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made the overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gaw'bl/ (spelled 'gawble' or possibly 'gawbul') was in use as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full machine word, but our sources are unclear on this). These terms are more easily understood if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of 'chomp' and 'gobble' pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For general discussion of similar terms, see nybble. |
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check n. A hardware-detected error condition, most commonly used to refer to actual hardware failures rather than software-induced traps. E.g., a parity check is the result of a hardware-detected parity error. Recorded here because the word often humorously extended to non-technical problems. For example, the term child check has been used to refer to the problems caused by a small child who is curious to know what happens when s/he presses all the cute buttons on a computer's console (of course, this particular problem could have been prevented with molly-guards). |
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chemist n. [Cambridge] Someone who wastes computer time on number-crunching when you'd far rather the machine were doing something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or running life patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry. |
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Chernobyl chicken n. See laser chicken. |
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Chernobyl packet /cher-noh'b l pak't/ n. A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ether and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet. |
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chicken head n. [Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly resembles a poultry part. Rendered in ASCII as 'C='. With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see amoeba), Commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little bitty boxes (see also PETSCII). Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the movie Blade Runner; the novel is now sold under that title), in which a 'chickenhead' is a mutant with below-average intelligence. |
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