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Too late: boxen has already been published in a dictionary and referenced in other on-line dictionaries.

Good jargon (as opposed to the kind of polysyllabic blather adopted by some of the soft sciences as counterfeit jargon) is a set of shorthand phrases with specific, non-ambiguous technical meanings and as such tends to be opaque to the layman. In this particular case we're not even reaching that far: the words are simply archaic and were once in common use.

Yes, boxen

Also as in: one sock, two socks, many soxen.

nerd: n.

1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals.
2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare geek.

The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950). (The spellings 'nurd' and 'gnurd' also used to be current at MIT, where 'nurd' is reported from as far back as 1957; however, knurd appears to have a separate etymology.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit" without the connotation of intelligence.

Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.

• The Net Legends FAQ
  
• The Happynet Manifesto
  
• The New Hacker's Dictionary
  
• The alt.sex.hello-kitty FAQ

However, the sort of phonetic bridges like the one I gave should be much less ambiguous; e.g. most dictionary phonetic tables use sample words. Techniques like consonants modification are used routinely in teaching foreign languages.

I for one prefer the internal phonetic alphabet, as used by the OED.

Hackers do. What could be possibly more exciting than hacking yourself - gaining insight of your own psyche, find ways how your thoughts run, find patterns how you are similar to other hackers... A good piece of that job was done by makers of The Hacker Jargon Dictionary and this is just another detail noticed by another hacker...

According to ESR's Jargon File, a LART (Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool) is a large, blunt object used to smack some sense into people who do offensive (or offensively stupid) things. Could be just the thing here...

The only sure way to erase a hard drive is to "squeeze" it: writing over the old information with new data -- all zeros, for instance -- at least once, but preferably several times.

I must say, this is the first time I've ever heard zeroing a hard drive as "squeezing" it. Sounds more like compressing the data on the hard drive to allow more to be stored in a riskier way. Where in the world did this term originate, or did this Justin Pope just make it up? I can't even find an entry for it in the Jargon File (I've found nothing between square tape and squirrelcide.)

The only sure way to erase a hard drive is to "squeeze" it: writing over the old information with new data -- all zeros, for instance -- at least once, but preferably several times.

I must say, this is the first time I've ever heard zeroing a hard drive as "squeezing" it. Sounds more like compressing the data on the hard drive to allow more to be stored in a riskier way. Where in the world did this term originate, or did this Justin Pope just make it up? I can't even find an entry for it in the Jargon File (I've found nothing between square tape and squirrelcide.)

The only sure way to erase a hard drive is to "squeeze" it: writing over the old information with new data -- all zeros, for instance -- at least once, but preferably several times.

I must say, this is the first time I've ever heard zeroing a hard drive as "squeezing" it. Sounds more like compressing the data on the hard drive to allow more to be stored in a riskier way. Where in the world did this term originate, or did this Justin Pope just make it up? I can't even find an entry for it in the Jargon File (I've found nothing between square tape and squirrelcide.)

For a really good model, you can follow the same model as ESR's Jargon File website.

If the Jargon File is anything to go by, this isn't exactly something IBM has only started doing recently.

The entry on Tiger Teams provides the definition; the entry on patches gives the example story:

There is a classic story of a tiger team penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't -- or don't -- inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any trap doors or any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were official military types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures.

The usual meaning is the one to do with inflammatory posting, as given above. (See the entry on troll in the Jargon File.) Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people on Slashdot have heard the term, but not understood it, and use it themselves as a fairly meaningless insult for people whose opinions they disagree with.
my plan

lets take a look at how many 1k bytes of code could be inserted throughout the SE Linux OS to

It seems to me that this would be double-damned hard in an open source system.
[...]
How would all you clever hackers out there hide a function in an open source system in a way that it can escape detection even if all the source is read?

Ken Thompson's discussion of how he did this is available at http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/. To summarize, I've blindly copied from Ignatius' post in an earlier Slashdot discussion below:

Check out the " back door" entry of the Jargon File to learn about one of the IMHO most creative hacks of all time:

[...] Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. [...]

A detailed description of the hack by Ken Thompson himself can be found here.

--

lets take a look at how many 1k bytes of code could be inserted throughout the SE Linux OS to

It seems to me that this would be double-damned hard in an open source system.
[...]
How would all you clever hackers out there hide a function in an open source system in a way that it can escape detection even if all the source is read?

Ken Thompson's discussion of how he did this is available at http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/. To summarize, I've blindly copied from Ignatius' post in an earlier Slashdot discussion below:

Check out the " back door" entry of the Jargon File to learn about one of the IMHO most creative hacks of all time:

[...] Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. [...]

A detailed description of the hack by Ken Thompson himself can be found here.

--

www.jargon.org

Dissention from the collective childhood warm-fuzzy remeniscence earns a "Troll" rating?

I think partly the trouble is some people, including moderators, don't know what "troll means". I can't find it defined anywhere on in the Slashdot faq, though it does appear in the faq for kuro5hin.

The Jargon File defines "troll" as "to utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself." A key part of this definition is that the poster pretends to be serious about a subject but in fact is trying to attract flames.

From references in comments, I'd guess that many people on Slashdot understand something else by the term, though I'm not sure what. The fact that Slashdot's faq describes anti-troll filters (when from the description they seem to be describing anti-spam filters) seems to imply that the confusion is occasionally present even in the minds of the administrators.

M

As to whether or not what they were doing should be called and what term best describes them, careful consultation of The Jargon File seems to indicate that they were, in fact, cracking the system, not hacking it. At the same time, however, it's clear that they (mostly at least) weren't script kiddies or warez d00dz. Perhaps more terminology is in order. Maybe hacker-cracker? (Just kidding)

--

The Jargon File called it "keyboard dandruff"... apparently that entry was lost somewhere in the 4.x Jargon series...

For that matter, this is the first time I've ever heard it claimed that Unix was Unics, which stood for UNiplexed Information and Computing System. I'm wondering where he dug that tidbit up and if there is any truth to it.

AFAIK, not really, but it isn't all that much of a stretch for a Mac advocate. See the entries for multics and unix in the Jargon File:

Multics: MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service

Unix: In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was `UNICS'

If Meyer thinks watching Stallman and a software developer at dinner is contentious, he should have been there when a friend of mine maneuvered RMS into a discussion on software patents with a patent attorney :-) While RMS dislikes software patents intensely (and I generally agree with him on the topic), he did agree that if software patents were for short periods of time, say 5 years or less, rather than the current near-infinity-in-Internet-years, he could live with them, because programmers could still do their work without too much interference.
And just because many of us in the community respect things RMS has done and many of the positions he's taken, that doesn't mean there's either anything resembling universal worship or liking his Whiny Righteous Anger Mode - there are times you put up with it because he has earned lots of Extra Slack points.

If Meyer wants to attack the free software movement by ad hominem attacks against its major players, we really do need to call on the Object Oriented Programming community to reject this person who not only believes that governments should radically outgun their subjects (in spite of the obvious contradiction between this and the last few millenia of experience watching armed governments make wars and oppress their citizens), but who clearly states that they should use the powers they've acquired to help control who has access to what software. (Needless to say, this paragraph is intended as a flame :-).

I've met ESR once or twice, back when I lived on the East Coast, before the Linux revolution happened. He had started doing the printed revised jargon dictionary, and was sharing booth space at the Tre nton Computer Fair with Nancy Lebovitz, the Calligraphic Button maker. Nice guy, and since nobody'd acquired the collection of used 9-track tapes he'd brought (in addition to the book), he decided to be non-attached to property and we frisbeed them into the dumpster.

The 3D imagery I was referring to in the Hollywood hacker stereotype is the swooping-through-the-network shots, the flashing "Access Denied" signs that spin in space, the crumbling walls that represent a bypassed security measure, etc.

Frankly, I think your term for 'hacking' as a verb is pretty general. I mean, I know what you mean (and that is the heart of the debate,) but such usages to me indicate a sort of "Me-too"-ism, sort of like sticking the word "engineer" at the end of a job title, because programming for some perverse reason enjoys a status in some communities that other forms of demanding technical work don't. "Hacking" can be as general as 'working really hard at something' or 'doing something cleverly.' I know I swore off from the philosophy of language, but I think of Wittgenstein's 'family resemblences' when talking about words and meanings: how the word game, for example, has a meaning whcih can't be bound by necessary and sufficient conditions, and includes things which merely resemble each other in some ways. If you think of 'meaning' as 'the ability for input to activate a term-node in a neural network,' then those sort of phenomenon makes more sense.

Phil wrote a better compression program that was compatible with System Enhancements Associates (SEA) program called ARC. So they litigated. And so Phil went off and found a better algorithem for compression, and brought out PKZIP.Many people in the BBS community thought that SEA was a little heavyhanded (Perception, I don't know the reality), and moved to PKZIP. Others moved over for the speed and the better compression. The rest is history.

See also "arc wars"MIT Jargon File ver 299. This story seems to have been dropped from the current Jargon File for some reason.

ttyl
Farrell McGovern
Former Sysop, Data/SFnet (One of the first few hundred Fidonet BBSs!) and Solsbury Hill, founding member of PODSnet.

You're completely wrong, of course. Like all other GPL'd software, Linux fully satisfies the ShareWare Foundation's "ShareWare Definition[SM]. It's a bit inexact, but not a falsehood, to refer to Linux as Shareware. Check the Jargon File if you don't believe me.

"Boxen". Plural of box (computer). Sort of like Vaxen (multiple VAX machines) or oxen. See the Jargon File.

And who says hating Microsoft makes you ignorant? Most if not all Linux users started out on Dos/Windows. If it was adequate for them, why would they switch? We've all found one reason or another to dislike Windows, and after being a Linux user for some time, you grow to resent Windows being pushed on everyone like that. I think that's where a lot of the animosity towards MS comes from.

Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?

My suggestion is possible, but likely a bit of work. Try installing Solaris/x86 on your Linux box, or Linux/Sparc on your Solaris machine. See how the math goes there.

For more documentation, see "Cray instability" in the Jargon File.

http://members.home.com/pnevares/jargo n.html

1. 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 Slashdot news service. The term is quite widely used by /. readers, including variants like "That site has been slashdotted again!" 2. In a perhaps inevitable generation, the term is being used to describe any similar effect from being listed on a popular site.

• http://www.snafu.priv.at/jargon/jargon. html
• http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jar gon.html

How would the server verify this? Rather than presenting links to the actual sites, would it present a list of CGI's that a browser could then click, causing the server to verify the page prior to passing it back to the client? That would be a major CPU killer.

Do a search for something on DirectHit and you'll see the little people icons. The more people icons, the more popular the page is.

The extension to this is that if you find one link that's bad, they should check all the other URLs for that site. There are a ton of bad links to old pages at jargon.org, for instance.

make has been used to manage dependencies between project components for almost a quarter of a century. While it was a major advance over the hand-written shell scripts that preceded it, make's semi-declarative syntax is clumsy, and even short make scripts can be very difficult to debug. In addition, its functionality is not accessible from other programs without heroic effort, and it provides little support for common operations such as recursion.

How can one expect to actually call himself a developer if he can't even manage to understand Makefiles? IMHO the standard make does wonderfully what it was designed for, and the GNU make is half-way to creeping featurism. The consistency and interoperability of each of the system utilities adds elegance to Unix, and learning how to use them helps to keep the brain working! :) Stupidifying it is a mistake.

This isn't elitism, but I believe that replacing make(1) to make it more accessible to dumb people doesn't make sense, except if you dumbify the programming languages as well.

(I actually like autoconf, and I have been using it in some of my projects, but the Makefiles generated by automake are just too bloated. I use my own nice very nice recursive Makefiles to build and package the system, and it works quite well!)

This is exactly what I was thinking.

If Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer can make it into a many-page pictoral for Christmas as "Mini-Hef" ...

...why can't we have "St IGNUcius' Happy Happy hacking run"?

Starring the girls of the mansion as the The Techno-Talking Babes(TM)?

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool, something large, heavy, and painful. As a verb, it can be read as "grievously wound."

[...] Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. [...]

A detailed description of the hack by Ken Thompson himself can be found here.

[...] Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.
Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. [...]

A detailed description of the hack by Ken Thompson himself can be found here.

What a fabulous idea!

Reminds me of such things as the game Core Wars, and the movies
Tron and The Matrix (bots can kill rogue processes too...)

...I'm also reminded of the scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where the kids make Pacman eat the data off Chevy Chase's CoCo screen... That always annoyed me as another crummy example of computers in the movies - now it seems that life is imitating art ;>

ANJ ..

According to the Jargon File, Death Star is a nickname for the logo of a certain telecommunications company..

According to the Jargon File, Death Star is a nickname for the logo of a certain telecommunications company..