WhatIs

/si:'ber-spays/

n. 1. Notional 'information-space' loaded with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer interfaces called 'cyberspace decks'; a characteristic prop of cyberpunk SF. At the time of this writing (mid-1991), serious efforts to construct virtual reality interfaces modeled explicitly on Gibsonian cyberspace are already under way, using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular TV headsets.

/si:'ber-puhnk/

[orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois]

/si:'ber-kruhd/

[coined by Ted Nelson]

n. Obfuscatory tech-talk. Verbiage with a high MEGO factor. The computer equivalent of bureaucratese.

/kət ā tāp/

[poss. fr. mainstream 'cut a check' or from the recording industry's 'cut a record']

vi. To write a software or document distribution on magnetic tape for shipment. Has nothing to do with physically cutting the medium! Though this usage is quite widespread, one never speaks of analogously 'cutting a disk' or anything else in this sense.

/kuhs'pee/

[WPI: from the DEC acronym CUSP, for 'Commonly Used System Program', i.e., a utility program used by many people]

adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written.

2. Functionally excellent. A program that performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy.

See rude.

3. [NYU] Said of an attractive woman, especially one regarded as available. Implies a certain curvaceousness.

/kər-sər dip'd ən eks/

n. There are a couple of metaphors in English of the form 'pen dipped in X' (perhaps the most common values of X are 'acid', 'bile', and 'vitriol'). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing on-line).

"Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"

/kyübiŋ/

[parallel with 'Tubing']

vi. 1. Hacking on an IPSC (Intel Personal SuperComputer) hypercube.

"Louella's gone cubing *again*!!"

2. Hacking Rubik's Cube or related puzzles, either physically or mathematically.

3. An indescribable form of self-torture (see sense 1 or #2).

/kyüb/

n. 1. [short for 'cubicle'] A module in the open-plan offices used at many programming shops.

"I've got the manuals in my cube."

2. A NeXT machine (which resembles a matte-black cube).

/sit'ee/ or /C-T-Y/

n. [MIT]

The terminal physically associated with a computer's system console. The term is a contraction of 'Console TTY', that is, 'Console TeleTYpe'. This ITS- and TOPS-10-associated term has become less common, as most UNIX hackers simply refer to the CTY as 'the console'.

/C-T-S-S/

n. Compatible Time-Sharing System. An early (1963) experiment in the design of interactive time-sharing operating systems, ancestral to Multics, UNIX, and ITS. The name ITS (Incompatible Time-sharing System) was a hack on CTSS, meant both as a joke and to express some basic differences in philosophy about the way I/O services should be presented to user programs.