WhatIs

/hak-ish-nes/

n. The quality of being or involving a hack. This term is considered mildly silly. Syn. hackitude.

/hak'ish/

adj. (also hackishness n.) 

1. Said of something that is or involves a hack.

2. Of or pertaining to hackers or the hacker subculture.
See also true-hacker.

/hakiŋtäsh/

n. 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into emulating a Macintosh (also called a Mac XL).

2. A Macintosh assembled from parts theoretically belonging to different models in the line.

/hakiŋ eks fər wī/

[ITS]

n. The information ITS made publicly available about each user (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out fields. On display, two of these fields were combined into a project description of the form "Hacking X for Y" (e.g., "Hacking perceptrons for Minsky"). This form of description became traditional and has since been carried over to other systems with more general facilities for self-advertisement (such as UNIX plan files).

/hakiŋ rən/

[analogy with bombing run or speed run]

n. A hack session extended long outside normal working times, especially one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to 'change phase the hard way' (see phase).

/hak'r/

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]

n. 

/hak'd əp/

adj. Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked that the surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue (compare critical mass). Not all programs that are hacked become 'hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge better for the experience.

Contrast hack up.

/hak'd ȯf/

[analogous to pissed off]

adj. Said of system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly criminal activities.

For example, having unreadable files in your home directory called worm, lockpick, or goroot would probably be an effective (as well as impressively obvious and stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked off at you.

/hak ən(d) slā/

v. (also hack-and-slash) 

1. To play a MUD or go mudding, especially with the intention of berserking for pleasure.

2. To undertake an all-night programming/hacking session, interspersed with stints of mudding as a change of pace. This term arose on the British academic network amongst students who worked nights and logged onto Essex University's MUDs during public-access hours (2 A.M. to 7 A.M.). Usually more mudding than work was done in these sessions.

/hak val-(ˌ)yü/

n. Often adduced as the reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were installed purely for hack value.

See display hack for one method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be explained. As a great artist once said of jazz:

"If you hafta ask, you ain't never goin' to find out."