Related:

• DEADBEEF /ded-beef/ n. The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory (decimal -21524111) under a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000.
  Some modern debugging tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a way of converting heisenbugs into Bohr bugs....
• hexadecimal:: n. Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.
  Actually, neither term is etymologically pure....
• unixism: n. A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory UNIX systems.
  Common {unixism}s include: gratuitous use of `fork(2)'...
• bogus: adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus.
  2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False....
• vaxocentrism /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ n. [analogy with `ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are valid (esp.
  under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are...
• handle: n. 1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym
  a `nom de guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity....
• gorets: /gor'ets/ n. The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning.
  Found esp. on the USENET newsgroup alt.gorets, which seems to be a running contest to redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final....
• hexadecimal n. Base 16. Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier `sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of the industry.
  Actually, neither term is etymologically pure. If we take `binary' to be paradigmatic, the most etymologically correct term for base 10, for example, is `denary', which comes from `deni' (ten at a time, ten each), a Latin `distributive' numbe...
• DED: /D-E-D/ n. Dark-Emitting Diode (that is, a burned-out LED).
  Compare {SED}, {LER}, {write-only memory}. In the early 1970s both Signetics and Texas instruments released DED spec sheets as {AFJ}s (suggested uses included "as a power-off indicator")....