Jargon File

Jargon File

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magic 1. adj. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explai
compare automagically and (Arthur C.) Clarke's Third Law...
magic cookie n. [Unix; common] 1. Something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operatio
a capability ticket or opaque identifier. Especially u...
magic number n. [Unix/C; common] 1.
magic smoke n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'
his is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). I...
mail storm n.
mailbomb (also mail bomb) [Usenet] 1. v. To send, or urge others to send, massive amounts of email to a single system or person, esp.
with intent to crash or spam the recipient's system....
mailing list n. (often shortened in context to `list') 1.
An email address that is an alias (or macro, though that word is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses....
main loop n. The top-level control flow construct in an input- or event-driven program, the one which receives and acts or dispatches on the program's input.
See also driver....
mainframe n. Term originally referring to the cabinet containing the central processor unit or `main frame' of a room-filling Stone Age batch machine.
After the emergence of smaller `mini...
management n. 1. Corporate power elites distinguished primarily by their distance from actual productive work and their chronic failure to manage (see also suit).
Spoken derisively, as i...

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