WhatIs

/mis-fē-chər/

n. A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved. It is not the same as a bug, because fixing it involves a substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system involved. A misfeature is different from a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the misfeature was actually carefully planned to be that way, but its future consequences or circumstances just weren't predicted accurately. This is different from just not having thought ahead about it at all.

/misbəg/

[MIT]

n. An unintended property of a program that turns out to be useful; something that should have been a bug but turns out to be a feature. Usage: rare.

Compare green lightning.

See miswart.

/M-I-P-S/

n. 

/mi-nē-flä-pēs/

n. 5.25-inch vanilla floppy disks, as opposed to 3.5-inch or microfloppies and the now-obsolescent 8-inch variety. At one time, this term was a trademark of Shugart Associates for their SA-400 minifloppy drive. Nobody paid any attention.

See stiffy.

/mi-lə-lamp-sən/

n. A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For example, noted computer architect C.

/mi-dᵊl-endē-ən/

adj. Not big-endian or little-endian. Used of perverse byte orders such as 3-4-1-2 or 2-1-4-3, occasionally found in the packed-decimal formats of minicomputer manufacturers who shall remain nameless.

See NUXI problem.

/mī-krō-tāp/

n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a macrotape. A DECtape is a small reel, about 4 inches in diameter, of magnetic tape about an inch wide. Unlike drivers for today's macrotapes, microtape drivers allow random access to the data, and therefore could be used to support file systems and even for swapping (this was generally done purely for hack value, as they were far too slow for practical use).

/mī-krō-slȯth win-dōs/

n. Hackerism for 'Microsoft Windows', a windowing system for the IBM-PC which is so limited by bug-for-bug compatibility with mess-dos that it is agonizingly slow on anything less than a fast 386.

Compare X, sun-stools.

/mī-krō-rēd/

n. See bogosity.

/mī-krō-lə-nät/

n. See bogosity.