drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch});

:drop-outs: n. 1. A variety of `power glitch' (see {glitch});
momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains. 2. Missing characters
in typed input due to software malfunction or system saturation
(one cause of such behavior under UNIX when a bad connection to a
modem swamps the processor with spurious character interrupts; see
{screaming tty}). 3. Mental glitches; used as a way of
describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut down
for a couple of beats. See {glitch}, {fried}.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary