WhatIs

/drȯid/

n. A person (esp.

/drī-vər/

n. 1. The main loop of an event-processing program; the code that gets commands and dispatches them for execution.

2. [techspeak] In 'device driver', code designed to handle a particular peripheral device such as a magnetic disk, tape unit, etc.

3. In the TeX general, 'driver' also means a program that translates some device-independent or other common format to something a real device can actually understand.

/drek'net/

[from Yiddish/German 'dreck', meaning dirt]

n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible.

See also connector conspiracy.

/dred hī-bi di-ˈzēz/

n. A condition endemic to PRIME (a.k.a. PR1ME) minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high (0x80) bit ON rather than OFF. This of course makes transporting files to other systems much more difficult, not to mention talking to true 8-bit devices. It is reported that PRIME adopted the reversed-8-bit convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine. This probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made.

See meta bit.

/drān/

[IBM] v. Syn. for flush (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking it offline.

/dra-gən bu̇k/

n. The classic text 'Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools', by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman (Addison-Wesley 1986; ISBN 0-201-10088-6), so called because of the cover design featuring a dragon labeled 'complexity of compiler design' and a knight bearing the lance 'LALR parser generator' among his other trappings. This one is more specifically known as the 'Red Dragon Book' (1986); an earlier edition, sans Sethi and titled 'Principles Of Compiler Design' (Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D.

/dra-gən/

n. [MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise), which was generated by the 'name dragon'.

/dee-pee-er/

n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that suits use this term self-referentially. "*Computers* process data, not people!"

See DP.

/d*-pib'/

[from the PDP-10 instruction set]

vt. To plop something down in the middle. Usage: silly.

"DPB yourself into that couch there."

The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for you to sit in. DPB means 'DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function of the same name.

/dee-pee/

n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a suit.

See DPer.

2. Common abbrev for Dissociated Press.

3. David Porter