Jargon File

Jargon File

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memory smash n. [XEROX PARC] Writing through a pointer that doesn't point to what you think it does.
This occasionally reduces your machine to a rubble of bits. Note that this is subtly ...
menuitis /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n. Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively simple-minded menu interface and no escape.
Hackers find this intensely irritating and much prefer the ...
mess-dos /mes-dos/ n. [semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS.
Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!...
meta /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ adj.
pref. [from analytic philosophy] One level of description up....
meta bit n. The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character values 128-255.
Also called high bit, alt bit, or (rarely) hobbit....
metasyntactic variable n. A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion.
The word foo...
MFTL /M-F-T-L/ [abbreviation: `My Favorite Toy Language'] 1.
mickey n. The resolution unit of mouse movement.
It has been suggested that the `disney' will become a benchmark unit for animation graphics performance....
mickey mouse program n. North American equivalent of a noddy (that is, trivial) program.
micro- pref. 1. Very small; this is the root of its use as a quantifier prefix.
2. A quantifier prefix, calling for multiplication by 10^(-6) (see quantifiers)....

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