WhatIs

/bi-gət/

n. A person who is religiously attached to a particular computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see religious issues). Usually found with a specifier; thus, 'cray bigot', ITS bigot, 'APL bigot', 'VMS bigot', 'Berkeley bigot'. True bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the favored tool.

/big'nuhm/

[orig. from MIT MacLISP]

n. 1. [techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers. More generally, any very large number. "Have you ever looked at the United States Budget? There's bignums for you!"

2. [Stanford] In backgammon, large numbers on the dice are called 'bignums', especially a roll of double fives or double sixes (compare moby, sense 4).

See also El Camino Bignum.

/big win/

n. Serendipity.

"Yes, those two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big win!"

See Win Big.

/big ru̇m/

n. The extremely large room with the blue ceiling and intensely bright light (during the day) or black ceiling with lots of tiny night-lights (during the night) found outside all computer installations.

"He can't come to the phone right now, he's somewhere out in the Big Room."

/B-R-S/

[ IBM ]

n. The power switch on a computer, esp. the 'Emergency Pull' switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red.

"This !@%$% bitty box is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch."

/big ī(-ə)rn/

n. Large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. Used generally of number-crunching supercomputers such as Crays, but can include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes. Term of approval; compare heavy metal, oppose dinosaur.

/B-G-W/

n. What faces a VMS user searching for documentation. A full VMS kit comes on a pallet, the documentation taking up around 15 feet of shelf space before the addition of layered products such as compilers, databases, multivendor networking, and programming tools.

Since VMS version 5 DEC documentation comes with gray binders; under VMS version 4 the binders were orange ('big orange wall'), and under version 3 they were blue.

See VMS.

/big-endē-ən/

[ From Swift's Gulliver's Travels via the famous paper On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980 ]

The Bifid Cipher is a Fractionating Transposition cryptographic technique that was invented by the French amateur cryptographer Félix Delastelle in 1901. It is a fractionating transposition cipher that combines elements of both substitution and transposition methods.

The Bifid Cipher operates on a square grid known as the Polybius square or Polybius checkerboard. This square consists of a 5x5 grid containing the letters of the alphabet (usually excluding the letter 'J').

The encryption process in the Bifid Cipher involves the following steps:

/bif/

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