Jargon File

Jargon File

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S/N ratio // n. (also `s/n ratio', `s:n ratio').
Syn. signal-to-noise ratio. Often abbreviated `SNR'....
acred adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (an extension of the standard meaning).
Often means that anyone may look at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever i...
aga n. [WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N random broken people.
Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L....
agan /say'gn/ n. [from Carl Sagan's TV series "Cosmo
hink "billions of billions"] A large quantity of anything....
SAIL /sayl/, not /S-A-I-L/ n. 1. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab.
An important site in the early development of LISP...
alescritter /sayls'kri`tr/ n. Pejorative hackerism for a computer salesperson.
Hackers tell the following joke: Q. What's the difference between a used-car dealer and a computer salesman?...
alt n. A tiny bit of near-random data inserted where too much regularity would be undesirable
a data frob (sense 1). For example, the Unix crypt(3) man page mentions that "the salt stri...
alt mines n. Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in N years.
Noted for their absence...
alt substrate n. [MIT] Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a carrier for sodium chloride.
Also `sodiu...
ame-day service n. Ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with respect to MS-DOS system calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to execute).

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