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test to redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former Soviet Union informs me that 'gorets' is Russian for 'mountain dweller' ESR] Compare frink. |
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gorilla arm n. The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?". |
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gorp /gorp/ n. [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar. |
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GOSMACS /goz'maks/ n. [contraction of 'Gosling EMACS'] The first EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now largely eclipsed by GNUMACS. Originally freeware; a commercial version is now modestly popular as 'UniPress EMACS'. The author, James Gosling, went on to invent NeWS and the programming language Java; the latter earned him demigod status. |
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Gosperism /gos'p r-izm/ n. A hack, invention, or saying due to arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the entries in HAKMEM are Gosperisms; see also life. |
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gotcha n. A misfeature of a system, especially a programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or mistakes because it both enticingly easy to invoke and completely unexpected and/or unreasonable in its outcome. For example, a classic gotcha in C is the fact that if (a=b) {code;} is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the value of b into a and then executes code if a is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was if (a==b) {code;}, which executes code if a and b are equal. |
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GPL /G-P-L/ n. Abbreviation for 'General Public License' in widespread use; see copyleft, General Public Virus. |
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GPV /G-P-V/ n. Abbrev. for General Public Virus in widespread use. |
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