WhatIs

/gag/

vi. Equivalent to choke, but connotes more disgust.

"Hey, this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler gagged."

See also barf.

/gay'bree-*l/

[for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP hacker and volleyball fanatic]

n. An unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. Also, pulling a Gabriel, Gabriel mode.

/jē/

[SI]

pref.,suff.

See quantifiers.

/fəzbȯl/

[TCP/IP hackers]

n. A DEC LSI-11 running a particular suite of homebrewed software written by Dave Mills and assorted co-conspirators, used in the early 1980s for Internet protocol testbedding and experimentation. These were used as NSFnet backbone sites in its early 56KB-line days; a few are still active on the Internet as of early 1991, doing odd jobs such as network time service.

/fə-nē mə-nē/

n. 1. Notional dollar units of computing time and/or storage handed to students at the beginning of a computer course; also called play money or purple money (in implicit opposition to real or green money). When your funny money ran out, your account froze and you needed to go to a professor to get more. Fortunately, the plunging cost of timesharing cycles has made this less common. The amounts allocated were almost invariably too small, even for the non-hackers who wanted to slide by with minimum work.

/fəŋ-kē/

adj. Said of something that functions, but in a slightly strange, klugey way. It does the job and would be difficult to change, so its obvious non-optimality is left alone. Often used to describe interfaces. The more bugs something has that nobody has bothered to fix because workarounds are easier, the funkier it is. TECO and UUCP are funky. The Intel i860's exception handling is extraordinarily funky. Most standards acquire funkiness as they age.

/fuhg'lee/

adj. Emphatic form of funky; (funky + ugly). Unusually for hacker jargon, this may actually derive from black street-jive. To say it properly, the first syllable should be growled rather than spoken.

Usage: humorous.

"Man, the ASCII-to-EBCDIC code in that printer driver is *fuggly*."

See also wonky.

/fyü(-ə)l əp/

vi. To eat or drink hurriedly in order to get back to hacking.

"Food?"

"Yeah, let's fuel up."

"Time for a great-wall!"

See also oriental food.

/fəj fak-tər/

n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms 'tolerance' and slop are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer that is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction.

/fəj/

1. vt. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program.

"I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it -- I'll fix it later."

2. n. The resulting code.