WhatIs

/pärm/

n. 

Further-compressed form of param. This term is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown outside IBM shops; spoken parm is more widely distributed, but the synonym arg is favored among hackers.

Compare arg, var.

/pär-kən-sənz lȯ əv dā-tə/

prov. "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars tends to double about once every 12 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.

/per-ə-tē er-ərz/

pl.n. Little lapses of attention or (in more severe cases) consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all night and most of the next day hacking.

"I need to go home and crash; I'm starting to get a lot of parity errors."

Derives from a relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error in RAM hardware.

/per-ənt me-sij/

n. See followup.

/pä-räm/

n. Shorthand for parameter.

See also parm.

Compare arg, var.

/pā-pər-net/

n. Hackish way of referring to the postal service, analogizing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. USENET sig blocks not uncommonly include a Paper-Net: header just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this are Papernet and P-Net.

Compare voice-net, snail-mail.

/pān in t͟hə net/

n. A flamer.

/pāj au̇t/

[MIT]

vi. 1. To become unaware of one's surroundings temporarily, due to daydreaming or preoccupation.

"Can you repeat that? I paged out for a minute."

See page in.

Compare glitch, thinko.

2. Syn. 'swap out'; see swap.

/pāj in/

[MIT]

vi. 1. To become aware of one's surroundings again after having paged out (see page out). Usually confined to the sarcastic comment:

"Eric pages in. Film at 11."

See film at 11.

2. Syn. 'swap in'; see swap.

/pad'd sel/

n. Where you put lusers so they can't hurt anything. A program that limits a luser to a carefully restricted subset of the capabilities of the host system (for example, the 'rsh(1)' utility on USG UNIX). Note that this is different from an iron box because it is overt and not aimed at enforcing security so much as protecting others (and the luser) from the consequences of the luser's boundless naivet'e (see naive). Also 'padded cell environment'.