WhatIs

/nän-li-nē-ər/

adj. [scientific computation]

1. Behaving in an erratic and unpredictable fashion. When used to describe the behavior of a machine or program, it suggests that said machine or program is being forced to run far outside of design specifications. This behavior may be induced by unreasonable inputs, or may be triggered when a more mundane bug sends the computation far off from its expected course.

2. When describing the behavior of a person, suggests a tantrum or a flame.

/nän-äp-tə-məl sə-lü-shən/

n. (also sub-optimal solution) An astoundingly stupid way to do something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious.

Compare stunning.

See also Bad Thing.

/nō-meks ən-dər-wer/

[USENET]

n. Syn. asbestos longjohns, used mostly in auto-related mailing lists and newsgroups. NOMEX underwear is an actual product available on the racing equipment market, used as a fire resistance measure and required in some racing series.

/nä-dē/

[UK: from the children's books]

adj. 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is hello, world. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using.

"This editor's a bit noddy."

/noh'op/ alt. NOP /nop/

[no operation]

n. 1. (also v.) A machine instruction that does nothing (sometimes used in assembler-level programming as filler for data or patch areas, or to overwrite code to be removed in binaries).

See also JFCL.

2. A person who contributes nothing to a project, or has nothing going on upstairs, or both. As in

"He's a no-op."

/N-M-I/

n. Non-Maskable Interrupt. An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680[01234]0; the NMI line on an 80{88,[1234]}86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is never ignored.

/nil/

[from LISP terminology for false]

No. Used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the -P convention.

See T.

/nīt-mer fī(-ə)l si-stəm/

n. Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level).

/nīt mōd/

n. See phase (of people).

/ni-kəl/

[from 'nickel', common name for the U.S. 5-cent coin]

n. A nybble + 1; 5 bits. Reported among developers for Mattel's GI 1600 (the Intellivision games processor), a chip with 16-bit-wide RAM but 10-bit-wide ROM.

See also deckle.

Night Mode n.

See phase (of people).