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parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of 'natural laws' to achieve a desired objective. Their use of legal is flavored as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare language lawyer, legalese. |
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legalese n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description, product specification, or interface standard; text that seems designed to obfuscate and requires a language lawyer to parse it. Though hackers are not afraid of high information density and complexity in language (indeed, they rather enjoy both), they share a deep and abiding loathing for legalese; they associate it with deception, suits, and situations in which hackers generally get the short end of the stick. |
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LER /L-E-R/ n. [TMRC, from 'Light-Emitting Diode'] A light-emitting resistor (that is, one in the process of burning up). Ohm's law was broken. See also SED. |
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LERP /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a verb or noun for the operation. "Bresenham's algorithm lerps incrementally between the two endpoints of the line." |
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let the smoke out v. To fry hardware (see fried). See magic smoke for a discussion of the underlying mythology. |
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letterbomb 1. n. A piece of email containing live data intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal. It is possible, for example, to send letterbombs that will lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that the user must cycle power (see cycle, sense 3) to unwedge them. Under Unix, a letterbomb can also try to get part of its contents interpreted as a shell command to the mailer. The results of this could range from silly to tragic. See also Trojan horse; compare nastygram. 2. Loosely, a mailbomb. |
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lexer /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for 'lexical analyzer', the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like =-." |
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lexiphage /lek'si-fayj`/ n. A notorious word chomper on ITS. See bag-biter. This program would draw on a selected victim's bitmapped terminal |
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