WhatIs

/sī-tən/

[TMRC]

n. The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. [This term appears to have been largely superseded by bogon; see also quantum bogodynamics. -- ESR]

/sī-kə-de-lik-wer/

[UK]

n. Syn. display hack.

See also smoking clover.

/sü-dō-süt/

n. A suit wannabee; a hacker who has decided that he wants to be in management or administration and begins wearing ties, sport coats, and (shudder!) suits voluntarily. It's his funeral.

See also lobotomy.

/sü-dō-prīm/

n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. This term is an esoteric pun derived from a mathematical method that, rather than determining precisely whether a number is prime (has no divisors), uses a statistical technique to decide whether the number is 'probably' prime. A number that passes this test is called a pseudoprime. The hacker backgammon usage stems from the idea that a pseudoprime is almost as good as a prime: it does the job of a prime until proven otherwise, and that probably won't happen.

/sü-dō/

[USENET: truncation of pseudonym]

n. 1. An electronic-mail or USENET persona adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's net.behavior; a nom de USENET, often associated with forged postings designed to conceal message origins. Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is BIFF.

/prau-lər/

[UNIX]

n. A daemon that is run periodically (typically once a week) to seek out and erase core files, truncate administrative logfiles, nuke 'lost+found' directories, and otherwise clean up the cruft that tends to pile up in the corners of a file system.

See also GFR, reaper, skulker.

/prə-vä-kə-tiv mānt-nən(t)s/

[common ironic mutation of 'preventive maintenance']

n. Actions performed upon a machine at regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a usable state. So called because it is all too often performed by a field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; this results in the machine's remaining in an *un*usable state for an indeterminate amount of time.

See also scratch monkey.

/prō-tə-kȯl/

n. As used by hackers, this never refers to niceties about the proper form for addressing letters to the Papal Nuncio or the order in which one should use the forks in a Russian-style place setting; hackers don't care about such things. It is used instead to describe any set of rules that allow different machines or pieces of software to coordinate with each other without ambiguity. So, for example, it does include niceties about the proper form for addressing packets on a network or the order in which one should use the forks in the Dining Philosophers Problem.

/prə-prī-ə-ter-ē/

adj. 1. In marketroid-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's hardware or software designers.

2. In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor able to gouge freely on service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in (that's assuming it wasn't too expensive in the first place).

/prə-pe-lər kē/

[Mac users]

n. See command key.