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speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the bare metal serial port programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in, drivers that use the hook but do not provide serial-port access themselves are named with a modifier, as in 'video fossil'. |
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four-color glossies n. 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-color glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-color-glossy manuals are never useful for solving a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output. |
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fragile adj. Syn brittle. |
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fred n. 1. The personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable (see foo). Allegedly popular because it's easy for a non-touch-typist to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Unlike J. Random Hacker or J. Random Loser, this name has no positive or negative loading (but see Mbogo, Dr. Fred). See also barney. 2. An acronym for 'Flipping Ridiculous Electronic Device'; other F-verbs may be substituted for 'flipping'. |
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frednet /fred'net/ n. Used to refer to some random and uncommon protocol encountered on a network. "We're implementing bridging in our router to solve the frednet problem." |
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freeware n. Free software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media. At one time, freeware was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See shareware, FRS. |
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freeze v. To lock an evolving software distribution or document against changes so it can be released with some hope of stability. Carries the strong implication that the item in question will 'unfreeze' at some future date. "OK, fix that bug and we'll freeze for release." |
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There are more specific constructions on this term. A feature freeze, for example, locks out modifications intended to introduce new features but still allows bugfixes and completion of existing features; a code freeze |
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