WhatIs

/yü-nikz/

[In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"]

/ən-in-t(ə-)rə-stiŋ/

adj. 1. Said of a problem that, although nontrivial, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient resources at it.

2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and code.

/ən-dä-kyə-men-təd fē-chər/

n. See feature.

/ən-dər t͟hə hu̇d/

prep. [hot-rodder talk]

1. Used to introduce the underlying implementation of a product (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance, but the speaker is about to enable the listener to grok it.
"Let's now look under the hood to see how..."

2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler than the appearance would indicate:
"Under the hood, we are just fork/execing the shell."

/ən-di-fīnd ek-stər-nᵊl re-fərn(t)s/

[UNIX]

excl. A message from UNIX's linker. Used in speech to flag loose ends or dangling references in an argument or discussion.

/yü-nikz/

n. Used to refer to the UNIX operating system (a trademark of AT&T) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly ™ typography.

Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers now say (1990) that the requirement for the TM-postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. It has been suggested that there may be a psychological connection to practice in certain religions (especially Judaism) in which the name of the deity is never written out in full, e.g., 'YHWH' or 'G-d' is used.

/U-B-D/

[abbreviation for User Brain Damage]

An abbreviation used to close out trouble reports obviously due to utter cluelessness on the user's part.

Compare pilot error; oppose PBD; see also brain-damaged.

/twȯŋ-kē/

n. The software equivalent of a Twinkie (a variety of sugar-loaded junk food, or (in gay slang) the male equivalent of 'chick'); a useless 'feature' added to look sexy and placate a marketroid (compare Saturday Night Special). This may also be related to "The Twonky", title menace of a classic SF short story by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), first published in the September 1942 'Astounding Science Fiction' and subsequently much anthologized.

/tü tü t͟hə en/

quant. An amount much larger than N but smaller than infinity.

"I have 2-to-the-N things to do before I can go out for lunch" means you probably won't show up.

/tü pī/

quant. The number of years it takes to finish one's thesis. Occurs in stories in the following form:
"He started on his thesis; 2 pi years later..."