WhatIs

/pōst/

v. To send a message to a mailing list or newsgroup. Distinguished in context from 'mail'; one might ask, for example:

"Are you going to post the patch or mail it to known users?"

/pō-ziŋ/

n. On a MUD, the use of ':' or an equivalent command to announce to other players that one is taking a certain physical action that has no effect on the game (it may, however, serve as a social signal or propaganda device that induces other people to take game actions). For example, if one's character name is Firechild, one might type ': looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal' to broadcast a message that says

"Firechild looks delighted at the idea and begins hacking on the nearest terminal".

/päp-jā/

[from a PDP-10 return-from-subroutine instruction]

n.,v. To return from a digression. By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly "Now let's see, where were we?"

See RTI.

/päp/

[from the operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack]

(also capitalized 'POP' /pop/) 1. vt. To remove something from a stack or pdl. If a person says he/she has popped something from his stack, that means he/she has finally finished working on it and can now remove it from the list of things hanging overhead.

/P-O-M/

n. Common acronym for phase of the moon. Usage: usually in the phrase POM-dependent, which means flaky.

/pä-lē-gän pu̇-shər/

n. A chip designer who spends most of his or her time at the physical layout level (which requires drawing *lots* of multi-colored polygons). Also rectangle slinger.

/pōl/

v.,n. 1. [techspeak] The action of checking the status of an input line, sensor, or memory location to see if a particular external event has been registered.

2. To repeatedly call or check with someone:

"I keep polling him, but he's not answering his phone; he must be swapped out."

3. To ask.

"Lunch? I poll for a takeout order daily."

/pōk/

n.,vt. See peek.

/pē-ō-dē/

[allegedly from acronym POD for Prince Of Darkness]

n. A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it.

See also P.O.D.

/p*-nam'bik/

[Acronym from the scene in the film version of The Wizard of Oz in which true nature of the wizard is first discovered:

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."]