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lost in the underflow adj. Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to floating underflow, a condition that can occur when a floating-point arithmetic processor tries to handle quantities smaller than its limit of magnitude. It is also a pun on 'undertow' (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow." Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit. |
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lots of MIPS but no I/O adj. Used to describe a person who is technically brilliant but can't seem to communicate with human beings effectively. Technically it describes a machine that has lots of processing power but is bottlenecked on input-output (in 1991, the IBM Rios, a.k.a. RS/6000, is a notorious recent example). |
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low-bandwidth adj. [from communication theory] Used to indicate a talk that, although not content-free, was not terribly informative. "That was a low-bandwidth talk, but what can you expect for an audience of suits!" Compare zero-content, bandwidth, math-out. |
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LPT /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ n. Line printer, of course. Rare under Unix, more common among hackers who grew up with ITS, MS-DOS, CP/M and other operating systems that were strongly influenced by early DEC conventions. |
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Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology prov. "There is always one more bug." |
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lunatic fringe n. [IBM] Customers who can be relied upon to accept release 1 versions of software. |
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lurker n. One of the 'silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm just lurking." Often used in the lurkers, the hypothetical audience for the group's flamage-emitting regulars. When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called delurking. |
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luser /loo'zr/ n. A user; esp. one who is also a loser. (luser and loser are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under |
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