1. [Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol] The wide-area-networking protocol that
makes the Internet work, and the only one most hackers can speak
the name of without laughing or retching. Unlike such allegedly
`standard' competitors such as X.25, DECnet, and the ISO 7-layer
stack, TCP/IP evolved primarily by actually being used,
rather than being handed down from on high by a vendor or a
heavily-politicized standards committee. Consequently, it (a)
works, (b) actually promotes cheap cross-platform connectivity, and
(c) annoys the hell out of corporate and governmental
empire-builders everywhere. Hackers value all three of these
properties. See creationism. 2. [Amateur Packet Radio]
Formerly expanded as "The Crap Phil Is Pushing". The reference
is to Phil Karn, KA9Q, and the context was an ongoing
technical/political war between the majority of sites still running
AX.25 and the TCP/IP relays. TCP/IP won.
he network n.
1. Historicaslly, the union of all the major
noncommercial academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as
Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and the
virtual UUCP and Usenet `networks', plus the corporate
in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such as
CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them....
