WhatIs

/blat/

n. 1. Syn. blast, sense 1.

2. See thud.

/blast/

1. vt.,n. Synonym for BLT, used esp. for large data sends over a network or comm line. Opposite of snarf. Usage: uncommon. The variant 'blat' has been reported.

2. vt. [HP/Apollo] Synonymous with nuke (sense 3). Sometimes the message 'Unable to kill all processes. Blast them (y/n)?' would appear in the command window upon logout.

/blak ma-jik/

A technique that works, though nobody really understands why.

More obscure than voodoo programming, which may be done by cookbook.

Compare also black art, deep magic and magic number (sense 2).

/blak hōl/

n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a bounce message) it is commonly said to have 'fallen into a black hole'. "I think there's a black hole at foovax!" conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see drop on the floor). The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself.

/blak ärt/

n. A collection of arcane, unpublished, and (by implication) mostly ad-hoc techniques developed for a particular application or systems area (compare black magic). VLSI design and compiler code optimization were (in their beginnings) considered classic examples of black art; as theory developed they became deep magic, and once standard textbooks had been written, became merely heavy wizardry.

/bee-kay/

n.

1. abbreviation for backup.
2. abbrev for Black Kattz which was a website in the late 90s that shared open source code like the newsfeed that it ran similar to fakebook. Black Kattz is phonetic for “black hats” which is a term that refers to malicious hackers.

/bik'see/

n. Variant emoticons used on BIX (the Byte Information eXchange). The smiley bixie is <@_@>, apparently intending to represent two cartoon eyes and a mouth. A few others have been reported.

/bit'ee boks/

n. 1. A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software for it. Especially used of small, obsolescent, single-tasking-only personal machines such as the Atari 800, Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80, or IBM PC.

2. [Pejorative] More generally, the opposite of 'real computer' (see Get a real computer!).

See also mess-dos, toaster, and toy.

/bits/

n. pl. 1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I need to know about file formats.") Compare core dump, sense 4.

2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrasted with paper: "I have only a photocopy of the Jargon File; does anyone know where I can get the bits?".

See softcopy, source of all good bits.

See also bit.

/bit'net/

[acronym: Because It's Time NETwork]