WhatIs

/men-yü-ī-təs/

n. Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of command-line or language-style interfaces, especially those customizable via macros or a special-purpose language in which one can encode useful hacks.

/mem-rē lēk/

n. An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading to eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at CMU) called core leak.

/mēm-ēt-eks/

[from meme]

The study of memes. As of mid-1991, this is still an extremely informal and speculative endeavor, though the first steps towards at least statistical rigor have been made by H. Keith Henson and others. Memetics is a popular topic for speculation among hackers, who like to see themselves as the architects of the new information ecologies in which memes live and replicate.

/mēm plāg/

n. The spread of a successful but pernicious meme, esp. one that parasitizes the victims into giving their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that 'joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir populations.

/mēm/

[coined on analogy with 'gene' by Richard Dawkins]

n. An idea considered as a replicator, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase 'meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion.

/hmelt-ˌdau̇n, net-ˌwərk/

n. See network meltdown.

/me'goh/ or /mee'goh/

['My Eyes Glaze Over', often 'Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over', attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn]

Also 'MEGO factor'. 1. n. A handwave intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a high proportion of TLAs.

2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics.

/me-gə-pe-nē/

n. $10,000 (1 cent * 106). Used semi-humorously as a unit in comparing computer cost and performance figures.

/me-gə/

[SI]

pref. See quantifiers.

/meg/

n. See quantifiers.