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crufty misfeatures common on commercial operating systems. Armando Stettner, one of the early Unix developers, used to give out fake license plates bearing this motto under a large Unix, all in New Hampshire colors of green and white. These are now valued collector's items. Recently (1994) an inferior imitation of these has been put in circulation with a red corporate logo added. |
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livelock /l v'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to finish because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. Differs from deadlock in that the process is not blocked or waiting for anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can never catch up. |
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liveware /lv'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for wetware. Less common. 2. [Cambridge] Vermin. "Waiter, there's some liveware in my salad " |
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lobotomy n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management training is said to have undergone. At IBM and elsewhere this term is used by both hackers and low-level management; the latter doubtless intend it as a joke. 2. The act of removing the processor from a microcomputer in order to replace or upgrade it. Some very cheap clone systems are sold in lobotomized form everything but the brain. |
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locals, the pl.n. The users on one's local network (as opposed, say, to people one reaches via public Internet or UUCP connects). The marked thing about this usage is how little it has to do with real-space distance. "I have to do some tweaking on this mail utility before releasing it to the locals." |
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locked and loaded adj. [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with magazine inserted and prepared for firing] Said of a removable disk volume properly prepared for use that is, locked into the drive and with the heads loaded. Ironically, because their heads are 'loaded' whenever the power is up, this description is never used of Winchester drives (which are named after a rifle). |
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locked up adj. Syn. for hung, wedged. |
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logic bomb n. Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or OS that causes it to perform some destructive or security-compromising activity whenever specified conditions are met. Compare back door. |
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