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demigod n. A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of Unix and C), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of EMACS), Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux), and most recently James Gosling (inventor of Java). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major software project has been driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also net.god, true-hacker. |
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demo /de'moh/ [short for 'demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a product or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than any number of test runs, especially when important people are watching. 2. n. The act of demoing. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof interface; how does it work again?" 3. n. Esp. as demo version, can refer either to an early, barely-functional version of a program which can be used for demonstration purposes as long as the operator uses exactly the right commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes. |
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demo mode n. 1. [Sun] The state of being heads down in order to finish code in time for a demo, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which video games sit by themselves running through a portion of the game, also known as attract mode. Some serious apps have a demo mode they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen which lets you impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with Microsloth Windows). |
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demon n. 1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See daemon. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to daemon especially in the Unix world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic. |
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Demons in sense 1 are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons |
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