WhatIs

/e-(ˌ)kō/

[FidoNet]

n. A topic group on FidoNet's echomail system.

Compare newsgroup.

/eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/

[acronym, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code]

/ēt flā-miŋ deth/

imp. A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous CPU Wars comic; supposed to derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility.

/ē-stər egiŋ/

[IBM]

n. The act of replacing unrelated parts more or less at random in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this the normal operating mode of field circus techs and do not love them for it.

Compare shotgun debugging.

/ē-stər eg/

n. 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.

/ərth-ˌkwāk/

[IBM]

n. The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware. Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the Bay Area quake of 1989 was initiated by the company to test quality-assurance procedures at its California plants.

/din'r/

32 bits, by analogy with nybble and Byte.

Usage: rare and extremely silly.

See also playte, tayste, crumb.

/dwim/

[acronym, 'Do What I Mean']

1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided.

2. n.,obs. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors.

See hairy.

3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see legalese).

/də-stē dek/

n. Old software (especially applications) which one is obliged to remain compatible with (or to maintain). The term implies that the software in question is a holdover from card-punch days. Used esp. when referring to old scientific and number-crunching software, much of which was written in FORTRAN and very poorly documented but is believed to be too expensive to replace.

See fossil.

/d[y]oop loop/

(also 'dupe loop') [FidoNet] n. An incorrectly configured system or network gateway may propagate duplicate messages on one or more echoes, with different identification information that renders dup killers ineffective. If such a duplicate message eventually reaches a system through which it has already passed (with the original identification information), all systems passed on the way back to that system are said to be involved in a dup loop.