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feep /feep/ 1. n. The soft electronic 'bell' sound of a display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to perfer beep). 2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: beep, 'bleep', or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip ''Shoe", uses the word 'eep' for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term 'breele' was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five seconds). The 'feeper' on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also ding. |
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feeper /fee'pr/ n. The device in a terminal or workstation (usually a loud-speaker of some kind) that makes the feep sound. |
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feeping creature n. [from feeping creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features. |
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feeping creaturism /fee'ping kree'ch r-izm/ n. A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn't really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises. |
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feetch feetch /feech feech/ interj. If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated thing". With a tone of resignation, it means, "Well, I'd rather keep it simple, but I suppose it has to be done". |
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fence n. 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished (out-of-band) characters (or other data items), used to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a 'sentinel'). The NUL (ASCII 0000000) character that terminates strings in C is a fence. Hex FF is also (though slightly less frequently) used this way. See zigamorph. 2. An extra data value inserted in an array or other data structure in order |
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