WhatIs

/god-zil'*-gram/

n. [from Japan's national hero]

1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the universe. The typical case of this is an IP datagram whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this!

2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets.

/gä-bəl/

vt. To consume or to obtain. The phrase 'gobble up' tends to imply 'consume', while 'gobble down' tends to imply 'obtain'.

"The output spy gobbles characters out of a TTY output buffer."

"I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow."

See also snarf.

/gō fa-stər strīpes/

[UK]

Syn. chrome.

/gō ru̇t/

[UNIX]

vi. To temporarily enter root mode in order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in Australia, where v. root refers to animal sex.

/gō flat-ˌlīn/

[from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of EEG traces upon brain-death]

vi., also adjectival flatlined.

1. To die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes.

2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing controlled shutdown.

"You can suffer file damage if you shut down UNIX, but power off before the system has gone flatline."

/gnoo'maks/

[contraction of 'GNU EMACS']

Often-heard abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with GOSMACS.

/gnoo/, *not* /noo/

1. [acronym: 'GNU's Not UNIX!', see recursive acronym] A UNIX-workalike development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu). GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. One of its slogans is

"Help stamp out software hoarding!"

/nar'lee/

adj. Both obscure and hairy in the sense of complex.

"Yow! -- the tuned assembler implementation of BitBlt is really gnarly!"

From a similar but less specific usage in surfer slang.

/glü/

n. Generic term for any interface logic or protocol that connects two component blocks. For example, Blue Glue is IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks 'glue logic'.

/glȯrk/

1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of 2 hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed.

2. Used as a name for just about anything.

See foo.

3. vt. Similar to glitch, but usually used reflexively.

"My program just glorked itself."

See also glark.