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this term has passed into the mainstream; the extension to other kinds of machine is still confined to techies (e.g. boiler mechanics may speak of a boiler being down). 2. go down vi. To stop functioning; usually said of the system. The message from the console that every hacker hates to hear from the operator is "System going down in 5 minutes". 3. take down, bring down vt. To deactivate purposely, usually for repair work or PM. "I'm taking the system down to work on that bug in the tape drive." Occasionally one hears the word down by itself used as a verb in this vt. sense. See crash; oppose up. |
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download vt. To transfer data or (esp.) code from a larger 'host' system (esp. a mainframe) over a digital comm link to a smaller 'client' system, esp. a microcomputer or specialized peripheral. Oppose upload. |
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However, note that ground-to-space communications has its own usage rule for this term. Space-to-earth transmission is always 'down' and the reverse 'up' regardless of the relative size of the computers involved. So far the in-space machines have invariably been smaller; thus the upload/download distinction has been reversed from its usual sense. |
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DP /D-P/ n. 1. Data Processing. Listed here because, according to hackers, use of the term marks one immediately as a suit. See DPer. 2. Common abbrev for Dissociated Press. |
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DPB /d -pib'/ vt. [from the PDP-10 instruction set] To plop something down in the middle. Usage: silly. "DPB yourself into that couch there." The connotation would be that the couch is full except for one slot just big enough for one last person to sit in. DPB means 'DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. Hackish usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP function of the same name. |
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DPer /dee-pee-er/ n. Data Processor. Hackers are absolutely amazed that suits use this term self-referentially. Computers process data, not people! See DP. |
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dragon n. [MIT] A program similar to a daemon, except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, |
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