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of core. Also, more modern memory-management techniques (esp. paging) make the 'moby count' less significant. However, there is one series of widely-used chips for which the term could stand to be revivedthe Intel 8088 and 80286 with their incredibly brain-damaged segmented-memory designs. On these, a moby would be the 1-megabyte address span of a segment/offset pair (by coincidence, a PDP-10 moby was exactly 1 megabyte of 9-bit bytes). |
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mockingbird n. Software that intercepts communications (especially login transactions) between users and hosts and provides system-like responses to the users while saving their responses (especially account IDs and passwords). A special case of Trojan horse. |
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mod vt.,n. 1. Short for 'modify' or 'modification'. Very commonly usedin fact the full terms are considered markers that one is being formal. The plural 'mods' is used esp. with reference to bug fixes or minor design changes in hardware or software, most esp. with respect to patch sets or a diff. 2. Short for modulo but used only for its techspeak sense. |
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mode n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. Use of the word 'mode' rather than 'state' implies that the state is extended over time, and probably also that some activity characteristic of that state is being carried out. "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode." In its jargon sense, 'mode' is most often attributed to people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. In particular, see hack mode, day mode, night mode, demo mode, fireworks mode, and yoyo mode; also talk mode. |
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One also often hears the verbs enable and disable used in connection with jargon modes. Thus, for example, a sillier way of saying "I'm going to crash" is "I'm going to enable crash mode now". One might also hear a request to "disable flame mode, please". |
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In a usage much closer to techspeak, a mode is a special state that certain user interfaces must pass into in order to perform certain functions. For example, in order to insert characters into a document in the Unix editor vi, one must type the "i" key, which invokes the "Insert" command. The effect of this command is to put vi into "insert mode", in which typing the ''i" key has a quite different effect (to wit, it inserts an "i" into the document). One must then hit another special key, "ESC", in order to leave "insert mode". Nowadays, modeful interfaces are generally considered losing but survive in quite a few widely used tools built in less enlightened times. |
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