WhatIs

/məl-tē-task/

n. Often used of humans in the same meaning it has for computers, to describe a person doing several things at once (but see thrash). The term multiplex, from communications technology (meaning to handle more than one channel at the same time), is used similarly.

/məl-teks/

n. [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"]

/məl-tē-shən/

[coined at Honeywell, ca. 1970]

n. Competent user of Multics. Perhaps oddly, no one has ever promoted the analogous Unician.

/mədhed/

n. Commonly used to refer to a MUD player who sleeps, breathes, and eats MUD. Mudheads have been known to fail their degrees, drop out, etc., with the consolation, however, that they made wizard level.

/məd/ or /M-U-D/

[acronym, Multi-User Dungeon; alt. Multi-User Dimension]

1. n. A class of virtual reality experiments accessible via the Internet. These are real-time chat forums with structure; they have multiple 'locations' like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic, a simple economic system, and the capability for characters to build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world.

/mü/

The correct answer to the classic trick question

"Have you stopped beating your wife yet?".

Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter (see the Bibliography), the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean

/em-es-däs/

n. A clone of CP-M for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since.

/mau̇s-ō/

n. [by analogy with typo] An error in mouse usage resulting in an inappropriate selection or graphic garbage on the screen.

Compare thinko, braino.

/mau̇s el-ˌbō/

n. A tennis-elbow-like fatigue syndrome resulting from excessive use of a WIMP environment. Similarly, mouse shoulder; GLS reports that he used to get this a lot before he taught himself to be ambimoustrous.

/mau̇s drä-piŋs/

[MS-DOS]

n. Pixels (usually single) that are not properly restored when the mouse pointer moves away from a particular location on the screen, producing the appearance that the mouse pointer has left droppings behind. The major causes for this problem are programs that write to the screen memory corresponding to the mouse pointer's current location without hiding the mouse pointer first, and mouse drivers that do not quite support the graphics mode in use.