WhatIs

/nüz-grüp/

[USENET]

/nüz-früp/

[USENET]

n. Silly synonym for newsgroup, originally a typo but now in regular use on USENET's talk.bizarre and other lunatic-fringe groups.

/nüz/

[acronym; the 'Network Window System']

n. The road not taken in window systems, an elegant PostScript-based environment that would almost certainly have won the standards war with X if it hadn't been proprietary to Sun Microsystems. There is a lesson here that too many software vendors haven't yet heeded. Many hackers insist on the two-syllable pronunciations above as a way of distinguishing NeWS from news (the netnews software).

/nü-līn/

n. 1. [techspeak, primarily UNIX]

The ASCII LF character (0001010), used under UNIX as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon), it is said to have originally been an IBM usage. (Though the term 'newline' appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before UNIX).

/nü-grüp wȯrz/

[USENET]

/nü-bē/

n. [orig. from British public-school and military slang variant of new boy]

USENET neophyte. This term surfaced in the newsgroup talk.bizarre but is now in wide use. Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one newsgroup while remaining a respected regular in another. The label newbie is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around USENET for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue.

/nü te-stə-mənt/

n. [C programmers]

The second edition of K&R's 'The C Programming Language' (Prentice-Hall, 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8), describing ANSI Standard C.

See K&R.

/nü jər-zē/

[primarily Stanford/Silicon Valley]

adj. Brain-damaged or of poor design. This refers to the allegedly wretched quality of such software as C, C++ and UNIX (which originated at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey).

"This compiler bites the bag, but what can you expect from a compiler designed in New Jersey?"

Compare Berkeley Quality Software.

See also UNIX conspiracy.

/net-wərk, t͟hə/

n. 

/net-wərk melt-dau̇n/

n. A state of complete network overload; the network equivalent of thrashing. This may be induced by a Chernobyl packet.

See also broadcast storm, kamikaze packet.