Hobbit KOM Hack: Secrets Revealed by Top Players

I use a hack for The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth that gave me free gold, food, mithril, ore, stone and wood for over a week by now. I have taken it from here: -hobbit-kingdoms-of-middle-earth-hack/

hobbit kom hack

Download: https://urllio.com/2vCUnQ

With the exception of a couple of cameos, War in the North mostly does its own thing, but the hack and slash title cannot shake the feeling that this story is nothing more than unnecessary filler. Released in close conjunction with Dark Souls and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, War in the North quietly slipped through the cracks.

In June 2014, the North Korean government threatened action against the United States if Sony released the film. As a result, Sony delayed the release from October to December and reportedly re-edited the film to make it more acceptable to North Korea. In November, the computer systems of Sony were hacked by the "Guardians of Peace", a North Korean cybercrime group.[8] The group also threatened terrorist attacks against theaters showing the film. This led to major theater chains opting not to release the film, and Sony instead releasing it for online digital rental and purchase on December 25, 2014, followed by a limited release at selected theaters the next day.

On November 24, 2014, an anonymous group identifying themselves as the "Guardians of Peace" hacked the computer networks of Columbia Pictures's parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment.[31] The hackers leaked internal emails, employee records and several recent and unreleased Sony Pictures films, including Annie, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, and To Write Love on Her Arms. The North Korean government denied involvement in the hack.[32][33][34] On December 8, the hackers leaked further materials, including a demand that Sony pull "the movie of terrorism", widely interpreted as referring to The Interview.[35][36][37]

On December 16, 2014, the hackers threatened to attack the New York premiere of The Interview and any cinema showing the film.[33] Two further messages were released on December 1; one, sent in a private message to Sony executives, said that the hackers would not release further information if Sony never released the film and removed it from the internet. The other, posted to Pastebin, a web application used for text storage which the Guardians of Peace had used for previous messages, stated that Sony had "suffered enough" and could release The Interview, but only if Kim Jong-un's death scene was not "too happy". The message also threatened that if Sony made another film antagonizing North Korea, the hackers "will be here ready to fight".[38]

The premiere was held in Los Angeles on December 11, 2014.[46] The film scheduled a wide release in the UK and Ireland on February 6, 2015.[47] Following the hackers' threats on December 16, Rogen and Franco canceled scheduled publicity appearances and Sony pulled all television advertising.[48] The National Association of Theatre Owners said that they would not object to cinema owners delaying the film to ensure the safety of filmgoers. Shortly afterwards, the ArcLight and Carmike cinema chains announced that they would not screen the film.[49]

In the wake of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, leaks revealed e-mails between Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton and RAND Corporation defense analyst Bruce Bennett from June 2014. Bennett advised against toning down The Interview's graphic Jong-un death scene, in the hope that it would "start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North". Bennett expressed his view that "the only resolution I can see to the North Korean nuclear and other threats is for the North Korean government to eventually go away", which he felt would be likeliest to occur following an assassination of Kim. Lynton replied that a senior figure in the United States Department of State agreed. Bennett responded that the office of Robert R. King, U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, had determined that the North Korean statements had been "typical North Korean bullying, likely without follow-up".[95]

Thanks for this post, Erin! SUPER helpful as I am in the process of planning my own Ikea hack wardrobe. Just so I fully understand, for the drawer fronts you just added them on top of the existing Komplement drawer fronts, or did you remove the fronts and add your own? Thank you!

Your hack is so amazing! It really inspired me to have a built in closet in my small condo! I absolutely love the color choice! I initially thought it looked green until you mentioned the shade name, wow! Consider this page permanently bookmarked in my DIY list!

Jamie Schneider is the Beauty & Wellness Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.A. in Organizational Studies and English from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in Coveteur, The Chill Times, and Wyld Skincare. In her role at mbg, she reports on everything from the top beauty industry trends, to the gut-skin connection and the microbiome, to the latest expert makeup hacks. She currently lives in New York City.

Do you need to hack your preferred action game and acquire countless resources? You are in the right website! Put to use our cost-free and infinite game cheats that produce countless resources in your mobile game! Now you can have easy access to unlimited resources and items in your favorite action games so that playing will be so much more fun. Use our online hacking tools at any time free of cost!

Do you like to cheat in your absolute favorite action game like never before? Right now we will teach you how to obtain countless game resources without using any dangerous methods! With our completely free mobile game cheats & hacks now you too can receive an infinite amount of resources in just 5 minutes. Set an end to the boredom and restrictions of mobile gaming by using our cheats that produce millions of resources in your action mobile game. By using our free game hacks, you will obtain all the best items in your action game without spending a penny.

#======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000 =======# This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor. This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.2.2" or "The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.2.2, 20 AUG 2000".) The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and 1

Node:Top,Next:Introduction,Previous:(dir),Up:(dir)#======= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.3.3, 20 SEP 2002 =======#This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slangilluminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freelyused, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legalrestraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions aboutits proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File,ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.3.3" or"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.3.3, 20 SEP 2002".)The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerabletime to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at largeas editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collatecontributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroboratinginformation; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in aconsistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versionsperiodically. Current volunteer editors include:Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.comAlthough there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered goodform to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published workor commercial product. We may have additional information that would behelpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflectnot only the letter of the File but its spirit as well.All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteereditor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwiselabelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of thispublic-domain file.From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited,and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of thevolunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish tohave a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient topurchase one of these. They often contain additional material notfound in on-line versions. The two `authorized' editions so far aredescribed in the Revision History section; there may be more in thefuture.Introduction: The purpose and scope of this FileA Few Terms: Of Slang, Jargon and TechspeakRevision History: How the File came to be

Node:Introduction,Next:A Few Terms,Previous:Top,Up:TopIntroductionThis document is a collection of slang terms used by varioussubcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material isincluded for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves forfun, social communication, and technical debate.The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection ofsubcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important sharedexperiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths,heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Becausehackers as a group are particularly creative people who definethemselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits,it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentionalculture less than 50 years old.As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps holdtheir culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each other'splaces in the community and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual, not knowing the slang (or using itinappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst ofall in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a suit. All humancultures use slang in this threefold way -- as a tool ofcommunication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion.Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhapsin the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hardto detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it arecode for shared states of consciousness. There is a wholerange of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic tohigh-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguisticreality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher'ssurreal `trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite ofhackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobviousways. As a simple example, take the distinction between a klugeand an elegant solution, and the differing connotations attachedto each. The distinction is not only of engineering significance; itreaches right back into the nature of the generative processes inprogram design and asserts something important about two differentkinds of relationship between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slangis unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones andundertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are veryconscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seemto be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machinewe are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out ofmost of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in mostsubcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconsciousprocess. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as agame to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thusdisplay an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment oflanguage-play with the discrimination of educated and powerfulintelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them togetherare fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the disseminationof new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuatedspecimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquelyintense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic andanthropological assumptions. For example, in the early 1990s it becamefashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context'communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context levelof their languages and art forms. It is usually claimed thatlow-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, andcompleteness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultureswhich value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; bycontrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive,nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultureswhich value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. Whatthen are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremelylow-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily"low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-contextslang style?The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make acompilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into thesurrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest versionof an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained byhackers themselves since the early 1970s. This one (like its ancestors)is primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collectbackground or sidelight information on hacker culture that would beawkward to try to subsume under individual slang definitions.Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended thatthe material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider shouldfind at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that isamusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers usehumorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statementsabout what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views ofopposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; thisis deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up thesedisputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that everyone'ssacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly ahackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpointsis.The reader with minimal computer background who finds some referencesincomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not feltit either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences-- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefitfrom them.A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is includedin Appendix A. The `outside' reader's attention is particularlydirected to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in Appendix B. Appendix C, the Bibliography, lists some non-technical workswhich have either influenced or described the hacker culture.Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual mustchoose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the linebetween description and influence can become more than a littleblurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a centralrole in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it tosuccessively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this onewill do likewise.Node:A Few Terms,Next:Revision History,Previous:Introduction,Up:TopOf Slang, Jargon, and TechspeakLinguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reservethe term `jargon' for the technical vocabularies of variousoccupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the`Jargon File', and hacker slang is traditionally `the jargon'. Whentalking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way todistinguish it from what a linguist would call hackers' jargon-- the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers,and manuals.To make a confused situation worse, the line between hacker slang andthe vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy,and shifts over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a widertechnical culture of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and donot speak or recognize hackish slang.Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts ofusage permit about the distinctions among three categories:`slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-technicalsubcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).`jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' languagepeculiar to or predominantly found among hackers -- the subject ofthis lexicon.`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computerscience, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking. This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder ofthis lexicon.The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot oftechspeak originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuinguptake of jargon into techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargonarises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms (there is more aboutthis in the Jargon Construction section below).In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicatesprimarily by a denotation well established in textbooks, technicaldictionaries, or standards documents.A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages,or documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore thatisn't covered in formal sources, or sometimes to convey criticalhistorical background necessary to understand other entries to whichthey are cross-referenced. Some other techspeak senses of jargonwords are listed in order to make the jargon senses clear; wherethe text does not specify that a straight technical sense is underdiscussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Someentries have a primary sense marked this way, with subsequent jargonmeanings explained in terms of it.We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins ofterms. The results are probably the least reliable information in thelexicon, for several reasons. For one thing, it is well known thatmany hackish usages have been independently reinvented multipletimes, even among the more obscure and intricate neologisms. It oftenseems that the generative processes underlying hackish jargonformation have an internal logic so powerful as to create substantialparallelism across separate cultures and even in different languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate innovations so quicklythat `first use' is often impossible to pin down. And, finally,compendia like this one alter what they observe by implicitly stampingcultural approval on terms and widening their use.Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-relatedoral history for the new compilations has enabled us to put to restquite a number of folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due,and illuminate the early history of many important hackerisms such askluge, cruft, and foo. We believe specialistlexicographers will find many of the historical notes more thancasually instructive.Node:Revision History,Next:Jargon Construction,Previous:A Few Terms,Up:TopRevision HistoryThe original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon fromtechnical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab(SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communitiesincluding Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University(CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File')was begun by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time untilthe plug was finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File wasnamed AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date backconsiderably earlier (frob and some senses of moby, forinstance, go back to the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT and arebelieved to date at least back to the early 1960s). The revisions ofjargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively considered`Version 1'.In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File onthe SAIL computer, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed thatit was hardly restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file onhis directory as AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON.The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning underITS) as a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and Guy L. Steele Jr. Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought ofcorrecting the term `jargon' to `slang' until the compendium hadalready become widely known as the Jargon File.Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafterand Don Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which wassubsequently kept in duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodicresynchronizations).The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; RichardStallman was prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT andITS-related coinages.In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk ofthe File published in Stewart Brand's "CoEvolution Quarterly"(issue 29, pages 26-35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and GuySteele (including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears tohave been the File's first paper publication.A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the massmarket, was edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as"The Hacker's Dictionary" (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors (Raphael Finkel, DonWoods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as did RichardM. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) ishereafter referred to as `Steele-1983' and those six as theSteele-1983 coauthors.Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectivelystopped growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire tofreeze the file temporarily to facilitate the production ofSteele-1983, but external conditions caused the `temporary' freezeto become permanent.The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by fundingcuts and the resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supportedhardware and software instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT,most AI work had turned to dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time,the commercialization of AI technology lured some of the AI Lab's bestand brightest away to startups along the Route 128 strip inMassachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. The startups built LISPmachines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a TWENEXsystem rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved ITS.The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, althoughthe SAIL computer continued as a Computer Science Department resourceuntil 1991. Stanford became a major TWENEX site, at one pointoperating more than a dozen TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980smost of the interesting software work was being done on the emergingBSD Unix standard.In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished theFile were dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiterproject at Digital Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers,already dispersed, moved on to other things. Steele-1983 was partly amonument to what its authors thought was a dying tradition; no oneinvolved realized at the time just how wide its influence was tobe.By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that hadgrown up around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopiesobtained off the ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed fromMIT and Stanford; the content exerted a strong and continuinginfluence on hacker language and humor. Even as the advent of themicrocomputer and other trends fueled a tremendous expansion ofhackerdom, the File (and related materials such as the Some AI Koans inAppendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a hacker-cultureMatter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights ofthe Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large acceleratedtremendously -- but the Jargon File, having passed from livingdocument to icon, remained essentially untouched for seven years.This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version ofjargon-1 (a few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped aftercareful consultation with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges inabout 80% of the Steele-1983 text, omitting some framing material anda very few entries introduced in Steele-1983 that are now alsoobsolete.This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aimis to cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technicalcomputing cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. Morethan half of the entries now derive from Usenet and represent jargonnow current in the C and Unix communities, but special efforts havebeen made to collect jargon from other cultures including IBM PCprogrammers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and even the IBM mainframeworld.Eric S. Raymond maintains the new Filewith assistance from Guy L. Steele Jr. ;these are the persons primarily reflected in the File's editorial`we', though we take pleasure in acknowledging the specialcontribution of the other coauthors of Steele-1983. Please email alladditions, corrections, and correspondence relating to the Jargon Fileto jargon@thyrsus.com.(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file but are notguaranteed to be correct later than the revision date on the firstline. Don't email us if an attempt to reach your idol bounces-- we have no magic way of checking addresses or looking up people.)The 2.9.6 version became the main text of "The New Hacker'sDictionary", by Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN0-262-68069-6.The 3.0.0 version was published in August 1993 as the secondedition of "The New Hacker's Dictionary", again from MIT Press(ISBN 0-262-18154-1).The 4.0.0 version was published in September 1996 as the third editionof "The New Hacker's Dictionary" from MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-68092-0).If you want the book, you should be able to find it at any of themajor bookstore chains. Failing that, you can order by mail fromThe MIT Press55 Hayward StreetCambridge, MA 02142or order by phone at (800)-356-0343 or (617)-625-8481.The maintainers are committed to updating the on-line version of theJargon File through and beyond paper publication, and will continue tomake it available to archives and public-access sites as a trust ofthe hacker community.Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line revisions:Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again after aseven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S. Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, andmicrocomputer-based jargon were added at that time.Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy for book. This version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551 characters, and1702 entries.Version 2.9.7, Oct 28 1991: first markup for hypertext browser. This version had 19432 lines, 152132 words, 999595 characters, and1750 entries.Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the book,including over fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions toold ones. Packaged with version 1.1 of vh(1) hypertext reader. Thisversion had 19509 lines, 153108 words, 1006023 characters, and1760 entries.Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. Thisversion had 20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and1821 entries.Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material. Thisversion had 21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters, and1891 entries.Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material. Thisversion had 21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters, and1922 entries.Version 2.9.12, May 10 1993: a few new entries & changes, marginalMUD/IRC slang and some borderline techspeak removed, all inpreparation for 2nd Edition of TNHD. This version had 22238 lines,175114 words, 1152467 characters, and 1946 entries.Version 3.0.0, Jul 27 1993: manuscript freeze for 2nd edition ofTNHD. This version had 22548 lines, 177520 words, 1169372 characters,and 1961 entries.Version 3.1.0, Oct 15 1994: interim release to test WWW conversion. This version had 23197 lines, 181001 words, 1193818 characters, and1990 entries.Version 3.2.0, Mar 15 1995: Spring 1995 update. This version had23822 lines, 185961 words, 1226358 characters, and 2031 entries.Version 3.3.0, Jan 20 1996: Winter 1996 update. This version had24055 lines, 187957 words, 1239604 characters, and 2045 entries.Version 3.3.1, Jan 25 1996: Copy-corrected improvement on 3.3.0shipped to MIT Press as a step towards TNHD III. This version had24147 lines, 188728 words, 1244554 characters, and 2050 entries.Version 3.3.2, Mar 20 1996: A number of new entries pursuant on 3.3.2. This version had 24442 lines, 190867 words, 1262468 characters, and2061 entries.Version 3.3.3, Mar 25 1996: Cleanup before TNHD III manuscript freeze. This version had 24584 lines, 191932 words, 1269996 characters, and2064 entries.Version 4.0.0, Jul 25 1996: The actual TNHD III version after copy-edit. This version had 24801 lines, 193697 words, 1281402 characters, and2067 entries.Version 4.1.0, 8 Apr 1999: The Jargon File rides again after threeyears. This version had 25777 lines, 206825 words, 1359992characters, and 2217 entries.Version 4.1.1, 18 Apr 1999: Corrections for minor errors in 4.1.0, andsome new entries. This version had 25921 lines, 208483 words,1371279 characters, and 2225 entries.Version 4.1.2, 28 Apr 1999: Moving texi2html out of the productionpath. This version had 26006 lines, 209479 words, 1377687 characters,and 2225 entries.Version 4.1.3, 14 Jun 1999: Minor updates and markup fixes. This version had26108 lines, 210480 words, 1384546 characters, and 2234 entries.Version 4.1.4, 17 Jun 1999: Markup fixes for framed HTML. This version had26117 lines, 210527 words, 1384902 characters, and 2234 entries.Version 4.2.0, 31 Jan 2000: Fix processing of URLs. This version had26598 lines, 214639 words, 1412243 characters, and 2267 entries.Version 4.2.1, 5 Mar 2000: Point release to test new productionmachinery. This version had 26647 lines, 215040 words, 1414942characters, and 2269 entries.Version 4.2.2, 12 Aug 2000: This version had 27171 lines, 219630 words,1444887 characters, and 2302 entries.Version 4.2.3, 23 Nov 2000: This version had 27452 lines, 222085 words,1460972 characters, and 2318 entries.Version 4.3.0, 30 Apr 2001: Special edition in honor of the firstimplementation of RFC 1149. Also cleaned up a number of obsolete entries. This version had 27805 lines, 224978 words, 1480215 characters, and2319 entries.Version 4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001:This version had 27862 lines, 225517 words, 1483664 characters, and2321 entries.Version 4.3.2, 18 Sep 2002:This version had 28401 lines, 230308 words, 1514477 characters, and2370 entries.Version 4.3.3, 20 Sep 2002:Point release, fixed botched upload of 4.3.2. This version had 28406 lines, 230340 words, 1514769 characters, and2370 entries.Version numbering: Version numbers should be read asmajor.minor.revision. Major version 1 is reserved for the`old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major version 2 encompassesrevisions by ESR (Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.) leading up to and including the second paper edition. From now on, major version number N.00 will probably correspond to theNth paper edition. Usually later versions will either completelysupersede or incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally nopoint in keeping old versions around.Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight andassistance, and to the hundreds of Usenetters (too many to name here)who contributed entries and encouragement. More thanks go to severalof the old-timers on the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers,who contributed much useful commentary and many corrections andvaluable historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer, Bernie Cosell, Earl Boebert , andJoe Morris .We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists. David Stampe and Charles Hoequist contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane helped us improve the pronunciation guides.A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted toBrian A. LaMacchia for obtaining permissionfor us to use material from the "TMRC Dictionary"; also, DonLibes contributed some appropriate material fromhis excellent book "Life With UNIX". We thank Per Lindberg, author of the remarkable Swedish-language 'zine"Hackerbladet", for bringing "FOO!" comics to our attentionand smuggling one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargonfiles out to us. Thanks also to Maarten Litmaath for generouslyallowing the inclusion of the ASCII pronunciation guide he formerlymaintained. And our gratitude to Marc Weiser of XEROX PARC for securing us permission to quote fromPARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy.It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions ofMark Brader and Steve Summit to the File andDictionary; they have read and reread many drafts, checked facts,caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful comments, anddone yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles. Theirrare combination of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging technicalknowledge, and precisionism in matters of language has been ofinvaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume and quality ofMr. Brader's input over several years and several different editionshas only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest ofmargins.Finally, George V. Reilly helped withTeX arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions,and Eric Tiedemann contributed sage advicethroughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.Node:Jargon Construction,Next:Hacker Writing Style,Previous:Revision History,Up:TopHow Jargon WorksJargon ConstructionThere are some standard methods of jargonification that becameestablished quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from suchsources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers,and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include verbdoubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization,spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussedbelow. We also cover the standard comparatives for design quality.Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization,and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; butsoundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other largeuniversities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPersflourish.Verb Doubling: Doubling a verb may change its semanticsSoundalike Slang: Punning jargonThe -P convention: A LISPy way to form questionsOvergeneralization: Standard abuses of grammarSpoken Inarticulations: Sighing and ingAnthropomorphization: Homunculi, daemons, and confused programsComparatives: Standard comparatives for design qualityNode:Verb Doubling,Next:Soundalike Slang,Up:Jargon ConstructionVerb DoublingA standard construction in English is to double a verband use it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack,quack!". Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also doubleverbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the impliedsubject does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate aconversation, in the process remarking on the current state of affairsor what the speaker intends to do next. Typical examples involvewin, lose, hack, flame, barf, chomp:"The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose.""Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame.""Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!" Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediatelyobvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.The Usenet culture has one tripling convention unrelated tothis; the names of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled lastelement. The first and paradigmatic example wasalt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "Muppet Show" reference);other infamous examples have included:alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borgalt.wesley.crusher.die.die.diecomp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brksci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boomalt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drillThese two traditions fuse in the newsgroupalt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, devoted to humor based ondeliberately confounding parts of speech. Several observers have notedthat the contents of this group is excellently representative of thepeculiarities of hacker humor.Node:Soundalike Slang,Next:The -P convention,Previous:Verb Doubling,Up:Jargon ConstructionSoundalike slangHackers will often make rhymes or puns in order toconvert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting. It is considered particularly flavorful if the phrase is bent soas to include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyistmagazine "Dr. Dobb's Journal" is almost always referred to amonghackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms ofthis kind that have been in fairly wide use include names fornewspapers: Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried) Boston Globe => Boston Glob Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle => the Crocknicle (or the Comical) New York Times => New York Slime Wall Street Journal => Wall Street UrinalHowever, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples include: Data General => Dirty Genitals IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) => Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) => Marginal Hacks Hall Microsoft => Microsloth Internet Explorer => Internet ExploiterThis is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has beencompared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaquewhereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.Node:The -P convention,Next:Overgeneralization,Previous:Soundalike Slang,Up:Jargon ConstructionThe `-P' conventionTurning a word into a question by appending thesyllable `P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter `P'to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function). The questionshould expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: Q: ``Foodp?'' A: ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!'' At any time: Q: ``State-of-the-world-P?'' A: (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.'' A: (Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.'' On the phone to Florida: Q: ``State-p Florida?'' A: ``Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?''[One of the best of these is a Gosperism. Once, when we were at aChinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone wouldlike to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquirywas: "Split-p soup?" -- GLS]Node:Overgeneralization,Next:Spoken Inarticulations,Previous:The -P convention,Up:Jargon ConstructionOvergeneralizationA very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with whichtechspeak items such as names of program tools, command languageprimitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outsideof computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus(to cite one of the best-known examples) Unix hackers often grepfor things rather than searching for them. Many of the lexiconentries are generalizations of exactly this kind.Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings tothem to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule tononuniform cases (or vice versa). For example, becauseporous => porositygenerous => generosityhackers happily generalize:mysterious => mysteriosityferrous => ferrosityobvious => obviositydubious => dubiosityAnother class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' toabstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usagearises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform thesame abstraction through `-iness' or `-ingness'. Thus:win => winnitude (a common exclamation)loss => lossitudecruft => cruftitudelame => lameitudeSome hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, forexample, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to becalled `lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can beverbed", "I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over","I'm grepping the files". English as a whole is already heading inthis direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackersare simply a bit ahead of the curve.The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fancifulways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, thesystem starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than oneheadfull of ideas, I start writing it all down." A common use is"screenfull", meaning the amount of text that will fit on onescreen, usually in text mode where you have no choice as to charactersize. Another common form is "bufferfull".However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniquescharacteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; ahacker would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or`securitize' things. Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucraticbafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slightovergeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, itis good form to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:win => winnitude, winnagedisgust => disgustitudehack => hackificationFurther, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard pluralforms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionaryincludes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' ismeeces, and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is`cabeese'. This latter has apparently been standard (or at least astandard joke) among railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for manyyears.On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' mayform plurals in `-xen' (see VAXen and boxen in the maintext). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimestreated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funnyplurals are the Hebrew-style `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz'(see frobnitz) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes'and `Twenexes'; see Unix, TWENEX in main text). But notethat `Twenexen' was never used, and `Unixen' was not sighted in thewild until the year 1999, thirty years after it might logically havecome into use; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and`-ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Among Perl hackers it is reported that `comma' and `semicolon'pluralize as `commata' and `semicola' respectively. Finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of`mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, isgeneralization of an inflectional rule that in English is eitheran import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or theAnglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normallyconsidered to apply.This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite wellaware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It isgrammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not toimpress but to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.Node:Spoken Inarticulations,Next:Anthropomorphization,Previous:Overgeneralization,Up:Jargon ConstructionSpoken inarticulationsWords such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places wheretheir referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggestedthat this usage derives from the impossibility of representing suchnoises on a comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs, and IRC channels(interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing upwith increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expressionsometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have acomplaint!"Node:Anthropomorphization,Next:Comparatives,Previous:Spoken Inarticulations,Up:Jargon ConstructionAnthropomorphizationSemantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackishtendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English puristsand academic computer scientists frequently look down on others foranthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort ofbehavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But mosthackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing programbehavior in terms of wants and desires.Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as thoughit has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions anddesires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got confused", orthat programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routinethat "its goal in life is to X". Or: "You can't run those twocards on the same bus; they fight over interrupt 9."One even hears explanations like "... and its poor little braincouldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling things thisway actually seems to make them easier to understand, perhaps becauseit's instinctively natural to think of anything with a really complexbehavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like a thing'.At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs actuallywork, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the peoplewho know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that they woulduse language that seems to ascribe conciousness to them. Themind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination.The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in anaive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense offeeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that thethings they work on every day are `alive'. To the contrary: hackerswho anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of programbehavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior.Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialisticontology of science (this is in practice true even of most of theminority with contrary religious theories). In this view, peopleare biological machines - consciousness is an interesting andvaluable epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery whichis not fundamentally different in information-processing capacityfrom computers.Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the differencebetween a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of siliconand metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what makes athing `alive', is information and richness of pattern. This is animismfrom the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and dolphinsand rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes of`consciousness' according to their information-processing capacity.Because hackers accept that a human machine can have intentions, itis therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention toother complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness ismechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that "Theprogram wants to go into an infinite loop" than it is to say that "Iwant to go eat some chocolate" - and even defensible to say that"The stone, once dropped, wants to move towards the center of theearth".This viewpoint has respectable company in academic philosophy. DanielDennett organizes explanations of behavior using three stances: the"physical stance" (thing-to-be-explained as a physical object), the"design stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an artifact), and the"intentional stance" (thing-to-be-explained as an agent with desiresand intentions). Which stances are appropriate is a matter not ofabstract truth but of utility. Hackers typically view simple programsfrom the design stance, but more complex ones are often modelled usingthe intentional stance.It has also been argued that the anthropomorphization of software andhardware reflects a blurring of the boundary between the programmerand his artifacts - the human qualities belong to the programmer andthe code merely expresses these qualities as his/her proxy. On this view,a hacker saying a piece of code 'got confused' is really saying thathe (or she) was confused about exactly what he wanted thecomputer to do, the code naturally incorporated this confusion, andthe code expressed the programmer's confusion when executed bycrashing or otherwise misbehaving.Note that by displacing from "I got confused" to "It got confused",the programmer is not avoiding responsibility, but rather getting someanalytical distance in order to be able to consider the bugdispassionately.It has also been suggested that anthropomorphizing complex systems isactually an expression of humility, a way of acknowleging that simplerules we do understand (or that we invented) can lead to emergentbehavioral complexities that we don't completely understand.All three explanations accurately model hacker psychology, and should beconsidered complementary rather than competing.Node:Comparatives,Previous:Anthropomorphization,Up:Jargon ConstructionComparativesFinally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to beunderstood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especiallytrue of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty andfunctional quality of code. Here is an approximately correctspectrum:monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeaturecrock kluge hack win feature elegance perfectionThe last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but neveractually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing thereliability of software:broken flaky dodgy fragile brittlesolid robust bulletproof armor-platedNote, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it israre in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for somespeakers.Coinages for describing lossage seem to call forth the very finestin hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said thathackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish hasfor obnoxious people.Node:Hacker Writing Style,Next:Email Quotes,Previous:Jargon Construction,Up:TopHacker Writing StyleWe've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizinggrammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness forform-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly inhackish writing. One correspondent reports that he consistentlymisspells `wrong' as `worng'. Others have been known to criticizeglitches in Jargon File drafts by observing (in the mode of DouglasHofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Too repetetetive", or"Bad speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentionalspoonerisms are often made of phrases relating to confusion or thingsthat are confusing; `dain bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps themost common (similarly, a hacker would be likely to write "Excuse me,I'm cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm dyslexic today"). This sortof thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all concerned.Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses,much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" isa phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackersgenerally prefer to write: "Jim is going", "Bill runs", and"Spock groks". This is incorrect according to standard Americanusage (which would put the continuation commas and the final periodinside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackersto mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions ofprogramming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extracharacters can be a real pain in the neck.Consider, for example, a sentence in a vi tutorial that looks like this:Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd". Standard usage would make thisThen delete a line from the file by typing "dd." but that would be very bad -- because the reader would be prone totype the string d-d-dot, and it happens that in vi(1) dotrepeats the last command accepted. The net result would be to deletetwo lines!The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in GreatBritain, though the older style (which became established fortypographical reasons having to do with the aesthetics of comma andquotes in typeset text) is still accepted there. "Hart's Rules"and the "Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors" call thehacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting. This returns BritishEnglish to the style many other languages (including Spanish, French,Italian, Catalan, and German) have been using all along.Another hacker habit is a tendency to distinguish between `scare'quotes and `speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style singlequotes for marking and reserve American-style double quotes for actualreports of speech or text included from elsewhere. Interestingly,some authorities describe this as correct general usage, butmainstream American English has gone to using double-quotesindiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, infact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked withUsenet --ESR]. One further permutation that is definitelynot standard is a hackish tendency to do marking quotes byusing apostrophes (single quotes) in pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on string and character literal syntax in someprogramming languages (reinforced by the fact that many character-onlyterminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a verticalsingle quote).One quirk that shows up frequently in the email style of Unixhackers in particular is a tendency for some things that are normallyall-lowercase (including usernames and the names of commands andC routines) to remain uncapitalized even when they occur at thebeginning of sentences. It is clear that, for many hackers, the caseof such identifiers becomes a part of their internal representation(the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without mental effort (anappropriate reflex because Unix and C both distinguish cases andconfusing them can lead to lossage). A way of escaping this dilemmais simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning ofsentences.There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms tothe effect that precision of expression is more important thanconformance to traditional rules; where the latter create ambiguity orlose information they can be discarded without a second thought. Itis notable in this respect that other hackish inventions (for example,in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise shades of meaning evenwhen constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact, to a hacker,the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is asubstantial part of its humor!Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasisconventions adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, andthese are occasionally carried over into written documents even whennormal means of font changes, underlining, and the like are available.One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', andthis becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person whogoes to caps-lock while in talk mode may be asked to "stopshouting, please, you're hurting my ears!".Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters tosignify emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the*hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of theasterisk suffix as a footnote mark. The underscore is also common,suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles;for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote_The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel ofthe future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other forms exemplifiedby "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it'sclaimed that in the last example the first slash pushes the lettersover to the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them fromfalling over). On FidoNet, you might see #bright# and ^dark^ text,which was actually interpreted by some reader software. Finally,words may also be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series ofcarets (^) under them on the next line of the text.There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (whichemphasizes the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (whichsuggests the writer speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to avery young child or a mentally impaired person). Bracketing a word withthe `*' character may also indicate that the writer wishes readers toconsider that an action is taking place or that a sound is being made. Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*, *stomp*, *mumble*.One might also see the above sound effects as , , ,, , , . This use of angle brackets to marktheir contents originally derives from conventions used in BNF,but since about 1993 it has been reinforced by the HTML markup used onthe World Wide Web.Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term standsfor some random member of a larger class (this is straight fromBNF). Examples like the following are common:So this walks into a bar one day...There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; thetextBe nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,he's visiting from corporate HQ.reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", withirony emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a printrepresentation for a backspace, and was actually very visible onold-style printing terminals. As the text was being composed thecharacters would be echoed and printed immediately, and when acorrection was made the backspace keystrokes would be echoed with thestring '^H'. Of course, the final composed text would have no traceof the backspace characters (or the original erroneous text).Accidental writing under erasure occurs when using the Unix "talk"program to chat interactively to another user. On a PC-style keyboardmost users instinctively press the backspace key to delete mistakes,but this may not achieve the desired effect, and merely displays a ^Hsymbol. The user typically presses backspace a few times before theirbrain realises the problem - especially likely if the user is atouch-typist - and since each character is transmitted as soon as itis typed, Freudian slips and other inadvertant admissions are (barringnetwork delays) clearly visible for the other user to see.Deliberate use of ^H for writing under erasure parallels (and may havebeen influenced by) the ironic use of `slashouts' in science-fictionfanzines.A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections toprevious text. This custom faded in email as more mailers gotgood editing capabilities, only to take on new life on IRCsand other line-based chat systems.charlie: I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.lisa: Send it to Erik for the File.lisa: Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.The s/Erik/Eric/ says "change Erik to Eric in the preceding". Thissyntax is borrowed from the Unix editing tools ed andsed, but is widely recognized by non-Unix hackers as well.In a formula, * signifies multiplication but two asterisks in arow are a shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN, andis also used in Ada). Thus, one might write 2 ** 8 = 256.Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses thecaret (^, ASCII 1011110); one might write instead 2^8 = 256. This goes all the way back to Algol-60, which used the archaicASCII `up-arrow' that later became the caret; this was picked up byKemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn influenced the designof the bc(1) and dc(1) Unix tools, which have probablydone most to reinforce the convention on Usenet. (TeX math mode alsouses ^ for exponention.) The notation is mildly confusing to Cprogrammers, because ^ means bitwise exclusive-or in C. Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot ofUsenet. It is used consistently in this lexicon.In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improperfractions (`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixedfractions (`3-1/2'). The major motive here is probably that theformer are more readable in a monospaced font, together with a desireto avoid the risk that the latter might be read as `three minusone-half'. The decimal form is definitely preferred for fractionswith a terminating decimal representation; there may be some culturalinfluence here from the high status of scientific notation.Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or verysmall numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). Thisis a form of `scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; forexample, one year is about 3e7 secondslong.The tilde () is commonly used in a quantifying sense of`approximately'; that is, 50 means `about fifty'.On Usenet and in the MUD world, common C boolean, logical, andrelational operators such as , &, , &&,!, ==, !=, >, =, andI recently had occasion to field-test the Snafu>Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was>right, and the racing stripe on the case looked>kind of neat, but its performance left something>to be desired.Yeah, I tried one out too.#ifdef FLAMEHasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't getdecent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today'snet volumes?#endif /* FLAME */I guess they figured the price premium for trueframe-based semantic analysis was too high.Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unlessyou're on a *very* tight budget.#include -- == Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)In the above, the #ifdef/#endif pair is a conditionalcompilation syntax from C; here, it implies that the text between(which is a flame) should be evaluated only if you have turned on(or defined on) the switch FLAME. The #include at the end is Cfor "include standard disclaimer here"; the `standard disclaimer' isunderstood to read, roughly, "These are my personal opinions and notto be construed as the official position of my employer."The top section in the example, with > at the left margin, is anexample of an inclusion convention we'll discuss below.More recently, following on the huge popularity of the World Wide Web,pseudo-HTML markup has become popular for similar purposes:Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!You'll even see this with an HTML-style modifier:You seem well-suited for a career in government.Another recent (late 1990s) construction now common on Usenet seems tobe borrowed from Unix shell syntax or Perl. It consists of using adollar sign before an uppercased form of a word or acronym to suggestany random member of the class indicated by the word. Thus:`$PHB' means "any random member of the class `Pointy-Haired Boss'".Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstreamusage. In particular, it is good hackish style to write a digitsequence where you intend the reader to understand the text stringthat names that number in English. So, hackers prefer to write`1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or `1970's' (the latter lookslike a possessive).It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance touse multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part ofthis is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeplynested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it hasalso been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playingwith complexity and pushing systems to their limits is inoperation.Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-linecommunication have shown that electronic links have a de-inhibitingeffect on people. Deprived of the body-language cues through whichemotional state is expressed, people tend to forget everything aboutother parties except what is presented over that ASCII link. This hasboth good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honestyand tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a badone is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitousrudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters oftendisplay a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing thathas passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (forexample, the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in personcommunicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps preciselybecause they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealingwith people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they wouldface to face.Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poorspelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy andclarity of expression. It may well be that future historians ofliterature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personalletters as art.Node:Email Quotes,Next:Hacker Speech Style,Previous:Hacker Writing Style,Up:TopEmail Quotes and Inclusion ConventionsOne area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some fluxis the marking of included material from earlier messages -- whatwould be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From theusual typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at anextra indent), there derived a practice of included text beingindented by one ASCII TAB (0001001) character, which under Unix andmany other environments gives the appearance of an 8-space indent.Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messagesthis way, so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD Mail(1)was the first message agent to support inclusion, and early Usenettersemulated its style. But the TAB character tended to push includedtext too far to the right (especially in multiply nested inclusions),leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period of confusion(during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four spacesbecame established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading >or > became standard, perhaps owing to its use in ed(1) todisplay tabs (alternatively, it may derive from the > that someearly Unix mailers used to quote lines starting with "From" in text,so they wouldn't look like the beginnings of new message headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their > leaders, so the `nestinglevel' of a quotation is visually apparent.The practice of including text from the parent article when posting afollowup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on Usenet: thefact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or evenconsist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around1984, new news-posting software evolved a facility to automaticallyinclude the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or whateverthe poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all but therelevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters postarticles containing the entire text of a preceding article,followed only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree".Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease,and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the readerskip over included text if desired. Today, some posting softwarerejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginningwith `>' -- but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as thedeliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quotedand thus pull the message below the rejection threshold.Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other operatingsystems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the olderconventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are stillalive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in bothnetnews and mail.Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusionstyle occasionally lead to holy wars.Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it willimmediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this, > relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 3 response to excerptor for short messages like this: > entire message response to messageThanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents (notably MicrosoftOutlook and Outlook Express), one will occasionally see the entirequoted message after the response, like this response to message > entire messagebut this practice is strongly deprecated.Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, isoccasionally used for extended quotations where original variations inindentation are being retained (one mailer even combines these anduses >). One also sees different styles of quoting a numberof authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it losesinformation) uses a leader of > for everyone, another (themost common) is > > > > , > > > , etc. (or>>>> , >>>, etc., depending on line length andnesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yetanother is to use a different citation leader for each author, say> , : , , } (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is stillapparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yetanother style is to use each poster's initials (or login name)as a citation leader for that poster.Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations fromauthoritative sources such as standards documents; the intendedallusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issuedwhen one is running as the privileged super-user).Node:Hacker Speech Style,Next:International Style,Previous:Email Quotes,Up:TopHacker Speech StyleHackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, carefulword choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relativelylittle use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns,and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued -- but an underlyingseriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use justenough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as amember of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessivelygung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normallyspoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technicalfields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it isfairly constant throughout hackerdom.It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negativequestions -- or, at least, that the people to whom they are talkingare often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is thatthey have done so much programming that distinguishes betweenif (going) ...andif (!going) ...that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it may seem tobe asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so tomerit an answer in the opposite sense. This confusesEnglish-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer asthough the negative part weren't there. In some other languages(including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretationis standard and the problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often findthemselves wishing for a word like French `si', German `doch', orDutch `jawel' - a word with which one could unambiguouslyanswer `yes' to a negative question. (See also mu)For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use doublenegatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usageallows them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to bean affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends todisturb them.In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answeringquestions containing logical connectives with a strictly literalrather than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicateenough to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding thatbug now or leaving it until later?" is likely to get theperfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it eithernow or later, and you didn't ask which!").Node:International Style,Next:Leet-speak,Previous:Hacker Speech Style,Up:TopInternational StyleAlthough the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usagein American English, we have made some effort to get input fromabroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often usestranslations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them byearlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting,and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These areintended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported inthe English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada,Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced byAmerican usage). There is also an entry on Commonwealth Hackishreporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences fromU.S. hackish.Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report thatthey often use a mixture of English and their native languages fortechnical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in theirEnglish usage that are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical andvocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italianhackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and`deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere' and`cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seenconjugated in Swedish. In German, many Unix terms in English arecasually declined as if they were German verbs - thus:mount/mounten/gemountet; grep/grepen/gegrept; fork/forken/geforkt;core dump/core-dumpen, gecoredumpt. And Spanish-speaking hackers use`linkear' (to link), `debugear' (to debug), and `lockear' (tolock).European hackers report that this happens partly because the Englishterms make finer distinctions than are available in their nativevocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makesfor amusing wordplay.A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where theyare parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible toEnglish-speakers.Node:Leet-speak,Next:Pronunciation Guide,Previous:International Style,Up:TopCrackers, Phreaks, and LamersFrom the early 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,MS-DOS-based bulletin boards developed separately from Internethackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of`pirate boards' inhabited by crackers, phone phreaks, andwarez d00dz. These people (mostly teenagers running IBM-PCclones from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristicjargon, heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rockslang. While BBS technology essentially died out after the Great Internet Explosion, the cracker culture moved to IRC and otherInternet-based network channels and maintained a semi-undergroundexistence.Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (theytypically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internetexpertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems). Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's, and hackersregard them with varying degrees of contempt. But ten years on thebrightest crackers tend to become hackers, and sometimes to recalltheir origins by using cracker slang in a marked and heavily ironicway.This lexicon covers much of cracker slang (which is often called"leet-speak") so the reader will be able to understand both whatleaks out of the cracker underground and the occasional ironic use byhackers.Here is a brief guide to cracker and warez d00dz usage:Misspell frequently. The substitutions phone => fone freak => phreakare obligatory. 2ff7e9595c