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Jargon File v4.1.0 118

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Stephen Williams writes "After a three-year break, Eric S. Raymond announces that a new version of the Jargon File (4.1.0) has been released. " Lots of new terms. The Slashdot Effect is actually in this time around, but as you old timers know, this is pretty good stuff, and you newbies should consider it required reading.
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Jargon File v4.1.0 More

Jargon File v4.1.0

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  • I read the changelog for new entries. Count the ones that are either:
    - MS bashing
    - some other company bashing
    - anti-SPAM commentary
    - creations of ESR that he gets to upgrade to
    Jargon status automatically

    The Jargon file has always been useful for explaining terms like "foo (*)" or getting ammunition for a battle of how to pronounce "#". It's also a great history lesson. But does it really need to be just a rehash of lame arguing and politics like we see all over USENET these days? And do the Halloween documents really deserve jargon status?

    d

    (*) I recently met a girl named "Foo". The following conversation took place, but I'm the only one that found it funny:
    "Where are we going?"
    "We have to go pick up Sarah's friend, Foo."
    "Sarah's friend who?"
    "Foo. That's her name."
    "If you tell me we're going to a bar I'm going to
    die a happy man."

  • An ESR habit (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree 100%. There is no "hacker culture/community", at least not in the way ESR and others describe/mythologize it. When I first read the Jargon file (years and years ago), I thought the notion was rather cute and fun, but as I've watched more people take ESR's mythology with deadly seriousness, it has turned into a major peeve.

    All of ESR's writings seem to have one thing in common. He always goes one step too far in his analysis. I think he's a very intelligent, well educated, and perceptive person. He's a pretty good writer, and just about everything he's done contains some very keen observations. If he has a gift, it is in tying a disparate collection of observations into neat bundles. I think all good writers do this. For example, it probably wouldn't occur to many people to look at computer jargon as a whole, or to look at free software projects in terms of land ownership (like he did in "Noosphere"). These were all very valid and creative things to do.

    But. But! BUT.....he always goes one step too far. This is a very annoying habit. He always ends up trying to tie it all together into a neat little bundle that is too neat and tied too tightly.

    In the case of the Jargon file, he could have used all of those disparate chunks of knowledge to make general observations about programmers, hobbyists, and other sorts of people who are drawn to computers. Does he? Nooooo. He goes way beyond that, and posits the existance of not only a very specific personality type, but an entire subculture! This culture supposedly has its own heritage, history, leaders, enemies, political viewpoints, traditions, etc. This in itself wouldn't be such a horrible thing (like I said, I initially thought it was kind of cute and fun), but when people start taking it 100% seriously, it becomes really annoying. I've known people who completely buy into the whole thing, and have actually changed their minds about (admittedly minor) things because they think that they're "hackers" and that members of the "hacker community" are supposed to feel a particular way about something. I'm not saying this is terribly destructive or dehumanizing, just annoying enough to merit peeve status, and to deserve a rant on Slashdot. :)

    The whole mythology has had the effect of encouraging a lot of groupthink and bad advocacy, while diluting the intellectual waters of public forums pretty badly. I can understand how fun it might be to pretend that you're in some group, but too many people seem to take it too far.

    Likewise, in "Noosphere", he made some very interesting observations about free software projects and how they frequently work. Did he stop there? You guessed it...NO! He didn't. He took it that one extra step over the edge. He didn't just say that the free software world had a lot in common with gift cultures. He said the free software world was a gift culture. He even went so far as to claim that it was driven by the desire for peer recognition, and suggested that this ought to be publicly acknowledged and acted upon.

    Like I said, this wouldn't be quite so annoying if so many people didn't buy into every bit of it, hook, line, and sinker. It's frustrating, because he's so close to being a really great writer and thinker, but he always seems to take that extra leap into silliness. The leap isn't so far that most people won't follow him, but it's far enough to be annoying to anyone who really wants to take an objective look at things.

  • Re: Open Source? (Score:3)

    by Gleef ( 86 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @05:30PM (#1943489) Homepage
    Nope, "Open Source" is not in there at all (neither is "Free" BTW, but "Copyleft" is). All in all an excellent upgrade of an already excellent work. Regardless of your opinion of how ESR handles the whole OSI thing, this is a good lexicon.
  • Everyone is busy deconstructing the new jargon file entries, but nobody has noted the six casualties (see the ChangeLog). Let us respectfully intone the names of the deceased:

    "DEChead"
    "Open DeathTrap"
    "Share and Enjoy!"
    "double DECkers"
    "microtape"
    "pig, run like a"

    Now I was never into DEC culture, but I *was* once a frequent user of "Share and Enjoy!". Sniff sniff...
  • This is a conceptual error on ESR's part, though it's not a really _severe_ one. We do still need it all as one vast file. There have been times when I needed to basically hose my brain out with meaningless yet fun trivia, and started reading the Jargon File straight through, usually finishing it after a couple of days. I have it in eDoc format, a Mac sort of Acrobat-ish thing which I use for read-only documents sometimes. I also have lots of BOFH stories in eDoc, so I get a sense of 'reading fun stuff' when I use eDoc for anything :)
    The new arrangement is not designed for reading, it's designed for looking up, as if it was VERY IMPORTANT to be able to have 'kremvax' at your fingertips. Is it? It's almost as if this is the PHB version, lacking only wizzy graphic javascript mouseovers to make it The Manager's Guide To What Those Salaried Freaks Are Saying ;)
    Hey, since obviously some people are going to turn it back into plaintext, who's up for taking it the other direction? Make a standalone Jargon File application, with lots of chrome, for suits! :) ESR has already done the hard part of turning it into the obligatory frame-oriented quick-lookup set of data files, so all that remains is to write chrome :)
  • You need to read a little deeper. The Jargon File is not an attempt to hang jargony names on to things. It's more a description of usage. ESR is cataloging words and phrases that are (or were) already in use.


    ...phil
  • ESR's done more true hacking for longer than you've probably been alive. He's from the original cadre.


    ...phil
  • Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:

    The jargon file is more than a simple collection of terms, it's also a compendium of knowledge.

    Point in case. A couple of years ago when pentiums first started hitting the market, the file upload/download software for PDT's that I'd written about six years ago suddenly stopped working. The reason was that the host PC was transmitting the response ( ACK/NAK ) before the PDT was ready to receive it.

    One solution to the problem would have been to incorporate a delay before response transmission, but since the programming language was Quick Basic, that would have meant waiting a whole second before transmitting the response ( which would have really slowed things down ) since Quick Basic can only resolve time to an increment of one second.

    It was at that point that I remembered an item from the 1993 version of the Jargon file. It was about a system that broke the timing control on a piece of software that played music when the system was run in fast mode, and that this problem was fixed by adding a bit of code to determine how fast the machine was running.

    Suffic to say, after thinking about this for a while, I realised how I could do the same thing ( even though the QBasic time function can only resolve down to a single second ). To cut a long story short, I was able to work out how to pause for only 1/20 of a second, regardless of how fast the host PC was. Being fairly unimaginative, it's unlikely that I would have done so without the hint from the 1993 Jargon file.

    So no, your wrong dude. The Jargon file is more than a collection of terms ( or even slang, as some of the other responses to your posting have stated ). It's also a collection of useful historical and technical information, and therefore well worth a read.

  • 404? (Score:1)

    by zerblat ( 785 )
    Where did you find that link?

    You're looking for http://www.tuxedo.org/~ esr/jargon/html/0/404-compliant.html [tuxedo.org]

  • The number of times I've looked at a massive tangle of html pages (with 3 lines of text per
    node) and wished there was a utility to compress
    it into a flat file.

    If you actually have time + ability to write such a thing I think it would be useful.

    The other one would be to be capable of de-mangling texinfo.
  • Here's a pretty good description: http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/meow.txt [digital.net]

  • Just the changelog... (Score:3)

    by Smack ( 977 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @09:43AM (#1943499) Homepage
    If you've read this before, you might want to just look at the Changelog [tuxedo.org]. It has the full text of the new items. Keep up the good work, esr!
  • I love the Jargon File. Have the current pb at home, and it is well-thumbed. Definitely will purchase the new version. Good work, esr!
  • Wahoo, I wasnt' sure, but I read the HOWTO be a hacker and the jargon file. It was close, but I just barely fit into ESR's cookie cutter mold of hackerdom.

    I listen to weird music, write C and Perl, and I'm into Karate. I wear weird clothes and blah blah blah.

    Conformity to nonconformity == hacker;

    Misfit
  • It was removed in AmigaOS 2, and replaced with "Software Error" or something equally boring.
    (I don't remember exactly what it was, haven't used my A500Plus in a while now...)

    --
  • This is just one of several bugs I caught in browsing the new entries (and some others). Here's the text of a message I sent to esr on the subject:


    It's great to see a new Jargon File out there. However, in browsing through the HTML version I found more than a few bugs ... some technical, some content, and some rather fiddly. These are listed in order of the afflicted entry, since I'm writing them as I go through it. I'm not reading every entry, so I'll probably miss more than a few ...


    1. In the entry for 'Borg' ... the show was 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', not 'The New Generation'.

    2. The link to the Acronymphomania FAQ, in the entry for 'C|N>K', is broken.

    3. (Not a bug, but an addition) The 'dogcow' also appears in several other Mac printer drivers besides the LaserWriter, notably including the (discontinued) StyleWriters.

    4. I have generally heard 'exploit' used to refer not to a security hole itself, but to a program or routine which makes use of the hole. Hence, CERT publishes information about holes; www.rootshell.com publishes exploits.

    5. There is an entry for 'fandango' (between 'fan' and 'fandango on core') but no definition within it.

    6. (Marginal) A 'forum' may be on the Web.

    7. (More marginal) 'Gweep' is still very live jargon. One vector for its spread out of WPI is the anime fanfic saga "Undocumented Features", written by a group of WPI students and their friends. http://www.eyrie.net/uf/

    8. (Not sure if this is a bug or intentional self-reference) The index to the 'I' section is indexed within itself, under 'index'.

    9. The links from 'intro' to 'screen' aren't.

    10. The index listing for 'M' references the entry for 'M$'.

    11. There is a stray <p> in the entry for 'patch pumpkin'.

    12. The link to Slashdot in the entry for 'slashdot effect' is broken in the same way as the link to Acronymphomania. Slashdot itself might someday deserve an entry.

    13. Same with the 'tracking spamhausen' link on 'spamhaus'. This seems to be a common problem with external links.

    14. '404 compliant' should be under [^A-Za-z], not Z. Though at least it is self-documenting.

    Okay, enough bugs for now. :) Thanks again for the new jargon!




    Is there a reason that character entities aren't getting translated in preview (and possibly in posting)? < > should be angle brackets.
  • One certainly learns a lot from it. - For example, I always thought VAXen were middle-endian; now I know they are little-endian. - Well, that's what The File says.

    ^D
  • Now, The File says that the "Guru Meditation" error messages in Amigas were removed early on. Now, I can clearly remember that every so often, my cable TV provider's Prevue Channel (now TV Guide Channel) node would crap out and output said message inside a blinking red box. And this wasn't so long ago either.

    ^D
  • Among IBMers, a Red Book is a technical document from the IBM publications department (no, I don't know it's actual name). There are Red Books about almost every kind of product made by IBM. Many of these Red Books are available as INF files (OS/2 help file format).

    ^D

  • I had missed all of this because I stopped reading Usenet a couple of years ago.

    Recently, I started again, and noticed that all of the big eight (or however many) hierarchies had "meow" groups (i.e., comp.meow, news.meow, talk.meow, etc.). I presume that relates, but how?

  • From ESR's "Jargon File":

    (Freely Redistributable Software)
    FRS // n.

    Abbreviation for "Freely Redistributable Software" which entered general use on the Internet in 1995
    after years of low-level confusion over what exactly to call software written to be passed around and
    shared (contending terms including freeware, shareware, and `sourceware' were never universally felt
    to be satisfactory for various subtle reasons). The first formal conference on freely redistributable
    software was held in Cambridge, Massachussetts, in February 1996 (sponsored by the Free Software
    Foundation). The conference organizers used the FRS abbreviation heavily in its calls for papers and
    other literature during 1995; this was probably critical in helping establish the term.
  • I have always been amused by the interesting conclusions which can made about a person by the literature in their bathroom. A carpenter friend has copies of woodworking magazines, etc. Another friend of mine has a worn version of Stroustrup, third edition, and a stack of mathematical texts.

    In my facility, there is a book of Richard Feynman's physics lectures, and a tattered copy of the New Hacker's Dictionary.

  • >Everything below was generated for the Jargon
    >File's 4.1.0 version. Note that we no longer
    >offer info and flat-text formats; it's an
    >HTML world now. Instead, you can download an
    >installable HTML tarball here.

    Well personally I've always preferred reading the JF as a straight text file (far easier to browse), so unless anyone's done it already, I'm going to have to write a script to convert it to somewhere near the original format.

    Then again, maybe this was done just to test our scripting abilities?

    ..ciaran

  • Isn't it funny how when the Star Trek people came up with the Borg years ago EVERYBODY thought !Microsoft!

  • He's right VAXen are little endian.

    PDPs were middle endian (at least partly!)
  • ...and so he spake to them, and it was good. And there was a lot of rejoicing.

    Arooooooooo...

  • For some reason, this version of the Jargon File has a lot of inaccuracies. For instance, see the entry for Borg. The show is "Next", not "New" Generation, and resistance is "futile", not "useless". See also his editorializing over the "Eric conspiracy" and the "Halloween Documents" (note: the effect on Microsoft was not nearly that of shutting up their PR for six months.)
  • The part where the Vogon guard has Ford and Arthur under his armpits is probably a lot more memorable than any given TNG episode with the Borg.
    -----
  • My entry made it in! Now, hopefully, dipshits will stop calling pig-tails dongles! Dongles are copy-protection devices, not converter cables!

    Well, it's important to me. :-P

  • He's not making assumptions, he's making observations. I assume you're referring to the hacker profile section at the back; I've always found it to be very correct - it sounds like *most* of the hackers I know and I doubt that I know any of the same people ESR knows.

    While you're certainly right that the programmer/techie community is *very* diverse, and is far, far different from the majority of humanity, we do share an amazing number of characteristics and some of the most commonly-shared ones are found in the Jargon File.

    The Jargon File is a wonderful way to learn the history of the movement you are a part of. It's a great way to learn How Not To Be 1337.

    It's our heiritage and we should all read it and treasure it.

    --
  • Damn, that's good. I wish I could think of a way
    to shoehorn it into the File...
  • Hm. I'll have to add a note the `Open Source'
    prett much stomped on FRS.
  • I have to agree here. It's easy to grep a text file, multiple HTML files is a real pain. I am seriously considering writing a script to convert it back.
  • I've been ordering kung pao beef from one chinese restaurant for over 10 years. It's the best kung pao beef on earth: all they put in is beef, hot peppers, and peanuts. No celery, baby corn, or that other crap.

    Gotta love it!

    (and don't forget the hot & sour soup!)
  • Even if he might not be doing much right now. He's done a lot of significant work on Emacs, ncurses, and I believe nethack. Take a look at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/software.html to see some of the stuff he's done (mostly the stuff he distributes... it doesn't mention the Emacs stuff, for instance).
  • Meow usenet?

    Gee, I've been reading ~30-50 usenet groups daily over the past 5 years, and I never noticed it. It seems to be a very localized phenomenom.
  • The /. effect is in there, but /. isn't referenced in its own entry. For those who are interested, but don't understand the alphabet, http://www.tuxedo.org /~esr/jargon/html/S/slashdot-effect.html [tuxedo.org]

    I think /. should have a big ol' entry of its own, describing why its named what it is and so forth. I also want a big flat file with all the entries, because the Jargon File makes a great coffee table book when printed. I guess I'll just have to make a PERL spider to take care of it.

  • ESR bashes the GPL in this new version. Not
    impressed. How many other instances can we find of
    his self-aggrandizement or subtle manipulations?
    The more explicit Microsoft bashing, and the
    assumption that most hackers are libertarians
    are worrying too.
  • Has anyone noticed this?

    :Borg: n. In "Star Trek: The New Generation" the Borg is a species
    of cyborg that ruthlessly seeks to incorporate all sentient life
    into itself; their slogan is "Resistence is useless. You will be
    assimilated."

    "resistence is useless"???

    That and a lot of errors/typos seem to be present in the document...

  • Cheer up. I didn't look up the others, but "Share and enjoy!" is still listed in the new edition.

    I was tipped off by "TeX" being in the change log. Surely ESR wouldn't wipe out TeX in favor of "404" as a verb!

    I would like to know what changes were made. Better links to old and new than this very long list with the revised text.

    Glad to see my name is pronounced correctly.

  • Frames suck. A flat text file would be better for searching, and surely ESR must have started with plain text or non-framed HTML--witness the change log. Non-framed would be better for Lynx users and for bookmarking purposes. IMHO, some of the letters have too many entries to be listed all together, but why not manageable sizes if necessary (A-Al, Am-Az), with links from top of file to individual entries?

    ESR does seem a bit too optimistic, as if Linux had already achieved World Domination(tm). Also his anti-FSF attitude is evident.

    Nice that Amiga got an entry. Too bad it came along with an anti-Amiga derogatory term that I at least have never heard or read.

    The libertarian politics is rather grating too. ESR seems to think that the worst thing about the CDA was that it might stifle online discussion of abortion. And here I thought it was unconstitutionally broad and vague. Silly me.

    "Resistance is useless"? Similar mistakes in discussing spam-fighters' terminology. ("Several Lumber Cartels were formed.") I guess I will have to look at the "how to get changes made" file.

    On the bright side, my name is pronounced correctly.

  • Is open source in there? Does it say who owns the "trademark"?

    --
  • Am I the only one here who not only uses Info files on a daily basis, but relies on them? Sure, Emacs has W3 mode, but nothing beats an Info file for speed and convenience, and besides, W3 is a real ugly pig.

    Why, when I was trapped in the non-digital universe of my parents house a few weekends ago, the only thing standing between me and the abyss of insanity was my laptop, XEmacs, and a copy of the Jargon File (in Info format.)

    Oh well, farewell, Info, we will not know what we had until it is gone.

  • Oh, you so silly. The Jargon file contains much history of hacker culture over the past 25 years or so. I can't think of a better single source to find the essence of hacking. It's not about jargon, it's about information. Do you think information is a waste of time, hackerboy?
  • Whatever you think of esr as a public figure or an Open Source advocate, he is a nerd lexicographer extraordinaire.

    I will keep my well-thumbed paper editions of v2 and v3, and probably buy this one in book form as well. It's too useful a reference for me to relegate it to solely on-line usage, and besides, Guy Steele's Crunchly cartoons alone are worth the purchase price.

  • The Jargon File does not necessarily represent ESR's personal opinions on life, the universe, or indeed anything. He's just listing hacker jargon. That is the whole point of the JF, after all.

  • 404? (Score:1)

    by loki7 ( 11496 )
    Is this a very subtle joke, or a missing link?

    http://www.tuxedo.org/~es r/jargon/html/Z/404-compliant.html [tuxedo.org]

    /peter
  • He's making a lot of assumptions of what most "hackers" are like, in the areas of gender, politics, eating/reading habits, religion, etc.

    What's the purpose of this ?

    When he says most hackers do this, eat that, read the other, he can only be talking about himself (and maybe his friends); so I don't see how he can so neatly categorize such a large (and international) group of people. Generalizing like this only encourages prejudice.
  • Keep in mind the "hacker profile" was originally written when there were, maybe, no more than a few thousand hackers around the country. Things are different now. It's even cool to be a hacker (which is sort of at odds with the whole idea of being one).

    True, so the ideas are outdated. Ok.

    .... so, are you an outsider, a larval stage hacker, or just a wannabe?

    I'm definetly not a wannabe anything, nor did I claim to be a hacker (you don't decleare yourself one, others do, IMHO). I've been coding since I was 10 as a hobby and now I get paid to do it as an adult ... hacking should be defined by your technical abilities and not the food you eat, the president you vote for, nor the God you pray to.
  • The last version of WorkBench that produced "Guru Mediation" errors
    rather than the later (boring) Software Errors, was Workbench 1.3.

    It's not impossible to believe that there were still 1.3 systems
    around being used for Cable TV / Hotel Info sorts of things a few
    years ago.

    Quite a lot of old software didn't like workbench 2 or later.

  • Sorry about the title -- I couldn't resist. :)

    I enjoyed your rant, but I was surprised at your observations -- I'd always thought most "hackers" or people of the hacker mindset had a pretty strong sense of self: ie, they knew who they were, what they liked and what they didn't like, and it didn't make a goddamn difference if someone walked up to them and said, "Ha! Nobody wears their hair like that! You're stupid!" because they could just say "So what?". I do that, and I'm no hacker (but I'm an electrical engineering major so it's almost the same thing).

    I enjoy the Jargon File (I even bought the print version so I could have a good laugh at the cartoons in the bathroom) but it's not my life. I hope those people who think it is will decide what they really like ...
  • Keep in mind the "hacker profile" was originally written when there were, maybe, no more than a few thousand hackers around the country. Things are different now. It's even cool to be a hacker (which is sort of at odds with the whole idea of being one).

    Plus, you ought to have a sense of humor about such things. The essence of the jargon file is found under the definition "ha ha only serious" .... so, are you an outsider, a larval stage hacker, or just a wannabe?
  • Yeah, but how many people actually use copy-protection dongles, as opposed to "pig-tails"?

    I think the term is doomed.

    [Side note: at my last job, doing an NT rollout, we upgraded a 486 system with a new box. After two or three weeks we got word that the user was missing a dongle. The approximate value of this dongle was allegedly $18,000. We looked for days. We didn't find it.]

  • AI (Score:3)

    by raistlinne ( 13725 ) <`lansdoct' `at' `cs.alfred.edu'> on Thursday April 08, 1999 @10:25AM (#1943541) Homepage
    I think that the stereotypes, even when untrue, lend something. They describe a certain mentality, if nothing else, that while one doesn't quite share in, one is still associated with by being in the culture. And if nothing else, it gives you an idea of what stereotypes people will expect you to fulfill. :-)

    Did you do work in artificial intelligence? I'd like to talk more about your sig, if you'd like. my real email address should be in the heading of this.

  • ESR _is_ a coder (Score:3)

    by raistlinne ( 13725 ) <`lansdoct' `at' `cs.alfred.edu'> on Thursday April 08, 1999 @11:30AM (#1943542) Homepage
    You forgot fetchmail. He's done an awful lot. it's sort of like how people forget that Bruce Perens wrote electric fence, as well as some other things. These people are in the positions that they are in for a good reason.
  • You missed something there: the jargon file does not attempt to describe what a hacker should be like, and anyone who modifies their behavior to match up with the jargon file is only kidding themselves. It describes what a lot of hackers are like, based on what ESR has seen himself and heard from others. Acting that way does not make you any more or less a hacker. That stuff is just in there for general amusement, really...

    You might not think it's 100% accurate -- of course it isn't. It's giving extreme specifics about large numbers of people, and there's no way it could really be that universal. But it is freqently at least somewhat accurate -- the first time I read it, I was shocked to be reading my own habits, opinions, eating habits, etc. Of course there were differences, some of them significant, but so what? You're taking the whole thing too seriously :-)

    There is a hacker culture, too. It may not be as strong or as universal as ESR believes -- that is understandable. Even if it isn't as strong now, there was a time when it was, and the weakening is a natural consequence of the enourmous population explosion. But the things ESR describes as parts of hacker culture are still very real, significant things in some subsets of the culture. Maybe not your part. Big deal :-) Like I said, you're taking it too seriously when it's mostly intended to be amusing (though some of the amusement derives from the partial accuracy).

    As for the anti-gift-culture bit. I thought that ESR gave a fairly good analysis of the whole thing, and the gift culture was a good explanation of a lot of effects seen in open source culture. It left out some other significant things, of course, like the "boy, that's-pretty-nifty" syndrome where people write code just because they think it's cool what it can do. Or the "I'm-gonna-solve-this-puzzle-dammit" syndrome, for people who like intellectual challenge. But -- in my opinion -- a lot of it hit the mark. If you're going to disagree, fine, but explain why :-) You just said ESR went too far, which is fairly ambiguous/arbitrary.

  • I have to say that I liked the older format better. ESR should be using anchored files instead of a file for every single entry, IMHO. 100K of a text file ain't that big.

  • Could you care to elaborate? I seem to have missed that one, having not been USENETting for quite some time.
  • I just read it. Why am I not surprised that G**bor et al. somehow got involved? Fscking kooks. It's what drove me off of USENET in the first place.
  • Just forwarded the URL and the definition of "Open Source" (from opensource.org) to Gore's site.
  • It would be nice to push the score of your message up, but I don't know how or am not allowed to.
  • AOL! ;)

    One of my favorite parts of reading the Jargon File was that i would start by looking up 'random' and end up reading 'random numbers', 'randomness', 'rape', 'rare mode', 'raster blaster', and on and on. It's harder to do that with the new layout, i'd rather just keep reading down a page than have to press a link to hit the next entry.
  • Well, i tried to, at least. If anyone wants to test it out, download it from http://anomie.dyn.cx/JFF.tar.gz [anomie.dyn.cx], at least until my computer gets slashdotted. Feel free to mirror it, or at least send comments or suggestions.
  • Not thinking completely straight. i should have said that i have a script available to convert the framed version (download the tarball) into a format similar to the old version's. Although it wouldn't be hard to change the script to make one huge HTML file... Maybe tomorrow. If my computer still works ;)
  • Hey, I discovered kung pao chicken because of this entry in the jargon file. Decided to try it next time I had chinese food after reading that, and it's been a favorite of mine ever since.
    Bascially my default chinese order.

    (Then there was the time I went to a chinese restaurant with a bunch of biology grad students. "Okay, everybody order from a different phylum".)
  • Read the "About" link and the "re-packaging" link. He maintains the master document in Texinfo, and may release the masters if he can convert them to a more sane cross-platform markup language. In the meantime, if you want to write your own HTML converter, he'll link to it.

    I suspect that not releasing the Texinfo masters is mostly about preventing people from republishing the document and therefore cutting into his sales, not about the lack of development tools.
  • The Jargon File (accidently) lists Slashdot's URL as http://slashdot.org/, Slashdot [slashdot.org]!

    slashdot effect n.
    Also spelled "/. effect"; what is said to have happened when a website being virtually unreachable because too many people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting article on the popular http://slashdot.org/, Slashdot news service. The term is quite widely used by /. readers, including variants like "That site has been slashdotted again!"
  • And a "dong" is an ethernet media converter. Ayep!
  • The new format is terrible. The jargon file is a perfect example of a document which is enhanced by the use of hyperlinking, but now in this broken up form browsing in the proper sense is impossible. OK, so some of the pages were getting big and slow, but not with a text browser, which is really all you need for a document like this. In fact, I'd say lynx is the preferrable interface to the jargon file. Who wants to reformat and host the new version then?
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  • I stumbled on to the jargon file a few years ago while researching for an english paper, I found it very helpful for a lot of things, but much of it predates me and my use of computers.
    Its nice to see alot of new terms that I understand and have been using.

  • The Jargon File and the Tao of Computing stand
    as the twin pillars of true wisdom in the
    world of hacking.

    I would argue that the Jargon File is ESR's
    most important contribution to hacker culture.
    This collection of folklore, humor, and myth is
    wonderful. Think of it as a mirror, and look into
    it to see yourself. (OK, maybe the mirror is a
    little bit curved...)

    Besides, it has "The Story of Mel" and GLS's
    "A Story About 'Magic'" in it.
  • "Mindshare" is marketspeak. Its meaning is something like "the number of suckers who will agree with anything we say".

  • Cool! (Score:1)

    by Utoxin ( 26011 )
    I've read previous versions of this, and loved it. Wonderful for finding fun obscure terms to puzzle people with. *grin* I haven't looked in this one yet, but as I recall, they define 'hacker' correctly. As in, a person who enjoys computer challenges.

    I'll probably spend the rest of today poking around in the Jargon File. :) Should be fun. I can't wait to see how they define the /. effect.
    --
    Matthew Walker
    My DNA is Y2K compliant
  • Could be just me, but whenever I hear 'Red Book' I think immediately of 'OpenGL Programming Guide' by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board.
  • No matter what you think of ESR's political views and actions, the Jargon File is a wonderful piece of work. I discovered it four years ago and it was a huge eye-opener. It manages to be a cultural document for the past and future at once. It's also one of the best things you can give to any proto-hackers you might meet to help them grow up the right way. (Along with Structure and interpretation of computer programs, not coincidentally another MIT product.)

    A cynical observer might suggest that ESR is trying to reassert his street credibility. I point this out to warn against it: not all actions are politically motivated, and we paranoid types too often forget to be nice once in a while.

  • Jargon is a waste of time. True, it does simplify discussions about complex things, but shouldn't we be more concerned with the substance of an idea rather than obcessively attaching catchy taglines to them?

    --
  • Someone needs to add a simple search engine.

    The explanation of the 1980s BBS losers is very amusing. I sorely miss they days before they all migrated to the Internet.

    One more thing: no explanation of the Meow Usenet phenomena? That was, like, THE online event of the past three years. Oh, well.

  • Yes, that too was the work of the meowers.
  • Recently, I started again, and noticed that all of the big eight (or however many) hierarchies had "meow" groups (i.e., comp.meow, news.meow, talk.meow, etc.). I presume that relates, but how?

    The meow groups were started by the "everyone should be able to newgroup" kooks, in deference to the meowers.

    My favorite is news.admin.meow. You'll fine that most of what's in there is also xposted to the center of the meow universe: alt.fan.karl-malden.nose

  • Yes, yes. If we get enough folks from the Malden Family of Newsgroups (flonkers, nosers, antUers, etc.) to Slashdot, we could create so much WBPA that there's no WAY they could possibly moderate it all.

    It's worth looking into.

  • Chill out, dude. Evil people may use guns to do evil things, but guns are not intrinsically evil. And U.S. statistics tend to suggest that far more often good people use guns for good purposes than evil people use them for evil purposes.

    As far as "homicidal gun-toting maniac" goes: ESR is a gun-toter. So am I, on occassion. But I'm not homicidal, and I seriously doubt that he is either. As for being maniacs, well... I have a rubber chicken in flight taped to my office window. ESR has been known to dress as Obi-Wan Kenobi. This may make us somewhat wierd, but not maniacal.


    -Anthony
  • Interesting to note that many of the changes involve terms dealing with Microsoft.
    Not surprising, given ESR's hatred of them. Of course, once they release their kernel under some crazy restrictive 'open-source' license, I'm sure ESR will adjust the jargon file to look more favorably upon them.

    But hey, it's good for a laugh or two.
  • "general public virus" has been in there for a while, and seems to be a fairly common feeling among *BSD people.
  • laser chicken n.
    Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: It can zap you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams. The dish has also been called `gunpowder chicken'.

  • I think everyone who browses through this realizes that it is done in fun (with lots of sarcasm in between). just read it and laugh at the funny parts :) and ignore the stereotypes that you dont happen to fit into

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