.

See like kicking dead whales down the beach.

Node:whalesong, Next:What's a spline?, Previous:whales, Up:= W =

whalesong n.

The peculiar clicking and whooshing sounds made by a PEP modem such as the Telebit Trailblazer as it tries to synchronize with another PEP modem for their special high-speed mode. This sound isn't anything like the normal two-tone handshake between conventional V-series modems and is instantly recognizable to anyone who has heard it more than once. It sounds, in fact, very much like whale songs. This noise is also called "the moose call" or "moose tones".

Node:What's a spline?, Next:wheel, Previous:whalesong, Up:= W =

What's a spline?

[XEROX PARC] This phrase expands to: "You have just used a term that I've heard for a year and a half, and I feel I should know, but don't. My curiosity has finally overcome my guilt." The PARC lexicon adds "Moral: don't hesitate to ask questions, even if they seem obvious."

Node:wheel, Next:wheel bit, Previous:What's a spline?, Up:= W =

wheel n.

[from slang `big wheel' for a powerful person] A person who has an active wheel bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." (See wedged, sense 1.) The traditional name of security group zero in BSD (to which the major system-internal users like root belong) is `wheel'. Some vendors have expanded on this usage, modifying Unix so that only members of group `wheel' can go root.

Node:wheel bit, Next:wheel of reincarnation, Previous:wheel, Up:= W =

wheel bit n.

A privilege bit that allows the possessor to perform some restricted operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill or create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, XEROX-IFS, and others. The state of being in a privileged logon is sometimes called `wheel mode'. This term entered the Unix culture from TWENEX in the mid-1980s and has been gaining popularity there (esp. at university sites). See also root.

Node:wheel of reincarnation, Next:wheel wars, Previous:wheel bit, Up:= W =

wheel of reincarnation

[coined in a paper by T. H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland "On the Design of Display Processors", Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again.

Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also known as `the Wheel of Life', `the Wheel of Samsara', and other variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea. See also blitter, bit bang.

Node:wheel wars, Next:White Book, Previous:wheel of reincarnation, Up:= W =

wheel wars n.

[Stanford University] A period in larval stage during which student hackers hassle each other by attempting to log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users.

Node:White Book, Next:whitelist, Previous:wheel wars, Up:= W =

White Book n.

1. Syn. K&R. 2. Adobe's fourth book in the PostScript series, describing the previously-secret format of Type 1 fonts; "Adobe Type 1 Font Format, version 1.1", (Addison-Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-201-57044-0). See also Red Book, Green Book, Blue Book.

Node:whitelist, Next:whizzy, Previous:White Book, Up:= W =

whitelist n.

The opposite of a blacklist. That is, instead of being an explicit list of people who are banned, it's an explicit list of people who are to be admitted. Hackers use this especially of lists of email addresses that are explicitly enabled to get past strict anti-spam filters.

Node:whizzy, Next:wibble, Previous:whitelist, Up:= W =

whizzy adj.

(alt. `wizzy') [Sun] Describes a cuspy program; one that is feature-rich and well presented.

Node:wibble, Next:WIBNI, Previous:whizzy, Up:= W =

wibble

[UK, perh. originally from the first "Roger Irrelevant" strip in "VIZ" comics, spread via "Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s and early 1990s"] 1. n.,v. Commonly used to describe chatter, content-free remarks or other essentially meaningless contributions to threads in newsgroups. "Oh, rspence is wibbling again". 2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op equivalent to humma. 3. One of the preferred metasyntactic variables in the UK, forming a series with wobble, wubble, and flob (attributed to the hilarious historical comedy "Blackadder"). 4. A pronounciation of the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e., www.foo.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com" (compare dub dub dub).

The ancestral sense of this word is reported to have been "My brain is packing it in now. I give up. Tilt! Tilt! Tilt!"

Node:WIBNI, Next:widget, Previous:wibble, Up:= W =

WIBNI // n.

[Bell Labs: Wouldn't It Be Nice If] What most requirements documents and specifications consist entirely of. Compare IWBNI.

Node:widget, Next:wiggles, Previous:WIBNI, Up:= W =

widget n.

1. A meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the parts list for a widget has 52 entries...." 2. [poss. evoking `window gadget'] A user interface object in X graphical user interfaces.

Node:wiggles, Next:WIMP environment, Previous:widget, Up:= W =

wiggles n.

[scientific computation] In solving partial differential equations by finite difference and similar methods, wiggles are sawtooth (up-down-up-down) oscillations at the shortest wavelength representable on the grid. If an algorithm is unstable, this is often the most unstable waveform, so it grows to dominate the solution. Alternatively, stable (though inaccurate) wiggles can be generated near a discontinuity by a Gibbs phenomenon.

Node:WIMP environment, Next:win, Previous:wiggles, Up:= W =

WIMP environment n.

[acronym: `Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device (or Pull-down menu)'] A graphical-user-interface environment such as X or the Macintosh interface, esp. as described by a hacker who prefers command-line interfaces for their superior flexibility and extensibility. However, it is also used without negative connotations; one must pay attention to voice tone and other signals to interpret correctly. See menuitis, user-obsequious.

Node:win, Next:win big, Previous:WIMP environment, Up:= W =

win