WhatIs

/bels ən(d) (h)wi-səls/

[by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs]

n. Features added to a program or system to make it more flavorful from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from chrome, which is intended to attract users.

"Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles."

No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle.

/bāzh tō-stər/

n. A Macintosh.

See toaster; compare Macintrash, maggotbox.

/bēp/

n.,v. Syn. feep. This term seems to be preferred among micro hobbyists.

/bē-nē kē/

[Mac users] n. See command key.

/bēm/

[from Star Trek Classic's "Beam me up, Scotty!"]

vt. To transfer softcopy of a file electronically; most often in combining forms such as 'beam me a copy' or 'beam that over to his site'. Compare blast, snarf, BLT.

The Beale Cipher, also known as the Beale Papers, is a cryptographic mystery that revolves around a supposed hidden treasure buried in the United States. The Beale Cipher is attributed to Thomas J. Beale, who allegedly discovered the treasure in the early 19th century.

/bee-cee/

bc, for basic calculator (often referred to as bench calculator), is "an arbitrary-precision calculator language" with syntax similar to the C programming language.

bc is typically used as either a mathematical scripting language or as an interactive mathematical shell. bc. Developer(s)

bc is also a command for DOS. The bc command is an interactive process that provides arbitrary-precision arithmetic. The bc command first reads any input files specified by the File parameter and then reads the standard input.

/B-B-S/

[ acronym, Bulletin Board System ]

/bee'bord/

[ contraction of Bulletin Board ]

n. 

/baz/

[Stanford: corruption of bar]

n. 1. The third metasyntactic variable, after foo and bar and before quux (or, occasionally, 'qux'; or local idiosyncracies like 'rag', 'zowie', etc.). "Suppose we have three functions: FOO, BAR, and BAZ. FOO calls BAR, which calls BAZ...."

2. interj. A term of mild annoyance. In this usage the term is often drawn out for 2 or 3 seconds, producing an effect not unlike the bleating of a sheep; /baaaaaaz/.