WhatIs

/jäb si-ˈkyu̇r-ə-tē/

n. When some piece of code is written in a particularly obscure fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to increase their job security (i.e., by making themselves indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a section and says "job security", the other one may just nod.

/ji-fē/

n. 1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on the computer (see tick). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second.

2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond wall time interval.

/jif'kl/, /jaf'kl/, /j*-fi'kl/

vt., obs. (alt. 'jfcl') To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" The fastest do-nothing instruction on older models of the PDP-10 happened to be JFCL, which stands for "Jump if Flag set and then CLear the flag"; this does something useful, but is a very fast no-operation if no flag is specified. Geoff Goodfellow, one of the jargon-1 co-authors, has long had JFCL on the license plate of his BMW.

Usage: rare except among old-time PDP-10 hackers.

/J-E-D-R/

n. Synonymous with IYFEG. At one time, people in the USENET newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use JEDR instead of IYFEG or '<ethnic>'; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was retconned by the expanding these initials as Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race.) After much sound and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise.

/J-C-L/

n. 1. IBM's supremely rude Job Control Language. JCL is the script language used to control the execution of programs in IBM's batch systems. JCL has a very fascist syntax, and some versions will, for example, barf if two spaces appear where it expects one. Most programmers confronted with JCL simply copy a working file (or card deck), changing the file names.

/jag'eez/

n. The stairstep effect observable when an edge (esp. a linear edge of very shallow or steep slope) is rendered on a pixel device (as opposed to a vector display).

/jā ran-dəm ha-kər/

[MIT]

n. A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd.

See random, Suzie COBOL.

This may originally have been inspired or influenced by J. Fred Muggs, a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of TMRC.

/jā ran-dəm/

n. [generalized from J. Random Hacker]

/I-Y-F-E-G/

[USENET]

Abbreviation for Insert Your Favorite Ethnic Group. Used as a meta-name when telling racist jokes on the net to avoid offending anyone.

See JEDR.

/I-W-B-N-I/

[acronym]

It Would Be Nice If.

Compare WIBNI.