Jargon File

Jargon File

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TOPS-10 /tops-ten/ n. DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of hackers but now effectively extinct.
A fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix A. See also...
TOPS-20 /tops-twen'tee/ n. See TWENEX.
ourist n. 1. [ITS] A guest on the system, especially one who generally logs in over a network from a remote location for comm mode, email, games, and other trivial purposes.
One step bel...
ourist information n. Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the software or hardware behind it.
...
ouristic adj. Having the quality of a tourist. Often used as a pejorative, as in `losing touristic scum'.
Often spelled `turistic' or `turistik', so that phrase might be more properly...
oy n. A computer system; always used with qualifiers.
1. `nice toy': One that supports the speaker's hacking style adequately....
oy language n. A language useful for instructional purposes or as a proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory, but inadequate for general-purpose programming.
Bad Thing...
oy problem n. [AI] A deliberately oversimplified case of a challenging problem used to investigate, prototype, or test algorithms for a real problem.
Sometimes used pejoratively. See al...
oy program n. 1. One that can be readily comprehended
hence, a trivial program (compare noddy). 2. One for which the effort of initial coding dominates the costs through its life cycle....
ampoline n. An incredibly hairy technique, found in some HLL and program-overlay implementations (e.
g., on the Macintosh), that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, l...

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